P is for Pits (Secondary)
it’s the pits
Sometimes there’s no denying that things are just the pits!? Perhaps when we’ve had bad news or if things haven’t gone our way, perhaps when life throws a curve ball & the options we thought we had just aren’t there any more. When life is the pits, our thoughts can take over & our stress can build up.
1. Sometimes when we’re in the pit of our feelings & our thoughts, one simple piece of advice is not to believe everything that you think. Did you know that our mind has around 3,000 thoughts an hour or 1 thought per second - that’s a lot the trick is to ‘engage’ our upstairs brain rather than ‘enraging’ our downstairs brain. We can stop, pause, shift our focus out of our heads & our thoughts and into our bodies, our breath. Thoughts will come and go, see if you can watch them for a while without getting too involved. Write them down & notice just how many thoughts are there. Remind yourself that worrying about things doesn’t actually solve our worries, it just makes us more stressed. Once our mind is more calm and settled, we can start to think about solutions.
2. When life is the pits, we need to remember that it’s times like these that are teaching us resilience in real life. The pit is showing us that we have the ability to climb back out, the power to bounce back. When we’re in the pit, try this simple gratitude practice (even if you don’t feel like it, trust us, it works). Bring to mind someone who did something or said something that changed your life for the better. Someone you never thanked. Call up their face in your memories & write this person a letter of gratitude. Be specific - what did they do to help you and how has it affected your life? Describe your life now. Don’t worry about spelling and try to write no more than 250 words! And then either post the letter or arrange to ring this person & read them the letter, word by word
3. Finally, take your gratitude one step further & try this three good things exercise. Every night for the next week, take 10mins at the end of the day to write down good things, 3 things that went well during your day, noticing why they went well! And then ask yourself why did they happen?
FINAL TAKE
Dealing with this might be difficult at first but this simple act of reflecting & savouring on positive things can be a game-changer when we’re stuck in the pit!
“when we’re feeling overwhelmed, our ‘downstairs brain’ gets triggered. This includes our most primitive responses of fight/flight/freeze, our instincts and emotions. Our challenge is to engage our ‘upstairs brain’ where we can make decisions & connect with what’s important to us.”
The not-so-small small print
There is none! Simply return to this part of the website daily to get the next part of this program. No payment or subscription required. This is a resource we are sharing with all of you through the website and aiming to help our youngsters, in the various stages of their lives. This program contains information and practices that are aimed for two different age groups and we intend to mostly post the primary level information in the morning and the secondary level in the afternoon. Please leave us a comment and let us know how you are getting on or get in touch if you require additional support. If you want to be notified of new content, courses and free resources subscribe to our mailing list.
Z is for Zzzzzz’s. Summer Resilience Program Final Entry (Secondary) with thanks to Karen Bluth, to the Sleep Foundation & the Greater Good Science Centre at UCLA Berkeley Youth for their ‘zzzzz’ advice & to Education Scotland for their inspiration for this programme x