Written by: Catherine Elizabeth Wood, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
It’s ok to not be okay sometimes.
Our mental wellbeing fluctuates regularly as we journey through life, and this is ok.
We can sometimes feel we are stuck or strained, which is important to acknowledge.
Consider what your current wellbeing challenges are. Maybe you are struggling with your workload. Maybe you are navigating uncertainty. Maybe you feel overwhelmed with too many spinning plates. All these situations impact your mental wellbeing. It is important to observe the impact of these challenges on your daily functioning, your energy levels. This is a starting point for identifying the changes you need to make to improve your overall wellbeing.
Recognise the shift
The first step is to recognise when there is a change in your mental wellbeing. Consider your mindset. Observe your behaviours. What shift have you noticed?
Your level of mental wellbeing impacts your functional ability to carry out day to day tasks. If you are struggling to do the things you would normally do with ease, then it is worth considering taking some time to restore your energy levels and reset. Be kind to yourself.
Create the lifestyle
The second step is to create a vision of what it would look like to experience ongoing wellbeing. Consider what your lifestyle would look like when it is aligned to provide you with long-term wellbeing. How could you reduce your working hours, ensure you take regular breaks or incorporate exercise into your lifestyle for example?
Create intentional steps
The third step is to consider what must shift to take you from feeling stuck or strained to flourish. Create personal wellness goals to align with this vision. This will give you the intentional steps to bring your vision to fruition. It’s about creating healthy habits to drive sustainable intentional lifestyle change.
Behaviour change is driven by habit change. Habits are automated responses where your brain has formed neural pathways through repetition and learning. The more you practice a habit, the stronger the habit becomes.
A habit has a motivational driver associated with it for you to carry out the task. The motivational driver, for example, could be to feel energised, to have the ability to manage stress or to have focus throughout the day.
Lifestyle change is about behaviour change which is driven by habit change.
If you are seeking to create a lifestyle that gives you long-term wellbeing, please contact me to start your journey of change.
Catherine Elizabeth Wood, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Catherine Wood, is a leader in mental resilience, science-based coaching through neuroscience, and creating new habits for behavior change. After an acute brain injury as an adult left her having irrational thoughts and self-doubt, Catherine developed an interest in neuroplasticity to understand how she could challenge her self-beliefs, promote helpful thoughts and create new habits for behavior change. Catherine has since dedicated her life to helping people to establish their self-belief in who they are as their best self to drive helpful thoughts and create new habits for behavior change in the workplace and in their personal life.
Catherine is the Founder of Life Renewal, the online coaching business combining leadership coaching and team coaching with evidence-based techniques in neuroscience. Catherine helps leaders drive employee engagement by modeling leadership behavior across 7 key leadership skills. Catherine has helped clients through her own coaching programs, workshops, and digital courses including "Mastering Emotional Competence in Leadership." Catherine has been a guest writer for Thrive Global which included an article on "Seeking Opportunities While Navigating Uncertainty", and she hosted a resilience series including "The Neuroscience of Resilience".
Catherine's mission: Science-based coaching for collaborative leadership behavior.
