4 wellbeing tips for a winter lockdown

15 minute wellbeing is back! A lot has changed since the last blog post, with the global Covid-19 pandemic changing how many of us live and work. It’s World Mental Health Day on 10^th October, so what better time to focus on our wellbeing and try making each day a little bit easier during these uncertain times?

Here’s a quick reminder of what 15 minute wellbeing is about. This blog translates existing research on wellbeing into simple activities you can do in 15 minutes to improve your health and wellbeing.

Each activity will not cost any money to do, because why should we pay to feel good about ourselves? As we progress through the activities, we will discover that we already have all the tools we need to improve our wellbeing. This blog doesn’t tell you what to do either – it offers different exercises for you to try to help you feel better within yourself.

The variety of activities means that you won’t get bored trying the same old thing. Instead, you’ll get to try lots of different things to figure out what works for you and your wellbeing. The activities are grouped into seven themes:

If you’re a new reader (welcome and thank you for visiting!) or want to know more, click on the links above which give more information on the themes. Over the next few months, 15 minute wellbeing will cover these themes and how they can help us during the coronavirus pandemic.

Wellbeing during a global pandemic

Uncertainty and ever-changing situations can take their toll on our wellbeing. In the UK, the number of us experiencing high levels of anxiety has increased dramatically since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Anxiety, stress and fear are normal responses to uncertain situations and for many of us this will pass as we return to some sort of normality (whenever that may be). However, the longer the pandemic continues, the higher the risk to our wellbeing and mental health. It has been estimated that 20% of adults in England will need help with their mental health because of the pandemic.

It’s more important than ever that we help ourselves and each other to stay mentally well. This blog cannot help alleviate mental illness, but it can provide ideas and options to improve wellbeing which contributes to good mental health. If you are concerned about your mental health, please speak to your local GP, local Mind, Samaritans or Time to Change.

Maintaining and improving our wellbeing during lockdown

Usually on 15 minute wellbeing, each post centres around one activity to try out. However, as this is the first post in a while, here are four things for us all to try to support our wellbeing over the next two weeks. Each activity can be done in 15 minutes, so why not try each of them at least once over the next fortnight and see how you feel?

Make plans with others

Many of us who felt (and may continue to feel) anxious during lockdown also reported feeling lonely a lot of the time. It’s important to stay connected with others as best we can to alleviate these feelings of anxiety.

You may be thinking “How can I make plans with others when social restrictions are in place?” If there is one thing that has accelerated during lockdown, it’s the use of digital technology to virtually connect with our friends, families and colleagues. Many of us young and old are now able to have video calls and connect with each other without having to leave the safety of our homes. For those of us who can’t or don’t like using video calls, a regular telephone call is just as effective.

Think of 5 things you’d like to do with someone else – it could be 5 activities to do with the same person or different activities with different people. The aim is to have fun spending time connecting with others. You may or may not be able to do these in person, depending on the local restrictions in place in your area so consider how you can do each activity in person and virtually/over the phone. The worksheet at the end of this post has a few ideas if you need inspiration.

Healthy body, healthy mind
Juvenal (abridged)

2. Keep exercising!

Lockdown has impacted our exercise habits, with some of us finding it gives us more time to exercise, whereas social distancing has prevented many sports teams from training together and competing. In England, exercise levels have fluctuated over the course of the pandemic. In May, they peaked with 35% of adults doing at least 30 minutes of activity 5 times a week. By September 29% of adults reported exercising regularly.

Physical activity has numerous benefits for our wellbeing including: distracting us from our negative thoughts, improving our quality of life and improving our mood. If the changing weather makes it feel too cold for you to exercise outside, there are thousands of free videos available online to get you moving, many of which are 15 minutes long. As the saying goes, “Healthy body, healthy mind” so see what difference 15 minutes of physical activity does for your wellbeing. You can use the worksheet at the end of this post to reflect on how you feel after exercising.

3. Reading

To combat feelings of stress, why not try reading or listening to an audiobook for 15 minutes? In an international survey of 18,000 people, 58% of respondents rated reading as the most restful activity they did. Those that read were also more likely to be optimistic and have a sense of purpose – both key to wellbeing.

