Student Affairs Podcast: How Wellness and Self-Care Affect Productivity

You can now listen to the latest episode of “Conversations with Student Affairs,” the podcast managed by the Student Affairs team at Penn State World Campus in collaboration with our many colleagues and partners across the University’s Student Affairs teams.

Title: Well-Being and Self-Care are the Foundation of Productivity

Participating staff member: Katie Marshall, World Campus mental health case manager

Summary: We discuss how using the Wellness Wheel and focusing on the “Big 5” can play a major role in well-being, self-care, and productivity. We also review how students can get connected with services and resources in their community.

Three interesting or helpful takeaways from this episode:

The Wellness Wheel is an easy way to evaluate the major areas of your life and identify your highest-priority wellness needs. This tool, available through the Ginger app, has eight wellness categories. You evaluate how things are going for you in each area and assign it a score on a ratings scale. The tool then provides a visual graphic that shows you which areas may need support or attention.

There are five major elements of self-care. They are eat, sleep, routine, connection, and exercise. “If you’re feeling off, it’s helpful to look at these five foundational items of self-care first and see if you can tweak those a little bit and see if that helps you sort of balance out a little more,” Katie says.

Remember we’re all going through challenges and stress. Katie notes that it seems like many of us are experiencing a variety of stressful things right now, which could include COVID-related health concerns and possibly dealing with testing and quarantining, financial or job-related stress, family responsibilities, and everything else we’re all juggling. Treating everyone — yourself included — with compassion and grace is important and can make a big difference in our mental and emotional well-being.

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“Conversations with Student Affairs” Podcasts 

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