Arthur Ellis 4‏+

We like keeping things simple here at Arthur Ellis and our own well-being can be broken down into five areas of behaviour that help us to build and protect our well-being. Like how brushing our teeth helps our teeth keep nice and healthy, there’s five types of behaviour that goes towards keeping us in that state of feeling comfortable, healthy, and happy.
These five different areas of well-being have been researched a huge amount to understand their benefits. The New Economic Foundation reviewed over 400 scientific papers to see what are the typical trends that helps people get their mental health and well-being back on track.
At Arthur Ellis, we use these different areas of well-being to help companies and individuals manage their emotions and mental health.

When our lives become disrupted by different life events, we aren’t often able to keep these positive well-being behaviours going. We call these our banana behaviours. If we have a banana every day, we will only get healthier over time. If our bananas become disrupted, they can be replaced by behaviours that can slowly turn to being negative, like missing that lunchtime walk or binging a TV show.
We are by no means saying that this is a bad thing to do, but these are our doughnuts, those indulgent behaviours that are fine from time to time but if we are having them every day, they will begin replacing our bananas and we will start to see our health decline.
By first understanding what we do as our Arthur Ellis Five a Day, we can begin to see where things might be missing in our lives that may be contributing to how we are feeling. When we have all of these Five a Days in place, we can then adjust them when those life events are coming up. They may lower in effort, they may change completely but we are keeping consistent which is the most important thing. Then, we begin to really gain control over our well-being and start to see incredible benefits.

MOVE isn’t just good for our physical health but it has a huge, positive impact on our mental health too! All of us have a hippocampus in our brains, the section responsible for memory, learning and emotional regulation. Exercise strengthens the hippocampus through a process called Neurogenesis and has been proven to support the recovery and management of depression and other mental health issues. Have you ever become really busy at work and missed that lunchtime walk? If this happens over a period of time, we might notice that people have a shorter fuse, become more irritable.

FOCUS is all about becoming more present and recognising what thoughts we are having and how they are making us feel. This develops a form of grounding and self-awareness which can combat worry about future situations and help us to address the things that we can control, support our thoughts and feelings towards that which we can’t control. It has been proven to reduce both anxiety and depression.

DISCOVER is more than attending college or university, it’s about consistently searching for ways to develop our knowledge about ourselves, other people and the world. Discovering new things has been proven to improve overall brain health and memory. If we are always discovering new things, this can do wonders for our self-esteem and confidence leading us to be more motivated, driven and assured in our actions.

COMMUNICATE with other people can have a huge, positive impact on our well-being by not only fighting isolation and loneliness but has other effects too. Having friendships and good relationships has been proven to lengthen our lives, combat stress and give us a real sense of purpose and belonging.

HELP is becoming more and more prevalent within society. This isn’t just donating to your chosen cause but it’s about working towards something that is bigger than ourselves. Help others with our time, knowledge and helping someone with no expectation of reward gives us a purpose, something to live for and something to boost our self-esteem and empathy.