It’s Take Your Teddy to Work Day!

Wellness at work

14 Oct

What are Your Coping Strategies?

Covid has touched everyone is one way or another bringing loss, uncertainty and fear around our health, lifestyle and work. We need to have some coping strategies to manage the emotional challenges that we meet. If teddies aren’t your thing, what are your coping strategies? Dr Laurie Santos, Professor in Psychology at the University of Yale, reminds us of the top 5 scientifically proven coping strategies. Her video is here . She recommends the following, which I have Teddified!

1. Exercise

We forget exercise is a coping strategy but even a half hour exercise in the morning can have a big impact on your day. If you are finding working from home tough, plan in some exercise time in your day.

3. Sleep

Sleep is incredibly important for our health and well-being.

Developing healthy sleep hygiene habits such going to bed at the same time every night, not taking electronic gadgets with us to bed and winding down gradually before bedtime can have a huge impact on our energy and focus as well as health.

5. Be with Your Emotions

Evidence suggests that, rather than ignoring or suppressing your feelings, it is important to acknowledge them.

Dr. Santos suggests a technique called RAIN, standing for:

Recognise - recognise that you are feeling an emotion

Accept - accept what it is and that you have it

Investigate - investigate how its making you feel and what’s going on

Nurture - nurture your emotion to take care of yourself, what would be helpful?

This is a particularly useful technique with negative emotions.

Does your teddy make you smile?

October is Mental Health Awareness month. This year in particular, it helps to focus our attention on our own and other’s mental health, and to think about healthy coping strategies, to make ourselves feel better. Psychologists have found that our environment and what we put in it is important to how we feel. So if taking a teddy to work (even if you are working from home!) gives you an internal glow - just do it! Read on to find more proven coping strategies to help you be happier and cope in difficult times.

2. Gratitude

Happier people tend to focus on the positives in life and be grateful and appreciate what they have.

Positive psychologist Martin Seligman and others, found a simple technique to focus the brain on the positives which is called the three blessings exercise.

To re-educate your attention to the positive, focus your attention, as you end your day, on three things that went well and why they went well. These three don't have to be huge - it could be that a meeting went well, you did a good presentation at work, you had a great sandwich at lunch time or even you smelt a beautiful flower! It works even better if you write these thigs down in a journal or notebook at the end of the day.

Teddy getting ready for a good nights sleep

4. Get Social

Evidence suggests that happy people are more social. Humans are social animals after all!

Keeping social can be incredibly difficult in these times and has to be worked at.

Some of my clients, who struggle with working remotely and missing their team, or have found their jobs disappearing as a consequence of covid, have introduced some social strategies to help them cope. These include - meeting a different team member for a walk every week to combat feelings of loneliness, organising weekly fun sessions on Zoom to feel less isolated or having a mental health buddy to go to if things feel too much.