Making Your Own Well-Being a Priority You give your all to your job,

Making Your Own Well-Being a Priority You give your all to your job, your family, your friends, CUPAHR and other community activities. These priorities often leave little to no time to take care of what’s most important – you! This session will discuss the daily practices you can start today to stay centered and at the top of your game.

Important Dates to Remember On a sheet of paper write down A list of items you will need to address when you get home. The list can include work- and homerelated tasks. We’ll be watching to see how long your list gets! We’ll give you a couple of minutes to complete your to-do list. Can you share some of what you included? 2

Have You Listed Yourself Last or at all on Your To-Do List? – Our profession aids others in their own self-care (motivate and inspire individuals, encourage engagement and connectivity, work with others to find their authentic, professional self, etc.). So if we’re assisting others and to spark their brain power, why don’t we do the same for ourselves? How much of what we say to others we consider doing for ourselves? – If you’re already taking care of yourself, the following information and discussion may sound familiar. The challenge for you is, do you regularly practice self-care? And how are you encouraging others do the same around you? 3

What is Self-Care / Well-Being? At its core, self-care means putting yourself first; before your partner, your kids and most definitely your job. Think of it as a mandate to take care of yourself, for a change. After all, how much use are you to anyone if you’re running on empty? It is any activity that we do deliberately in order to take care of our mental, emotional, and physical health. Although it’s a simple concept in theory, it’s something we very often overlook. Good self-care is key to improved mood and reduced anxiety. It’s also key to a good relationship with oneself and others. It isn’t a selfish act either. It is not only about considering our needs; it is rather about knowing what we need to do in order to take care of ourselves, being subsequently, able to take care of others as well. That is, if I don’t take enough care of myself, I won’t be in the place to give to others either. 4

https://www.ted.com/talks/guy winch the case for emotional hygiene/transc ript?referrer playlist-the importance of self care#t-196187 5

Answer yes or no to the following questions about your relationships: Are you: blowing up more easily at others than usual? short, or rude, to loved ones or strangers (e.g. on the bus or at a checkout)? longing for more supportive relationships in your life? gossiping more about others than normal? making a “big deal” out of things that you normally handle in stride? failing to see humor in a situation that others find funny? insistent that there is only one way to do things? 6

Cont’d Are you: neglecting to eat healthy and/or exercise? more disorganized than usual? experiencing sudden changes in sleep? relying on over-the-counter medications for any health issue, such as poor sleep or headaches? Creating standards usually higher than others? engaging in negative self-talk, or complaining about yourself to yourself (e.g., that you never do anything right)? rarely satisfied or fulfilled throughout each day? 7

Cont’d Are you: having more trouble than usual concentrating? experiencing crippling indecision? looking to other people to make things happen? 8

The Effects of Chronic Stress on Your Brain Chronic stress shrinks your brain. Stress halts the production of new brain ce Stress creates free radicals that kill brain cells. Chronic stress makes you forgetful and emotional. Stress lets toxins into your brain. Stress creates a vicious cycle of fear and anxiety. Stress depletes critical brain chemicals causing depression. Stress impairs your memory and makes you bad at making decisions ess puts you at greater risk for mental illnesses of all kinds. 9

Table Activity Spend the next few minutes talking at your table, Identify ways to: Minimize impatience, especially during interactions with others Look for the positive – in our interactions with others and when we feel nothing is going our way Commit to recognizing the effects of stress on our overall health and diet and do something about it. Think of this exercise as if you are preparing to share this information with a loved one or friend. 10

Why Self Care, Practicing Well-Being Starts Today! As much as we want to believe it, we really aren’t super heroines and heros! Yes, you ARE important, too! Sharing the love should have its limits No really means No Time for a reboot Giphy.com Mental health professionals recommend taking at least 20 minutes a day to do something for ourselves, which seems pretty dang reasonable. The following 2 slides offer some suggested assessment tools to use on your campus: 11

The Authentic Happiness Inventory The happiness measure is based on The Authentic Happiness Inventory (developed by Christopher Peterson, University of Michigan). It’s a quick set of 24 questions that provide an overall measure of your happiness levels. You can take the Authentic Happiness Inventory survey online by registering at the University of Pennsylvania’s Authentic Happi ness website . 12

https://www.takingcharge.csh.umn.edu/wellbeing-assessment 13

PSYC 157: Psychology and the Good Life Professor Laurie Santos didn’t set out to create the most popular course in the history of Yale University and the most talked-about college course in America. She just wanted her students to be happy. Santos’s course, PSYC 157: Psychology and the Good Life is wildly popular (over 1,200 enrolled students). “College students are much more overwhelmed, much more stressed, much more anxious, and much more depressed than they’ve ever been. I think we really have a crisis writ large at colleges in how students are doing in terms of self-care and mental health.” Sadly, I don’t think it’s just in colleges.” (Santos, The Cut article) Santos is right on both counts. College students aren’t happy, and neither is anyone else. According to a recent survey by the American College Health Association, 52 percent of students reported feeling hopeless, while 39 percent suffered from such severe depression that they had found it difficult to function at some point during the previous year. At the University of Pennsylvania, there’s even a slang term for the grim mask of discontent that accompanies this condition: “Penn Face.” What does she cover in her course? Check it out here: https://www.thecut.com/2018/05/how-to-be-happy.html 14

The Science of Well-Being: ReWIREments Or take Santos’ free Coursera course, The Science of WellBeing! 15

On a related note The Good News is The Bad News is 16

Simple changes can make a huge difference! Activity: What have you done for yourself or for team members that impact well being on campus? Share with those at your table. Then be prepared to share with the entire group 17

Did You Know Charitable actions increase levels of happiness Strong ties to friends and family increase levels of happiness Psychologist Martin Seligman lists three components of happiness: Tai Chi can 1 – pleasure, 2 – engagement and 3 relieve meaning Optimistic older people depresssion live longer than pessimists Experiences make people Studies have found that playing with dogs increased levels of happier than possessions joy-inducing hormones 18

Thank you! 19

Resources Slide 2 – Alice in Wonderland graphic. 300Hours.Com Slide 4 – World Happiness Report 2018: http://worldhappiness.report/ed/2018/ Slide 5: TedTalk Guy Winch: Why We All Need to Practice Emotional Self Aid: https://www.ted.com/talks/guy winch the case for emotional h ygiene/transcript?referrer playlist-the importance of self care#t196187 Slides 6-8: Reader’s Digest Best Health: The 5-Minute Stress Test: https://www.besthealthmag.ca/best-you/prevention/the-5-minute 20

Resources Slide 9 – HuffPost Workplace Stress: The Health Epidemic of the 21st Century (January 7, 2016): https://www.huffingtonpost.com/gina-soleil-/workplace-stress-the-heal b 8923678.ht ml Slide 11 graphic: Giphy.com Slide 11 – Project Time Off: New Report Shows Critical Crossroads Between Taking Vacation Back or Letting It Go Extinct. https://projecttimeoff.com/press-releases/americans-waste-record-setting-658-million-v acation-days/ Slide 12 – University of Pennsylvania’s Authentic Happiness website: https://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/ And Inventory sign in: http://bit.ly/SWBAuthenticHappiness 21

Resources Slide 13 – The University of Minnesota Wellbeing Assessment: https://www.takingcharge.csh.umn.edu/wellbeing-assessment Slide 15 – Course: The Science of Well-Being at Coursera.org Slide 16 – Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC): Suicide Rates Rising Across the U.S. (June 7, 2018) https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2018/p0607-suicide-pre vention.html 22