All aspects of health are essential to a good school year
Good grades are important but if you don't have good mental health they won't help you as much as they should.
To help you be and do your best, we offer this guide to wellness. It features stories from our archives on dealing with anxiety, reshaping perspectives, taking care of your body so that it can properly take care of your mind, and more. Many of them also have links to invaluable services at NAIT. Don't miss out!
In the meantime, have an awesome, productive year – just be sure to look after yourself as you go.
1. Take these 6 steps to stay positive
Being negative is natural – expecting the worst is an evolutionary mechanism that helps us anticipate threats and survive them. But staying in that state isn't much fun, nor is it healthy. Here, Personal Fitness Trainer chair Kate Andrews offers six ways to change your perspective. Feel your feelings, but also pause to consider what's causing them and how those causes might be seen in a more positive light.
2. Try to exercise
We've all heard about the postive mental health effects of a good workout. But not everyone has time to hit the gym. You don't need to! From trainer Brittany Uchach (Personal Fitness Trainer ’05), here's a total body workout involving no equipment that you can do at home. Pause to break a sweat and you just might find that you return to your studies refreshed.
3. Know that you belong (and help others feel it, too)
Building community takes work, compassion and time. To help the polytechnic has directed efforts toward honouring Aboriginal knowledge on campus and in classrooms.
Grads are doing this work as well, and offer tips to the rest of us on how to participate. We all want a community that feels inclusive of our uniqueness. Perhaps we can take some comfort in the fact that we have it in us to help make it that way.
4. Eat well – without breaking the budget
No one is at their best if they're not eating well. Cheap snacks and heavily processed foods aren't going to cut it. From Rylan Krause (Cook ’12), executive chef at Ernest’s Dining Room, NAIT's on-campus restaurant, here are six tips on cooking, shopping and sharing that will provide you with plenty of food for thought.
5. Reframe your perseptive on student debt
If you're a student, chances are you have student debt. It's no small thing, but it's also not a burden that has to weigh you down long after you graduate. JR Shaw School of Business Accounting instructor Stacey Cooper has tips on how to come to peace with your loans, not make things worse and, eventually, repay them.
6. Try meditating
Yoga instructor Amanda Bell-Tardif (Personal Fitness Trainer ’09) starts and ends her day with 15 minutes of sitting and focusing on her breathing and how her body feels. That's it – and it changed her life. Maybe it can help you get through tough times that might come. Better yet, it's could be a way to boost your mental health everyday, making hard ones better and good ones great. Here are her tips.
7. Sleep better in six steps
Sleeping better makes us better at being awake. We're not going to tell you that you need you a solid eight hours a night (well, if you can you should). But a NAIT counsellor has ideas on how to make the most of the hours you get. Get into the right frame of mind, don't try too hard and never take a certain something into the bedroom. Rest assured, these tips will help.
8. Remember that it's OK not to be OK
If you're ever feeling down, you're not alone. That's a message worth remembering for yourself but also one to share with others. For inspiration, we offer this story about Humboldt Broncos tragedy survivor Tyler Smith (Radio and Television – TV '20). His healing journey hasn't been easy, but it's made him who he is today: one of Alberta's greatest advocates for mental-health awareness.
9. Hang with Flynn
It’s a “ruff” job but someone’s got to do it. Since September 2013, Flynn, an Australian labradoodle and NAIT's assisted therapy dog, has been a presence on campus, bringing a warm, fuzzy sense of calm to whomever he meets. You'll find plenty of friendly faces at NAIT this year but this one's just a bit furrier than most.
10. Set goals
Goals can keep you thinking positively about the future and where you see yourself in it. There are steps you can take to make them more managable, and to help keep you stay focused and motivated. From trainer Jarryd Reed (Personal Fitness Trainer ’21), here are eight things to do to keep yourself in a healthy state of mind as you move forward through the school year and beyond.
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