Fall Family Challenge
21 Day Gratitude Challenge
In a follow up from our November Newsletter we wanted to provide you with more information behind our Fall Family Challenge. Here is a recap of some information shared in our November newsletter and how it is connected to our challenge!
Last week Mrs. Brown graciously welcomed us into her health classes to discuss:
- mental health
- our resources in the building
- New York State high school statistics
- 1 in 4 has a diagnosable anxiety disorder
- 1 in 5 has a diagnosable disorder other than anxiety
- 1 in 6 have contemplated suicide
- 17% have seriously considered suicide in the last 30 days with 8.6 of those students making a plan
After our discussion we did a 10 minutes meditation and we received VERY positive feedback. Some stated, I have never sat still for 10 minutes not doing something and that was so helpful. As counselors we have a year subscription given to us by Calm, a website and app for mindfulness, and the ability to share a month with any of our students and families. We have also shared this with faculty. In addition to meditations, Calm has short Master Classes on topics such as Gratitude, Better Sleep, Discovering Happiness, Rethinking Depression, and Social Media & Screen Addiction to name a few. I have recently completed the Master Class on Discovering Happiness and wanted to challenge all of you to help spread happiness in November. Shawn Achor researches and teaches positive psychology and his research has found that the happier people are the more successful they areā¦and this includes us and our students!
Here are 5 practical methods to increase happiness that can be done in 2 minutes or less (except exercise) and if you choose to accept the challenge we ask that you do them 21 days in a row.
- Write down or say out loud three things that you are grateful for each day.
- 2 minutes of journaling about a single positive experience with three details.
- Exercising 15 minutes a day
- Getting people to watch their breath go in and out for 2 minutes (Shawn did this at Google with their employees!)
- Getting people to take 2 minutes to send a positive email thanking or praising a different person each day
- If you are willing to embrace this challenge with your family we would love to know if and how it has helped!