Mental Health Matters: Creating Wellness in your Life (Part I & II)
Lifestyle Management: Breaking the Loop (Part I & II)
Resilience and Adaptability (Part I & II)
Mindful Leadership (Part I & II)
-> February 3 & 10 from 1:00pm – 2:30pm (EST)
-> May 5 & 12 from 1:00pm – 2:30pm (EST)
-> August 4 & 11 from 1:00pm – 2:30pm (EST)
-> October 6 & 13 from 1:00pm – 2:30pm (EST)
CBIE Members: $50 (8 sessions) | Non-members: $800 (8 sessions)
NOTE: These 8 sessions are live webinars, which will NOT be recorded or redistributed after the live event.
For information on missed sessions, please contact guard.meCARES directly.
Part I – February 3
Any life is a life of change. We experience transitions in work and relationships, changes in our physical and mental health, within our communities and even in our world. Some changes we expect, as we know they are going to happen, while others come suddenly and unexpectedly. This can create challenges to our ability to make rewarding choices for health and well-being. Often when we’re struggling, our inner monologues can become critical and it takes practice to shift our mindsets. The mindset we have and the inner dialogue we have when we’re faced with difficult tasks has a big impact on our overall success and personal well-being. In this workshop we will learn how your mind – and your mindset – affects your ability to change habits and outcomes.
Part II – February 10
Wellness matters as it has a direct impact and influence on everything we do, every emotion we feel, and very interaction we have. How we achieve our well-being is up to us, however being well doesn’t just develop on its own. Creating balance in our lives is a crucial element of overall wellness, and while everyone’s journey to wellness will be quite personal and unique, we can all benefit from a more conscious, self-directed, and intentional process of achieving our full potential. When you invest in your own wellness, you are better able to invest in promoting positive well-being in others. We will explore ways on how to support your own wellbeing and ways to keep yourself and your communities empowered, nourished, and supported.
Workshop Objectives:
- Recognize and reflect on the major obstacles in your life and learn specific tools to cope with life’s ups and downs
- Build your self-esteem to be strong and resilient
- Commit to your priorities in life
- Evaluate thinking patterns when disappointed to create an alternate and healthier mindset
- Learn how your mind and your mindset affects your ability to change your habits and your outcomes
Part I – May 5
Whether you hope to make major changes to improve your health or simply fine-tune and build on your current healthy habits, creating a personalized lifestyle management plan can help you achieve your overall wellness goals. Wellness is a lifestyle and a personalized approach to living life beyond just exercise and eating healthy, it is about feeling happy and indulging in experiences that promote a state of well-being and sharing those experiences. The choices we make to support out wellness is our lifestyle – our style of life. This workshop will look at best practices when creating a plan for your wellness, effective ways to assess each area of your life to determine what your goals are to help you discover opportunities for an improved quality of life and create goals accordingly. It is time to “take charge” of your life.
Part II – May 12
Wellness involves remembering that we have psychological, physical, spiritual, and social needs that are all essential for us to enjoy life to the fullest. Wellness emphasizes the whole person. It brings together spirit, mind, and body; and the understanding that all we do can be impacted by the choices we make. In this workshop we will cover how we can press pause in the moment, consider how to react to life stressors in a productive way, and recognize when we are starting to fall into our unhealthy habit loop. Noticing when habits no longer support your values and goals and visioning a healthier and more balanced you can serve as a powerful intrinsic motivator to leave your old patterns and embrace new ones. In this workshop we will explore unhealthy habits, signs of stress and strategies for developing effective and sustainable coping skills. We will also develop a road map for sustainable change, providing a pathway to freeing yourself from those unhealthy habits and interrupting the habit loop.
Workshop Objectives:
- Assess the elements of a healthy lifestyle and the relationship between the various dimensions of wellness
- Evaluate and improve your emotional intelligence
- Identify how language impacts emotional self-regulation and how emotional self-regulation impacts language
- Understand how others read your emotions and what persona you emanate
- Build a toolkit of simple strategies and techniques to help turn all interactions into collaborative experiences that foster resiliency
Part I – August 4
How we see ourselves often changes throughout our lives, based on various life experiences. We may have a mental blueprint of our lives and the obstacles that appear which force us to change our plans, shift our values and organize our priorities. When we learn that we do have to accept things for the way they are, it allows us to change the way we see life and make positive changes to ourselves. When you are accepting of yourself and have faith in your circumstances, you will find life to be more fulfilling and happier. It will not be perfect and embracing imperfection will give you ultimate freedom! The readiness to learn new concepts, improve skills, challenge our limiting self-beliefs, we can remove barriers that prevent our personal growth and adaptability.
Part II – August 11
With all of life’s obstacles, there is always room to grow and learn from the various events we are faced with. Life is about you vs. you. Focus your mindset on the progress you experience along the way. When you focus on the journey, the actual outcome becomes less important. The lessons you have learned from making progress along the way is what will propel you to grow and achieve more going forward, strengthening your resilience. Focus on your path. Focus on your journey. Our ability to learn from the downs, motivates us to push through challenges. This workshop will assist you in identifying skills, needs and barriers, foster knowledge-sharing activities, and effective strategies to become more adaptable during difficult circumstances improving your resilience and promoting the resilience of others.
Workshop Objectives:
- Implement mindfulness practices in our personal and professional lives
- Learn to build authentic and trusted relationships
- Develop ways to conquer your inner critic
- Learn to live according to values, rather than expectations, gaining freedom from perfectionism
Part I – October 6
Everyone can be a leader; leadership is a process not a position. To be healthy influencers, we must invest in ourselves and our well-being. Obstacles, mistakes, conflicts, and moments of stress are inevitable. What isn’t certain is your response. You can choose to be discouraged and overwhelmed in these moments, or you can reframe them into opportunities to learn, grow, and problem-solve. Building off all that you’ve learned about yourself, redirecting that new energy into a solution and action enables perspective-taking and compassion. This mindset shift keeps us in the present, where we can truly address what is happening, what is needed, allowing us to give others the best of us and not what is left of us.
Part II – October 13
A leader can be viewed as anyone who wants to make a difference and ends up making an impact with someone, somewhere. Leadership is about empowering those we influence to achieve their full potential; it is the acts we carry out living our lives daily. Leading mindfully takes time, patience, and practice. It is about maintaining our focus through responsive decision-making whilst aligning with our values. A healthy influencer and leader is one who creates positive change, and this change must begin from within. By combining self-awareness and self-improvement, with a development of intentional and more mindful awareness we can begin to build our capacity to lead by example influencing those we come into connect with.
Workshop Objectives:
- Effectively communicate using sensitive, non-judgmental language, and recognize the emotional impact of our wellbeing on others
- Cultivate non-reactive habit patterns, essential to navigate the ups and downs common to the business domain
- Recognize unproductive patterns, both within ourselves and in workplace interactions, and learn how to respond more effectively
PRESENTER
Christina Furtado
Mental Health and Wellness Specialist
Christina Furtado, MACP is a Mental Health Counsellor specializing in the areas of substance-use disorders, mood-related disorders, as well as anxiety and trauma-related disorders, with clinical experience in outpatient mental health programs and inpatient addiction rehabilitation centres. Christina devoted 15 years to supporting students’ wellbeing as an educator within the K-12 sector prior to becoming a mental health counsellor. Christina continues to be a passionate advocate, bringing her expertise to the guard.meCARES platform through the Wellness and Learning Initiatives Program.
Christina is a practicing member of the Canadian Psychological Association (CPA) and the Ontario Association of Mental Health Professionals (OAMP, formerly the OACCPP) since 2015 and continues to be involved in various mental health initiatives across Canada.