PaJeS hosted a secondary school parents workshop with Harriet Beveridge called, 'Resilience, Change and Gearing up for the Summer Holidays.’

In the talk we explored dealing with change, building resilience and self belief, and planning for the summer holidays. You can access a recording of the talk on Harriet's online 'resource rucksack' - a collection of coaching videos , pdfs and more to help people navigate the uncertain terrain of 2020. Click here to sign up

We've all been in the same storm, but in different boats for the last few months. Knowing what's important to us can help us eliminate the mental 'noise', be kind to ourselves and focus on priorities. It's also useful to remember that emotions are simply messages from a part of a brain that can't vocalise. It's just trying to protect us, so a first step can be to say 'thank you' and reflect on the message it's giving us. For example, fear is typically a message to prepare (not necessarily to stop). Self-belief can feel like something that you either 'have' or you don't, but even world class athletes at the top of their game put time and effort into cultivating useful beliefs. Choosing what we focus on and tell ourselves - eg reminding ourselves of our past achievements - rather than letting the voice in our heads take over. 

The summer holidays will bring yet more change; creating an environment which promotes motivation can help. For example, if we make it a routine to, for example,  exercise at a certain time each day, it can become more 'automatic', putting us on a helpful path. 

Lastly we talked about how people are already feeling regretful about how they spent their time in Lockdown. There are a lot of 'shoulds' - 'I should have spent more time with the kids' or 'We should have become fluent in Spanish'. It's a useful reminder to us of the pressures our children face to be perfect. our self-worth is not contingent on achievements, or a certain body shape or the number of likes we get on social media. We are worthy, full stop!