We might not always be ready, confident and capable of accessing every environment. We have to meet people where they are in terms of their comfort, epoch and growth.
History
Adopting a growth mindset requires breaking down everything you've ever learned about learning. As humans the empirical evidence towards behavioral psychology explains that we feel negative experiences three times as much as we feel positive experiences. Biologically this is helped us in our evolution to avoid the negative. However our lizard brain no longer needs to adopt this mindset because we live in a much safer time in history that we have for the previous hundreds of thousands of years.
A mindset
Adopting a growth mindset is something we need to teach and train ourselves to do through trial and error and of course with the support of those around us. A support worker's job is to help cultivate this and to have some basic understandings of behavioral psychology. It is critical that the support worker has adopted a growth mindset.
Kids learn more from what they see rather than what they hear.
To adopt this mindset you must learn to embrace the discomfort of tough conversations tough environments and things that heighten your state of alertness and make you feel uncomfortable. Through embracing this discomfort it's how we grow. We go to the gym and put our muscles and our bodies through stress, that force is the muscle to grow and become stronger. The next day after a solid gym session our muscles are sore they have had trauma on them and we have split the fibers, those fibres mend stronger than they were beforehand in order to adapt to the new stress it may face. Overtime these discomforts create a positive compounding effect where you can look in the muscle and see a physical change. That makes us feel good about ourselves and encourages us to work out more, adopt more stimuli and better diet, creating a positive feedback loop the builds upon our previous levels of growth.
We do not often see the growth of our internal changes whether it be reduced anxiety, greater confidence, more social connections, stronger relationships and many other amazing impacts. Humans have a phenomenal resilience built into their DNA where we can adapt to whatever life throws at us. However, the negative impact of this is that we constantly move the chains in our mind an elephant forget how far we have come.
Our goal should always be to embrace the discomfort in all aspects of life.
Community opportunities
Mens sheds
Men's sheds are everywhere:
Rosebud
Hastings
Mornington
Safety beach / Dromana
Langwarrin
Pines
They are a phenomenal way to connect for men to be hands-on, creative and embrace the social cohesion of other men. They have proven to be a great way for men to find social connectedness and we know that men's mental health in particular has been on the rise for years. I have found these places to be quite open-minded to assisting the access for PWD.
Community art groups
Non-gender specific art groups that are often quiet and creative spaces for the intrinsic type to feel safe in a calming environment. Connecting with like-minded people is a great way to build social networks and create friendships and more.
Alcoholics/Narcotics Anonymous
These groups cultivate the essential support and education to people wanting to change their behaviours. When we choose our vice whether it be unhealthy food, drugs, alcohol, cigarettes or video games, we are generally seeking a change in our emotional state we don't actually need that 5th donut or 12th glass of wine/beer. They teach us to confront the underlying feelings and emotions of our choices.
When confronted with uncomfortable feelings we need to sit with them and let them dissipate fully.
The Gym
We know that mental social physical and spiritual health are all interlinked. They all influence each other in a positive and negative way when we are unhappy we are more likely to be physically affected. Finding social support in these settings is often easier especially when you have that growth mindset and ask people questions, you'll be surprised how often people are willing and enjoy helping others.
Running groups
Pilates classes
water aerobics
chatting in the sauna and steam room
All abilities weight lifting https://allabilitiesstrength.com/
Sporting Clubs
Weather participating yourself in domestic competitive matches or attending the local semi-professional leagues it's a great way to meet and connect with people while feeling the adrenaline rush of supporting your local team. Quite often professional players drop down to these lower legs in the off season and so it can be really high quality and leave you starstruck.
Frankston blues NBL1
Local Football team
Local Soccer Team
Pickleball
Comicon, Pax and Supanova
These are some of the most inviting environments I've been a part of. Each event is held annually and they're usually at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre or the Melbourne Showgrounds. The effort into the costumes and although they can get really quite busy if you get there in the morning it's not that confronting and a great place to start for those with higher levels of anxiety. The anime cartoon and video game flavor can be a welcomed distraction to the anxieties that some may have.
Locally there is also many Yu-Gi-Oh Warhammer and Pokemon style card game meats where people play and you can even watch.
General Games Frankston
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