Many local libraries have re-opened across the UK – check your local council website for information on opening times – and stock books and audiobooks. Some offer contactless reserve and collect services. If you’re unable to get to a library, e-loans may be available. Alternatively, there are lots of free access articles and stories available online.

You can use the worksheet to reflect on what effects (if any) 15 minutes of reading has on your wellbeing.

This will bring out the best and worst in people
said by many

4. Give 15 minutes of your time

A phrase that has been often repeated over the last few months (as well as “You’re still on mute!”) is “This will bring out the best and worst in people.” One of the best things it has brought out is people’s willingness to volunteer to help others. Within one week of the Royal Voluntary Service appealing for volunteers to help vulnerable people during lockdown, 750,000 people signed up to deliver medication and shopping; transport equipment; and check-in and chat with those who needed help.

Giving just 15 minutes of our time can make a huge difference to someone else and improve our own wellbeing. If you’re unsure what you can do in 15 minutes, the worksheet below has plenty of ideas to inspire you.

4-wellbeing-tips-winter-lockdown-worksheet Download

I’d love to hear how you get on with these activities and what effect they have on your wellbeing. Please do get in touch 15minutewellbeing@gmail.com or comment in the box below.

I share wellbeing-related research, news and stories on twitter and Instagram in between weekly blog posts so do follow @15minwellbeing on both platforms to keep up to date.

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Shape your thoughts

When people talk about mindfulness, does it conjure up ideas of sitting with your eyes closed, trying to clear your mind? Well, it doesn’t have to be that way. Mindfulness can be practised standing up, brushing your teeth and even while eating your dinner. This week’s activity shows that you can practise mindfulness wherever you are, so you can easily fit it into your day.

It’s been a while since I posted about mindfulness, so let’s have a quick recap. Mindfulness is the practice of focusing and accepting, rather than judging, our thoughts, feelings and sensations that occur in the present moment. In other words, it’s all about focusing on the here and now – not getting lost in our thoughts and feelings, which can sometimes be detrimental to our wellbeing.

There are multiple benefits to practising mindfulness, including:

Reducing repetitive negative thinking, allowing us to step back from stressful and emotional situations
Reducing pain
Improving quality of life
Reducing symptoms of depression

Furthermore, the more we practise mindfulness, the longer the positive effects on our wellbeing last.

If mindfulness is good for us, why do we struggle to fit it into our lives? Only 8% of adults in the United States use meditation, however this covers mindfulness as well as other types of meditation. This suggests even fewer people practise mindfulness regularly. Despite the lack of mindfulness in our lives, it appears we could benefit from it, as 47% of the time, our minds wander, and this is linked with unhappiness.

A world of shapes

With this in mind, this week’s activity is a simple way to introduce mindfulness – through shapes. Yes, shapes.

Typically, we learn about shapes when we’re children, but as adults, even if we know the names of many shapes, we often don’t notice how they make up almost every aspect of our world. The world itself is a sphere, the screen you’re reading this on is a rectangle, the bag you carry may be a mixture of cylinders and squares…the list goes on.

Noticing the shapes around you

This week’s activity is to spend 15 minutes noticing all the different shapes around you. You can do this wherever you are, if you are standing, sitting or moving. The aim of this is to help clear your mind by focusing on the environment around you and hopefully evoke a sense of calm. I find this activity particularly useful when I’m feeling anxious, as it slows down my racing thoughts.

As you notice the different shapes around you, remember to think in 2D and 3D (i.e. squares and cubes) and name them either aloud or in your head. If you don’t know the name of a shape, just describe what you see. For example, leaves aren’t typically a geometric shape. You could describe some leaves as oval, with the edges meeting in a pointy tip, with ridges across the leaf making curved, rectangular-like shapes.

When looking for shapes, why not try noticing:

What’s above you
What’s below you
Anything you are holding
What you are sitting or walking on
The details on something right in front of you. For example, I was sitting on the bus and noticed this stop sign button consisted of circles, crosses, an oval, a cube and a sort of curved cuboid

You can do this week’s activity without a worksheet, but if you’re struggling with how to start, I’ve created a worksheet with specific questions about a picture with different shapes. You can click the link below to download the worksheet.

shape-your-thoughts-worksheet Download

If you’d like to share your pictures of all the shapes you’ve noticed, or share how you found this mindful activity, please do get in touch 15minutewellbeing@gmail.com

I share wellbeing-related research, news and stories on twitter and Instagram in between weekly blog posts so do follow @15minwellbeing on both platforms to keep up to date. This week, I will also be posting pictures and videos to help encourage you to notice the different shapes around you.

