In the last few years of my time as a head teacher, we did a lot of work with our children on a document called ‘The Five Ways to Wellbeing.’ I believe that this coincided with the drive for all schools to have a mental health champion when we had training funded by the DfE. I have since learned that this piece of work was an adaption for schools from the NHS’ Five Steps to Mental Wellbeing and I have been delving a bit deeper into these on the NHS website this weekend, ready to write about them in my manuscript.
Incidentally, my manuscript (I don’t think I can call it a book until it is published) is undergoing a major rewrite at the moment. I realised that wellbeing was a thread through a lot of what I had written, so the new version has the draft title of ‘The Wellbeing Toolbox—How to Build a Successful School through a Wellbeing-Centred Approach.’
For those of you who are not aware, the five steps to mental wellbeing suggested by the NHS are:
Connect with other people
Be physically active
Learn new skills
Give to others
Pay attention to the present moment
So, this weekend, I have started using these five steps to organise the many wellbeing-focused ideas and strategies I have collected to support school staff in writing an action plan to address them effectively. Teachers love an action plan, don’t we? We also love a toolkit, but I have deliberately used the term ‘toolbox’ for my title as I want readers to understand that I have written about practical, no-nonsense strategies, backed up with a bit of science, mind you!
Being quite a reflective person, I have also been thinking about how my personal wellbeing strategies link to the five ‘steps’, and as teachers often do I started thinking about the steps that I feel I do not do enough of. I am ok in some areas, so I have been thinking mostly about step 1 and whether I am doing enough connecting with other people. Since I left my position as headteacher, I have led a quiet life, and writing (which I have been doing a lot of) is a solitary activity. Getting two kittens in November was a calculated move to inject a bit of something into my day-to-day existence, but I don’t think that they count as they are not officially people!
Driving up to see my parents this morning, I had a bit of a revelation, though, and that is the main reason for this post. In my book (sorry, manuscript), I write about ‘the shower effect’, which is the phenomenon that allows us to have brilliant ideas in the shower. It can also happen when we are driving on a familiar route, which is where it happened for me today.
I was listening to the latest edition of my favourite podcast when I realised its impact on my wellbeing, particularly on the ‘connecting’ step that I felt was one of my weakest of the five. The title of this broadcasting (and podcasting) behemoth is the Elis James and John Robins show.
For the uninitiated, Elis and John have been doing a radio show/podcast together for ten years, initially on Radio X and then on BBC Radio Five. They are stand-up comedians first and foremost, and they have been friends for a very long time.
It is not an exaggeration to say that as a listener to their output, you feel like you are part of a family. They have a term for long-term listeners such as me (PCDs or podcast devotees), and they have a Facebook group, which is a very supportive and inclusive community. There are many in-jokes for PCDs, but their shows are also incredibly accessible for newbies. I think it is their friendship and their bond with their producer Dave that makes the show so easy to connect with, as they forgo laddie banter for occasional gentle teasing but mostly incredibly supportive chat. Don’t worry, though; they are still extremely funny!
Perhaps the most obvious example of the way that the show prioritises connecting with people is in its most popular feature, ‘The Cymru Connection’, where Elis has sixty seconds (and sometimes longer) to prove his theory that everyone in the country of Wales is connected. The fact that it is so popular (I believe Dave got some lighthearted abuse when Elis was recently banned from connecting for three weeks) shows the emotional need we all have to feel connections, even if they are by proxy, through Elis. There are countless other examples of people being connected throughout the show, whether through written correspondence (you simply have to be on email these days!) or through hearing stories from the presenters' daily lives. We can all connect with them, whether it is Elis’ struggles with getting his kids to school on time, Dave dealing with his approaching middle age, or John’s many ups and downs with his mental health, there is something there for everyone. It feels real, even though we won’t ever meet them; it is real.
Whilst I am recommending ‘The Elis and John Show’ as a way of fulfilling our need to make connections, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention their sister podcast, which is called ‘How do you cope?’ Although real life is a core part of their main show, this show takes it up a notch when they interview people who have had huge challenges in their lives and talk about how they dealt with them. They are still funny but also incredibly moving. The one that hit home for me was when they interviewed Rev Richard Coles and talked about him losing his husband to alcoholism. At that time, we had just lost my brother to the same disease, so listening to this episode was extremely therapeutic.
Outside of ‘connecting’, Elis and John address all the other steps to mental wellbeing in their content in one way or another. Hearing about John ‘being active’ through his experiences at the gym, or Dave through his running, and I recall two particularly memorable episodes with Elis ‘learning new skills’ when he had a go at beatboxing and juggling!
I am going to finish this post with a challenge. Consider how you address the five steps to mental wellbeing, and if you feel that you would benefit from a bit more ‘connecting,’ why not give Elis and John a try?
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