At assembly Ahlia and Chelsea, the BHPS PERMA introduced our character strength for this week which is Self-Belief. They had some good ideas as to how Self-Belief could be integrated into the class room.

Ahlia: Hi, we are Ahlia and Chelsea and we are the PERMA leaders at BHPS for 2022.

Chelsea: Today we are going to introduce the Character Strength coming up

Ahlia: Self-Belief is our character strength for next week

Chelsea: Self-Belief means respecting yourself and feeling confident about yourself

Ahlia: Having self-belief means that you work to achieve your goals and don’t compare yourself to others. 

Chelsea: A class lesson on self-belief that you could use next week is using your community circle to talk about a goal  that you are proud of having achieved

Ahlia: You could also use the community circle to talk about character strengths that others have seen in you.

One of our Grade 6 Students made this character strength card on self-belief

The students in 4B (Ms Thomas) showed self-belief when they worked collaboratively to unpack our PERMA model and redefine the definitions using their own words.

 

Self belief, like self worth, means that you value yourself and expect to be treated with respect.

People with a sense of self-belief try not to compare themselves to others. Having self worth comes from setting goals, working to attain the goals and achieving success. This makes us feel good about ourselves.

Self-Belief comes within the “Meaning” arm of our wellbeing model because people with self-worth are inspired by and use the character strengths of positive role models, they do things that make a positive difference and use their strengths in all that they do.

The positive side effects of high self-esteem, include:

• Taking responsibility for our actions
• Forming positive relationships
• Feeling confident and respected
• Feeling proud of our achievements
• Understanding mistakes is part of learning
• Being resilient and independent
• Being confident of our decisions in the face of peer pressure
• Having a positive self-image

To understand yourself better and increase your self worth and boost how you feel about yourself you can use these sentence stems (or prompts) :

• I was really happy when . . .
• A goal that I have achieved recently is…
• Something that my friends like about me is . . .
• I’m proud of . . .
• My family was happy when I . . .
• In school, I’m good at . . .
• Something that makes me unique is . . .
• Others tell me my character strength is…

You can also use positive self-talk to boost your self worth. To do this, you need to catch yourself saying negative things about yourself in your head and chage the thinking to being more positive (eg. I’m not as good as the rest of my team (at, say, football) you could say; I may not be as good, but I play a valuable role and my team mates think I’m funny/kind/nice)

You can also use positive self-talk to boost your self worth. To do this, you need to catch yourself saying negative things about yourself in your head and change the thinking to being more positive eg. Instead of thinking; I’m not as good as the rest of my team (at, say, football) you could say; I may not be as good, but I play a valuable role and my team mates think I’m funny/kind/nice)

Perfectly Norman by Tom Percival

What is the main message in this story?

So Few of Me by Peter H. Reynolds

My favourite line in this story is: What if I did less but did my best?

At assembly on Friday, two of our 2022 House Captains, Fin and Sonny, introduced our wellbeing focus for next week and this is what they said:

Fin: Next week we have PERMA timetabled as our focus which we have been doing for the past 2 weeks as part of our starting right program.

Sonny: PERMA stands for the five elements that help us to lead happier lives with increased wellbeing.

Fin: These are: Positive Emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning and Accomplishment.

Sonny: At BHPS, we aspire to use these elements because we know that they will help us to flourish.

Fin: Positive Emotions means having vocab to express emotions

Sonny: Engagement means taking opportunities to learn new things

Fin: Relationships is about friendship and means having old friends and finding new ones

Sonny: Meaning means knowing my purpose and doing things to make a positive difference

Fin: Accomplishment means challenging yourself and doing the best you can and feeling proud of your effort.

Sonny: Next week with Valentines day on Monday, we thought, along with the PERMA, that we could use the character strength of “LOVE” This means thinking about people in our lives who we care about and who care about us in return.

Fin:These people can be our parents, our family members and even our friends! Some of us love our heroes and those who have been kind to us. We love our pets and our teddy bears! Some of us love unicorns, books, our footy teams and lego.