You can make someone’s day in 15 minutes

“We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.”
Sir Winston Churchill

A national survey found that 76% of the UK population feel society was more selfish than 10 years ago and 67% believe that people were less likely to be kind to strangers. Isn’t that sad?

There are numerous examples of people coming together to help each other such as Americans offering refuge to those in New Orleans after the destruction of Hurricane Katrina and residents of Clapham in London cleaning up their local streets following the riots in 2011. However, we shouldn’t wait for a natural disaster or social uprising to happen in order to help each other.

Small acts of kindness can make a huge difference to someone else’s – and our own – lives. Today’s activity focuses on giving 15 minutes of our time, but often doing something to help or be kind to others can take far less time than that. Something small such as:

Giving way to a fellow driver;
Helping someone carry a buggy down the stairs;
Holding the door open for someone;

Can all make a small but positive impact on another person’s day. As we covered in the first giving blog, a secondary benefit of giving is that helping others also helps us and can improve our wellbeing.

Give just 15 minutes to improve your wellbeing

Today’s activity asks you to give 15 minutes of your time to someone or something else. The worksheet provides you with some ideas on how you can give your time, be it helping someone else or your local community. These are just suggestions so if you’d like to give 15 minutes of your time doing something else to help others, then do. There is also space on the worksheet to reflect on how it went and how you felt afterwards.

Click the link below to download the worksheet. You can fill it in using the ‘fill and sign’ tool or alternatively print it off and fill it in by hand.

give-15-minutes-of-your-time Download

If you have any ideas about other activities we can do by giving 15 minutes of our time, please get in touch so they can be shared with everyone. I am currently creating a ‘Good Deed Directory’ so any contributions would be greatly appreciated.

Check back here (and @15minwellbeing on Instagram and twitter) tomorrow for the next wellbeing activity as part of Mental Health Awareness Week!

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Give a little, gain a lot

Giving is often associated with gifts or lavish acts that cost a lot of time and money. Although it is nice to give and receive presents, this is rarely the route to long term happiness and positive wellbeing. Research conducted around the world has shown that materialism is linked with low life satisfaction. The giving we are talking about today isn’t about gifting material goods, but gifting our time to support others.

Theme 3: Giving

The next theme that can improve our wellbeing is giving. The type of giving we are focusing on is prosocial behaviours such as volunteering, sharing and cooperating to benefit others. This could range from offering our seat to someone on the train or comforting a friend who is going through a tough time: giving to others does not need to involve spending lots of time or money. Altruistic behaviour such as helping others and sharing can lead to feeling more positive and increased self-worth. Giving back to others and reciprocating kindness can improve wellbeing for people of all ages.

Why giving is good for our wellbeing

When we give to others, the reward areas in our brains are stimulated, which makes us feel good about ourselves. Helping others and sharing can give us a sense of self-worth and purpose. Not only that, giving and sharing can result in developing new, stronger relationships throughout life which are also essential to wellbeing.

In a national survey, 80% of people in the UK said they felt good after being kind, with 87% feeling that being kind to others has a positive effect on their own health. Helping other people can give us a sense of euphoria or a ‘helper’s high’ which can reduce stress and improve our wellbeing. If you’ve seen the episode of ‘Friends’ where Joey and Phoebe argue about whether there is such a thing as a selfless good deed, it looks as if Joey may be right – helping others helps us feel good.

Small acts of kindness can make a big difference

Whether it’s volunteering or a small act of kindness to someone else, giving is linked with positive wellbeing. Those who are kind to others – including those who commit small acts of kindness – report benefits such as:

Feeling happier
Higher self-esteem
Reduced symptoms of depression
Improved morale
Feeling like a good person

Being kind to others does not need to be time consuming: one study asked participants to commit five random acts of kindness each week over six weeks. These acts included visiting a sick relative, helping someone with a problem and donating blood. Wellbeing improved amongst those who carried out these random acts of kindness compared to those who didn’t. Other research has shown that committing just one act of kindness a week over six weeks led to increased wellbeing, compared to those who did not help others.

