Resources and worksheets for staying inspired at work
This is an ongoing project to collate the best information we find from around the web, podcasts, books, and other sources. Feel free to email us with extra items for inclusion or updates.
Resources
1. Resilient Educator resources for school communities. Specific to the COVID-19 world but applicable beyond this, RULER have created a huge list of great resources to support schools. Topics include emotional regulation, dealing with anxiety, creating charters to guide group behaviour.
2. Emotions and the arts. Inspiration is an active process. You'll find great ideas anywhere but you need to make a point to keep searching. The Yale Centre for Emotional Intelligence have some excellent resources and ideas. Their blogs are a wellspring of ideas, and maybe you'll get some of your own from seeing what they're up to.
3. To be creative be smart with emotions. An excellent Psychology Today article about a study of 99 painters, sculptors, composers, choreographers, and writers on how they channel and use their emotions in the creative process. It shows how some can process difficult emotions in their art. There is a common theme of regulating emotion before using it (one of the facets of emotional intelligence).
Worksheets
If we've learnt anything from cognitive behaviour therapy, it's that changing your actions can change your mood. Negative automatic thinking can lead to poor mental health and vice-versa. Many of these worksheets are geared towards noticing and rewriting this behaviour. Several are encouraging of activity creating good experiences, so that there's always something to look forward to. As always, what works for you will be personal preference, but if you're in a funk consider trying one of these consistently for a week with an open mind. See if it helps you notice different things.
1.Rewriting automatic thoughts. This worksheet from Therapist Aid is a great starting point for learning about and noticing your own automatic thoughts. The worksheet splits into three columns of trigger, automatic thought and new thought, showing how you can re-write the patterns and avoid habitual negative loops.
2. Journaling 3 good things. This classic gratitude exercise is recommended by Seligman (2011) in his book Flourish. You can do this in any note book you have, although the pdf linked here sets it out for you in a straight-forward way: every day, at the end of the day, write about three things—large or small—that went well for you and why they went well. It has become a well-known exercise for good reason. As simple as it sounds, it has completely transformed some peoples lives. The challenge is remembering to actually do it. Suggestion: keep the notebook and pen beside your bed.
3. Thought/feeling record. An excellent worksheet that walks you through 10 steps of rewriting your thoughts. It provides another excellent basis for journaling as this could be an activity to do every evening before bedtime. The habit of looking at and noticing your thought patterns will help you better spot where you're being unnecessarily tough on yourself.
4. Creating Positive Experiences. It has been shown that positive experiences, and especially those shared with others, can have a lasting impact on our emotions. The actual worksheet link is halfway down the page, and again, once you have the idea this would be a great regular journaling activity because it gets you noticing things that are going well in your world. Another approach is to just make a point of picking a day each week in which you'll do something fun with another person. It encourages you to make events to look forward to and it also helps you be pro-active in reaching out to people.
Feeling Overwhelmed?
Create space/time/energy. This needs to be done in phases as some of these changes are quite significant, but changing your actions WILL change your mood. If you never do these things, how will you ever know how much better/easier/more obvious things can be? Steps 1 and 2 are fundamentals. Without solid sleep and energy, it's hard to imagine things shifting. Restore your biology first. Then steps 3 and 4 will make more sense.
1. Foundations first. Sleep. Do you:
Allow time to transition to sleep in the evenings
Go to bed (lights out) at the same time every day
Wake up at the same time every day
Get sunlight in your eyes within 30 minutes of waking (take a walk, stroll, drink coffee outside)
Avoid all alcohol
2. Foundations first. Energy. Do you:
Do something just for fun every day (listen to music, run, draw, talk with a friend)
Eat vegetables every day
Drink water
Avoid all alcohol
3. Foundations first. Time.
Look at your smart phone screen time (iPhone: settings> screen time> see all activity) where are you using time that you want back?
a) Social media. Delete all apps with a scrolling function or a pull to refresh function. You can reinstall them later if you choose to, but for now, it's a reset. Access via the browser versions if you need.
b) Emails. Look in your deleted emails folder and unsubscribe from as many mailing lists as possible. You can resubscribe later if you miss them, but for now it's a reset. Alternatively, Unroll.me mass-unsubscribes you in a much quicker fashion. Highly recommended.
c) Are there any other areas of your life that you can reclaim a bit of time from? Consolidate errands around town to one day (groceries, post office, library, fill car with petrol). Consolidate emails to one time of day (or two). Batch related tasks. Batch cook food. Where are you wasting time and you aren't ok with it?
4. Movement. It's important for mental health as it helps you shake off the residual stress from the body. I CANNOT EMPHASISE THAT ENOUGH. You choose what, but it matters that you do something everyday. It matters that you look forward to it. It's up to you to make it fun though: so does that mean meeting a friend for a walk, practicing with Yoga Online, or swimming in the ocean and rewarding yourself with hot cocoa afterwards?
