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Boosting your mental wellbeing while you are a student can help with motivation and ensure you get the most out of your time at Surrey.
Develop positive emotions
The human brain has evolved to be expert at spotting threats and problems. This is what kept us alive as a species over millennia when life was physically very dangerous, and sabre-tooth tigers lurked around every corner. The downside of this is that our brains have a negative bias. Negative events stay with us for longer than positive ones, and we tend to spend more time and energy worrying about what could go wrong than focusing on what could go right.
The good news is that we can do things to re-balance the brain so that we can be more relaxed, creative and can think more clearly to problem solve challenges effectively.
Boost your mindfulness
Mindfulness is an evidence-based technique which if practised regularly for even 10 minutes a day can help us to reduce anxiety, boost mood, focus better, sleep well and can enhance enjoyment of life. While there are different ways to practise mindfulness, essentially it’s about practising bringing the attention into the here and now, to the body and senses.
Find out more:
Start our free Mindful Study course on SurreyLearn - this is open to all students and will help you to develop mindful meditation techniques, which may be especially useful during assessment or exam periods.
Visit the Frantic World website to find out about mindfulness, it has lots of free short and longer mindfulness exercises as podcasts in their ‘Resources’ section
Download the following apps:
Headspace
Stop, Breathe and Think.
Post-traumatic stress
Remember you are not alone, many people experience traumatic events. The feelings and symptoms you are experiencing are just a normal reaction to a traumatic situation. They are not a sign of personal weakness or failure. Please look at the important information on MySurrey Help and use the things that help section to best support your recovery.
Build your growth mindset
Decades of research has shown that how you think about the process of learning can significantly influence your ability to learn and achieve academically.
Carol Dweck, a leading researcher found that when it comes to learning, there are two attitudes or ‘mindsets’. People with a ‘fixed mindset’ believe that you're born with a certain level of intelligence and ability, and that there’s nothing you can do to change it. People with a ‘growth mindset’ believe that ability is simply a reflection of how hard you work at something, and that you can change how good you are at a subject.
She found that those with a ‘growth mindset’ learnt better and achieved more academically. They took on learning challenges enthusiastically and worked hard at the things they found difficult and so improved. Those with a ‘fixed mindset’ avoided learning challenges, worrying that if they failed this was prove that they were never going to be able to get better at a subject.
The good news is that you can change your mindset. Find out more about how to get a ‘growth mindset’:
Values can be defined as ‘principles or beliefs that a person views as being of central importance’. They’re the qualities that give meaning and purpose to your life. They’re qualities like caring, achievement, fun, conscientiousness, responsibility, passion, commitment etc. Connecting to our core values and writing briefly about them has been found to increase motivation and raise grades.
There are several ways you can find your core values.
Choose your values from a list. Initially pick the six that are most important to you.
Think about the following, and the note down the values:
Past events where you acted in a way that you feel good about
Times when you were doing something where you felt really engaged
Things you care passionately about
People you admire and why you admire them
Qualities you’d like to develop in yourself for the future
Imagine it’s five years from now. You look back over your life and feel proud of what you’ve done – you’ve been bold and lived the best life you could in your own estimation. What are the values you’ve lived by?
Be aware: values are not the same as goals. A goal is a concrete outcome, such as wanting to get a good degree, or a good job, or settle down and have a family. They’re not values, but they will have values at their heart. To find the values, keep asking yourself ‘what’s important about that for me?’ and you’ll find the value. For instance, getting a good job might be about different values for different people, such as expressing your creativity, or it might be about security, or about being independent or about caring for others.
Now whittle your values down to the top three. Once you’ve found them, write a short paragraph about each to say why it’s important to you and what difference it can make to others and the world.
Then write three more short paragraphs, saying how your course relates to your core values.