When giving our time to others, it is important to look after ourselves. If we overly focus on helping others without considering our own needs, we can put ourselves at risk of burnout, feeling guilty and even depression. Therefore it is important not to take on too much and spread ourselves too thinly –spending just 15 minutes of our time giving is enough to not only help others, but benefit us too.

Click the link below to download the worksheet. You can fill it in using the ‘fill and sign’ tool or alternatively print it off and fill it in by hand.

give-15-minutes-of-your-time Download

If you have any ideas about other activities we can do by giving 15 minutes of our time, please get in touch so they can be shared with everyone. It would be great to create a ’15minute giving’ database so any contributions would be greatly appreciated.

I share wellbeing-related research, news and stories on twitter and Instagram inbetween weekly blog posts so do follow @15minwellbeing on both platforms tokeep up to date.

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What can you learn about love?

Today is Valentine’s Day which celebrates love. Although many people enjoy exchanging cards and gifts and declaring their affection for others, some of us find Valentine’s Day very difficult. If you’re in a relationship or not, the romantic ideals shown in films, TV and social media can be hard to live up to, which isn’t great for our wellbeing.

Today’s post uses Valentine’s Day to introduce the next theme that can improve your wellbeing – learning. Learning in adulthood can help us feel more positive about ourselves and our lives – this is what today’s blog and activity aim to do.

But what’s learning got to do with love? One of the key benefits of learning is that it helps us connect with others. Also, learning about the different types of love – the focus of today’s activity – can increase our awareness of the different ways we love and are loved, most of which aren’t celebrated on Valentine’s Day.

Theme 2: Learning

Learning broadens our minds and improves insight into all aspects of our lives – ourselves, our relationships and the world around us – which in turn is good for our wellbeing. Learning isn’t just about memorising something new, ready for a test. It also involves having new experiences, developing skills and gaining knowledge that can enrich our lives.

Learning can be a time consuming process. However, a recent large-scale study showed that training related to hobbies or leisure activities does not need to be of a high intensity or duration to improve wellbeing. Therefore, learning something new in just 15 minutes can help you feel better within yourself.

Why is learning good for our health and wellbeing?

Learning beyond our school days has many benefits such as helping us to connect with others, give us a sense of purpose and increase our self-esteem and self-confidence. Continuing to learn after school, college or university is linked with feeling:

More optimistic;
More satisfied with life and
More capable of dealing with stress.

The confidence and self-efficacy gained by learning can even improve our ability to manage our health. For example, we can make better decisions about our health and better adhere to instructions from clinicians. Not only that, lifelong learning can prolong independence which can result in less reliance on healthcare services as we get older.

Reservations about learning

Although learning can have a range of benefits for our wellbeing, some of us have had negative learning experiences which cause us to feel stressed and anxious. This may in part be due to the association between learning and assessment. Even when assessments are routine and expected, the possibility of failure can be very distressing.

None of the 15 minute wellbeing learning activities involve any tests or assessments, just questions that encourage you to gain new knowledge, develop skills and even challenge you to try something that you may not have done before.

Different types of love

Valentine’s Day typically celebrates romantic love between couples and encourages single people to share their hidden romantic feelings and affection for one another. However, there is more to love than romance. The ancient Greeks had more than 30 different words to describe love in all its forms. ‘Eros’ is the word used for attraction, romance and sexual desire, the type of love typically celebrated by Valentine’s Day.

Another type of love is ‘Philia’ the love we have for people with whom we share experiences and goals. This may be your team mates in a netball or football club, soldiers in the same army regiment or even your co-workers.

Today’s activity asks you to discover and learn about different types of love. Not only that, but also reflect on your experiences of the multiple ways we love and are loved. The worksheet has space for you to note up to four different types of love, though you do not have to fill in all the boxes if you run out of time.

Click the link below to download the worksheet. You can fill it in using the ‘fill and sign’ tool or alternatively print it off and fill it in by hand.

Different types of love Download

If you’d like to share how you got on with this activity, or a type of love that you experience, please do get in touch.

I share wellbeing-related research, news and stories on twitter and Instagram inbetween weekly blog posts so do follow @15minwellbeing on both platforms to keep up to date.