This is an ongoing project to collate the best information we find from around the web, podcasts, books, and other sources. Feel free to email us with extra items for inclusion or updates.
Resources
1. Resilient Educator resources for school communities. Specific to the COVID-19 world but applicable beyond this, RULER have created a huge list of great resources to support schools. Topics include emotional regulation, dealing with anxiety, creating charters to guide group behaviour.
2. Emotions and the arts. Inspiration is an active process. You'll find great ideas anywhere but you need to make a point to keep searching. The Yale Centre for Emotional Intelligence have some excellent resources and ideas. Their blogs are a wellspring of ideas, and maybe you'll get some of your own from seeing what they're up to.
3. To be creative be smart with emotions. An excellent Psychology Today article about a study of 99 painters, sculptors, composers, choreographers, and writers on how they channel and use their emotions in the creative process. It shows how some can process difficult emotions in their art. There is a common theme of regulating emotion before using it (one of the facets of emotional intelligence).
Worksheets
If we've learnt anything from cognitive behaviour therapy, it's that changing your actions can change your mood. Negative automatic thinking can lead to poor mental health and vice-versa. Many of these worksheets are geared towards noticing and rewriting this behaviour. Several are encouraging of activity creating good experiences, so that there's always something to look forward to. As always, what works for you will be personal preference, but if you're in a funk consider trying one of these consistently for a week with an open mind. See if it helps you notice different things.
1.Rewriting automatic thoughts. This worksheet from Therapist Aid is a great starting point for learning about and noticing your own automatic thoughts. The worksheet splits into three columns of trigger, automatic thought and new thought, showing how you can re-write the patterns and avoid habitual negative loops.
2. Journaling 3 good things. This classic gratitude exercise is recommended by Seligman (2011) in his book Flourish. You can do this in any note book you have, although the pdf linked here sets it out for you in a straight-forward way: every day, at the end of the day, write about three things—large or small—that went well for you and why they went well. It has become a well-known exercise for good reason. As simple as it sounds, it has completely transformed some peoples lives. The challenge is remembering to actually do it. Suggestion: keep the notebook and pen beside your bed.
3. Thought/feeling record. An excellent worksheet that walks you through 10 steps of rewriting your thoughts. It provides another excellent basis for journaling as this could be an activity to do every evening before bedtime. The habit of looking at and noticing your thought patterns will help you better spot where you're being unnecessarily tough on yourself.
4. Creating Positive Experiences. It has been shown that positive experiences, and especially those shared with others, can have a lasting impact on our emotions. The actual worksheet link is halfway down the page, and again, once you have the idea this would be a great regular journaling activity because it gets you noticing things that are going well in your world. Another approach is to just make a point of picking a day each week in which you'll do something fun with another person. It encourages you to make events to look forward to and it also helps you be pro-active in reaching out to people.
Feeling Overwhelmed?
Create space/time/energy. This needs to be done in phases as some of these changes are quite significant, but changing your actions WILL change your mood. If you never do these things, how will you ever know how much better/easier/more obvious things can be? Steps 1 and 2 are fundamentals. Without solid sleep and energy, it's hard to imagine things shifting. Restore your biology first. Then steps 3 and 4 will make more sense.
1. Foundations first. Sleep. Do you:
Allow time to transition to sleep in the evenings
Go to bed (lights out) at the same time every day
Wake up at the same time every day
Get sunlight in your eyes within 30 minutes of waking (take a walk, stroll, drink coffee outside)
Avoid all alcohol
2. Foundations first. Energy. Do you:
Do something just for fun every day (listen to music, run, draw, talk with a friend)
Eat vegetables every day
Drink water
Avoid all alcohol
3. Foundations first. Time.
Look at your smart phone screen time (iPhone: settings> screen time> see all activity) where are you using time that you want back?
a) Social media. Delete all apps with a scrolling function or a pull to refresh function. You can reinstall them later if you choose to, but for now, it's a reset. Access via the browser versions if you need.
b) Emails. Look in your deleted emails folder and unsubscribe from as many mailing lists as possible. You can resubscribe later if you miss them, but for now it's a reset. Alternatively, Unroll.me mass-unsubscribes you in a much quicker fashion. Highly recommended.
c) Are there any other areas of your life that you can reclaim a bit of time from? Consolidate errands around town to one day (groceries, post office, library, fill car with petrol). Consolidate emails to one time of day (or two). Batch related tasks. Batch cook food. Where are you wasting time and you aren't ok with it?
4. Movement. It's important for mental health as it helps you shake off the residual stress from the body. I CANNOT EMPHASISE THAT ENOUGH. You choose what, but it matters that you do something everyday. It matters that you look forward to it. It's up to you to make it fun though: so does that mean meeting a friend for a walk, practicing with Yoga Online, or swimming in the ocean and rewarding yourself with hot cocoa afterwards?