Wellness Wednesdays

You may be feeling a bit flat this week with the announcement of the new COVID lockdown restrictions. I must admit I was feeling a bit uninspired to write this today, but my Social Policy colleague Eileen Cunningham inspired me this morning with starting up her daily gratitude posts on Facebook. This is something that she did during lockdown earlier in the year; she shared daily thoughts of gratitude about aspects of her life, often simple things like a walk or a meal or a positive experience in work. This really helped her to feel positive during a testing time. The power of gratitude is well documented and research evidence suggests that it has a positive impact on mental health.      So what is gratitude? It can be lots of things – an emotion, an attitude, a moral virtue, a habit, a personality trait or a coping response. From a psychological perspective, gratitude involves having a distinctive view of the world; i t’s about focusing on and appreciating what we have ra...