Hello, everyone. I'm Amber Snyder, founder of A G life LLC. I'm gonna present my screen now for Blue Wellness. Amber, Blue Wellness, a little background about me. I have earned my MB A and master of arts in international studies.My day job is in government and I have experience in private sector as well. I decided to address the topic of well being and mental health because we are all impacted by well being and good health. Today, I'm gonna talk about Blue Amber Wellness and that's a topic on well being and mental health. United Nations has 17 developmental goals. Goal number three is to ensure healthy lives and to promote well-being. Under this goal, there are 13 targets. Each has an indicator to measure progress.

Target 3.4 addresses my focus mental health and well being. The indicator for this target is measured by a reduction in the suicide mortality rate by 2030. The United Nations wants to achieve a one third reduction in premature mortality for non communicable diseases, which includes mental health.

This information can be found on the United nations.org website. So what is mental health, mental health according to the World Health Organization is a state of well being in which an individual realizes his or her own abilities can cope with the normal stresses of life can work productively and is able to contribute to his or her community.

Based on this definition, mental health has four aspects and achieving these four aspects according to the World Health Organization means good mental health. So someone with a mental illness can actually have good mental health if they're able to achieve these four aspects.

The first aspect is to of mental health is to realize your own abilities. There are tools to help you realize your own abilities. Two of my favorites are a self swat analysis and the Jahari window, a self swot analysis is a way to assess your own strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. A second favorite tool of mine is the Jahari window. The Jahari window is a look into you how you view yourself and how others view you. The window has four panes which categorizes different perspectives of you and your personality. Another way to realize your own abilities is creating and sharing a pleasures and stressors list with loved ones.

This type of list allows insight into who you are and what stresses you and what brings you joy. Sharing. This type of list can help increase your happiness because others who love you or who you live with or who you deal with will know what stresses you and what brings you happiness. A second aspect of mental health is to cope with normal life stressors. Since COVID-19, some have increased responsibilities with home school and having kids full time in the home. There is a new norm of working from home while being in closed quarters with yourself for others. There is a new norm of caring for parents, friends and loved ones full time.

These new norms coupled with social distancing can cause an imbalance in your mental health. I have listed on the screen several ways to cope. One is get outside, enjoy some nature, do some gardening, plant, clean your yard. Another is to move about, get some exercise, walk, dance, just get movement in your body throughout the day. The third is to stay hydrated and then the other is to eat, to live. So be careful of what you're eating, make sure you put in healthy things that energize your body. Because when you eat certain foods, you can feel the energy in your body. When you eat other foods, you can feel drained and tired. Uh talk out, talk it out loud and laugh are are two other ways that you can cope with normal stressors of life and then creating a calm space at night to meditate and practice breathing exercises and get sleep and plenty of rest. The third aspect of mental health is working productively and to do so you can separate work time and have some downtime. So some people working from home, have blended and they're finding that they're working more hours than they did when they had to commute to the office. So I suggest you set and keep your boundaries, decrease the fear of failure in work environments.

This is something we all can do and we can bring up to the attention of those at the top to create a fear of failure, to decrease fear of failure in the workplace. So create fail forward programs where individuals who do venture out or find innovative, innovative ways of doing things who are creative um are rewarded for their innovation and their creativity. You can reward yourself personally for your productivity if you do something well or you get something accomplished, reward yourself in small ways. Those small wins are big wins if you acknowledge them and, and keep moving forward to encourage yourself, seek out mentors or become a mentee.

So become a mentor or, or mentor other people uh find a career coach or become a coach yourself and then sponsor others. Sponsors are those who put their name out there for someone else to get their foot in the door. So a sponsor knows about an opportunity and says, hey, you know, I know, so this person who would be a good fit potentially and they offer up their, their clout to get you in. The fourth aspect is to, to show you are mentally healthy, is contributing to the community. And there are several ways you can contribute to your community or a community. You can pay it forward by buying groceries from a grocery store for your neighbor who you know, lost their job or who had hours cut back. You can reach back by reaching out to neighborhood Children who need tutoring or who need access to different, different um resources. And you can give back, you can add value to your community in a number of ways you can care for others in the community. And then lastly, you can invite friends, family and neighbors to help come up and brainstorm to create solutions to improve all of our communities allyship. This is being there for someone who is dealing with mental health issues or going through something.

Um And it's having an impact on their mental health. I just suggest that you never give up on someone with a mental illness. And when we replace I with, we illness becomes wellness. We're all in this together. Thank you.