The adverse impact on the state of mental health and wellbeing of New Zealanders over the last 3 years due to COVID, plus with the recent weather events, does not require any research or studies. All you need to do is to simply ask people, “how are you coping?”. Sadly, the normal response I receive from this question are stories of challenges, struggles, and hardship.

It’s a bold assumption, but one I believe is true, and that is, no-one has escaped from the negative tentacles of these events… myself included! By knowing this, and since my focus is in the area of Emotional Wellness, the question I asked myself was, “what can I do?”.

This resulted in the development of the course Riding Life’s Emotional Waves. The course establishes how to build a strong Emotional Wellness foundation by developing an individual’s emotional readiness and responsiveness, which will support their state of Emotional Wellness when faced with life’s evitable waves (challenges).

However, it has become evident that even with the best intent, I can only make so much of a difference. The Solution: There are amazing individuals and organisations with diverse knowledge and services within the NZAPP community whose purpose aligns with mine, which is to make a positive difference to state of mental health and wellbeing of New Zealanders. Recognising this, I thought wouldn’t it be incredible if we were to collaborate for the greater good and establish a ‘Tribe’ of like-minded people. Instead of only an individual approach, the tribe would deliver a holistic approach to support New Zealanders to address the short and long-term psychological impact of these events.

Support could be through courses, clinical interventions, and other modalities. Since this initiative is only at the conceptional stage, the details would be confirmed by the members of the tribe as part of the strategic planning process.

Therefore, the first stage is to gain initial interest from potential tribe members, which could consist of:

• -          Private Training Establishments (PTEs) and Wellbeing Training Providers, e.g., positive psychology
• -          Corporate Wellbeing Providers
• -          Clinicians; psychologist, counsellors
• -          Coaches
• -          Natural Health Providers, e.g., naturopaths, reiki
• -          Social Services NGOs (incorporating the solution into their service offer)
• -          Specialist in the areas of strategic planning, marketing, graphic designers, IT; websites, app development, LMS, online systems
• -          Funders; Charities, NGOs, Community Groups, Corporates
• -          Plus, office space

Please contact me if you would like to discuss this exciting opportunity to create a like-minded tribe to make a positive difference to state of mental health and wellbeing of New Zealanders.

Garth Castle

Emotional Wellness Thought Leader

Garth@expand.org.nz

garthcastle.com