“An Awesome Book of Love” by Dallas Clayton – I LOVE this book!!

“Koala Lou” by Mem Fox

Little kids explain what they think love is!

This week at Barwon Heads PS we will spend each day looking at one of the five elements of our PERMA model.

PERMA is an acronym for a model of well-being put forth by a pioneer in the field of positive psychology, Martin Seligman. According to Seligman, PERMA makes up five important building blocks of well-being and happiness:

• Positive emotions – feeling good
• Engagement – being completely absorbed in activities
• Relationships – being authentically connected to others
• Meaning – purposeful existence
• Achievement – a sense of accomplishment and success

Positive Emotions

Positive emotions are among the many components that make up happiness and well-being, and one of the more obvious layers of happiness. It’s good to know the difference between pleasure and enjoyment. While pleasure relates to satisfying bodily needs like hunger, thirst, or taking a long sleep after a tough day, enjoyment comes from intellectual stimulation and creativity. Enjoyment can be as simple as playing a fun game with friends in the playground at lunch time. Enjoyment also involves being intellectually challenged and standing up to it. For example, puting a jigsaw puzzle together, which requires concentration and careful figuring out, can lead to smiles of contentment and enjoyment.

Positive emotions are good for us because they stretch the imagination. When we do something they enjoy or find interesting, we are more likely to persevere in the face of challenges, and spontaneously search for more creative solutions and opportunities. Positive emotions can also help undo negative ones; Generally, we are likely to do more of the activities we find stimulating and that bring enjoyment, and the effects last longer than those that generate short-lived pleasure.

Engagement

We’ve all had the experience of becoming so absorbed in work or in reading a book that we completely lose sense of time or forget an appointment. Achieving this state of flow or total engagement is natural, especially when people are involved in activities they love and are good at, such as dancing, playing sport, or pursuing creative activities and hobbies.

Although engagement in enjoyable activities comes relatively easy to most children, it is still important to have opportunities to take part in activities that offer experiences of engagement or flow. Such opportunities might involve putting together jigsaw puzzles, drawing and coloring, playing with toys, or practicing ballet or a musical instrument. The fact that such activities stretch the intellectual and emotional limits and endurance, as well as require concentration and effort, is important.

Relationships

Happiness and psychological health are inextricably linked with close, meaningful, and intimate relationships. Fleeting social relationships with strangers as well as longstanding ones with peers, siblings, parents, extended family, and friends are all sources of positive emotions and support. According to research, one important function of social networks is that they can spread happiness, cheer and laughter like wild fire.

Meaning

True happiness comes from creating and having meaning in life, rather than from the pursuit of pleasure and material wealth. Loving someone and being loved is a meaningful phenomenon, for example, because such acts inspire people to live for, and take care of, someone other than the self. Living a meaningful life is, in essence, related to attaching oneself to something larger than oneself. It instills the sense that there is a larger purpose to life, and being a part of it confers meaning. Doing chores, caring for the environment and helping others within the broader community are some examples of taking part in activities that go beyond merely living for oneself. These activities bring fulfillment and meaning that enhance well-being.

Accomplishment

Having explicit goals in life, even small ones like reading for an hour everyday, and making efforts to achieve them are important to well-being and happiness. Achievement helps to build self-esteem and provides a sense of accomplishment.  It also strengthens self-belief. 

The mere effort one puts into reaching a specific goal in itself harbors satisfaction. Importantly, setting goals and putting in the necessary efforts to achieve them are just as important as actually reaching them; it is OK not to succeed the first time.

The beginning of term is a great time to look at your previous Wellbeing Goal and, if you have achieved it, set a new one.

A video that explains PERMA!

My Strong Mind by Niels Van Hove. A book about about Confidence, Resilience and a Growth Mindset? An introduduction to mental strength and techniques to develop a own strong mind.

“Happy”; A Children’s Book of Mindfulness

“Be Happy!”