Tall Hobbit Takeaway – Exercise your Gratitude for Mental Health Awareness Week

Hello everyone!

You may or may not be aware that this week (May 18th – 24th) is Mental Health Awareness Week, and so this week’s Takeaway will give you a short activity to help give you a little mental health boost and a week long challenge, should you choose to accept it.

Each year, Mental Health Awareness Week has a guiding theme, and this year’s theme is ‘Kindness’.

In this Takeaway, I invite you to sit down somewhere comfortable and quiet and write a list of things that you are grateful for. I’m sure there’s many things you could think of if you put your mind to it – a few examples for me would include a roof over my head, a plentiful supply of food, the ability to cook, a beautiful part of the world to be living in, and an amazingly kind and supportive partner. Reminding yourself of the things you are grateful for, rather than the things you lack can create a mental shift that can help you feel better about yourself.

However, I would like you to go a step further if you are willing. I would like you to focus on your gratitude for other people. Chance are you have benefitted from the kindness of others and that is an important thing to remember, as negative interactions and negative news can sometimes make you forget that there is a lot of good and kindness out there. Perhaps a friend sent you a message just to check how you were doing. Perhaps a housemate saw you were getting a little stressed and made you a cup of tea. Perhaps a stranger stepped aside on a narrow path so you could comfortably get by. Reminding yourself of these examples of kindness and being grateful for them will help you have a more positive outlook and hopefully be inspired to show that same kindness for others.

If you fancied a challenge to keep this mindset up the whole week, why not make this a daily practice this week? Challenge yourself to writing down at least 1 time you’ve been grateful for the kindness of others for every day this week!

That’s all from me for now. If you’re looking for inspiration for what else you can do during Mental Health Awareness Week, check out this blog from the home of kindness, Cathedral Grove.

It may also interest you to know that this week is also Learning At Work Week, so watch this space for a Lockdown Lowdown on what you can do for that!

(Above image from Pexels)