Journaling Workshop

Anne (active wellbeing officer) and Toni (postgraduate officer) piloted a workshop with the Keele Postgraduate Association on journaling and goal-setting. Four students engaged in the workshop and provided positive feedback. Due to its success, more workshop dates are being arranged.

For Anne this workshop was building on the work booklet she had already developed called setting goals and taking action. The contents of the work booklet are evidence-based ways towards behavioural change and cover topics on identifying barriers and facilitators, setting effective SMART goals, and making an action plan. While this booklet primarily aims to support students to increase physical activity long-term, it can also be used for other wellbeing behaviours and studies.

For Toni, the gratitude portion of the journaling workshop aimed to introduce students to what gratitude is and how they can use it in their everyday lives. Gratitude can be a wonderful method of shining a light on the things in life that bring us joy and pleasure and that we might otherwise take for granted. However, just as importantly, the workshop also touched on the concept of ‘toxic positivity’ in relation to gratitude practices and aimed to highlight some of the limitations of gratitude in order to share with students how best to use gratitude as a tool in their wellbeing toolkit! The workshop finished off by providing a few different methods of practising gratitude. The first being via a written journal with prompts and ideas taken from research into gratitude practice interventions. The second approach introduced students to visual methods of recording joy and practising gratitude.