What is Renew?
As we all navigate the pandemic and look to rebuild a sense of normality, routine and restore our lives that are potentially very different from before, it is important to remember that each one of us will have been impacted by COVID-19. Our wellbeing, our mental, emotional and physical health will have been impacted.
Renew is a series of short development sessions designed for adults which you can do when and how best suits you. It has three key parts: an overview to Learn about the theme, some key content to Engage with; video, blog or something else and then something to Practice to help you develop the tools and skills needed to renew you. Each session should take no more than 30 minutes.
LEARN | ENGAGE | PRACTICE
For more information about Phase, who we are, what we do and why we are passionate about helping you to have the tools and skills needed to navigate this new normal, then visit our website phase-hitchin.org
Learn: Importance of gratitude
"Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance." Eckhart Tolle
Does happiness make us grateful? Or does being grateful make us happy?
We often fall into the trap of thinking we need that one more thing to make us happy. And yet a huge amount of psychological research shows that despite someone’s circumstances, practicing gratitude has a significant effect on happiness and gratitude (as well as a number of other benefits)
Dr Robert A. Emmons found that participants who spent 10 days reflecting on things they were grateful for reported feeling more optimistic and better about their lives, exercising more and having less visits to their doctor than those who wrote about daily irritations or neutral experiences.
According to Brother David Steindl-Rast, a great first step in living gratefully is to build stop signs into your life. He shares an example of how grateful he was for drinking water when he returned from Africa, but as this effect wore off, he put stickers on his taps to remind himself of the opportunity to be grateful. Stop signs are reminders to ourselves to slow down and pay attention to the opportunities to be grateful.
Practice
- What are your stop signs? What stop signs can you build in your life to remind you of opportunities to be grateful
- Gratitude journal. Reflect on 1, 2 or 3 new things each day to be grateful for and write them down. (start with the option that feels most realistic and achievable)
Further reading
- Want to be happy? Be grateful | David Steindl-Rast
- How Gratitude & Reflection Saved My Life | David O'Mahoney
Credits:
Created with images by Alexas_Fotos - "the little things of life enjoy gratitude" • Pexels - "woman umbrella floating" • CharuTyagi - "writing journal personal diary"