As you might be aware, it’s Mental Health Awareness Week in the UK, focussing on the power and potential of kindness.
I don’t need to tell you to be kind to others (bit patronising, to be honest!) as it’s what most people do instinctively and what most of us do in our everyday job role. However, we do sometimes need to be kinder to ourselves.
Being kind to yourself, particularly when working within the challenges of the adult social care sector, with a global pandemic on top of that, is even more necessary at the moment. Take some time for yourself and have a go at our free online course on Stress & Resilience, you will find lots of useful stuff and look out for Kelly McGonigle’s TED Talk, I would love every care worker to see the last three minutes, you will see why… https://greymatter-old.website-build.info/onlinelearning/stress-resilience-course/
According to research, kindness and our mental health are deeply connected. As well as this making a lot of sense, kindness has been shown to be an antidote to isolation, creating a sense of belonging. I don’t normally quote Plato as a rule, but I particularly like this quote of his – “Kindness is more than deeds. It is an attitude, an expression, a look, a touch. It is anything that lifts another person” and although we might be behind masks so the people we support cannot see our smiles, our attitude will always shine through, as will our smiling eyes..
It’s also ‘Online Learning Week at Work’, again very apt for the current times. We have all had to stop all face-to-face training for the time being and, in order to keep pace with annual learning and development plans, have had to quickly adopt online learning, some for the very first time. We, as a business, have started to use webinar technology to deliver our leadership and management training, with great success and feedback. We firmly believe then that both online and webinar learning has become the ‘new normal’, even in the more traditional sectors. As our contribution to this week, why not join us for our next free Lead to Succeed Module 5 webinar on 3rd June?
And remember: “every act of kindness is a piece of love we leave behind…”
