Course instructions for a sustainable change - READ THESE BEFORE YOU START


This course includes exercises and assignment which help you explore which factors you specifically can influence to strengthen your wellbeing and study skills as a student. Enhancing these requires aquiring new practices, which is not always easy. In this course you will every week learn possible new methogs and tools, and each week you will choose a new practice to rehearse in your everyday life. To maximise your success, please observe these issues when doing course assignments: 

1. Aim for changing one thing at a time - when you make changes to your everyday life and on your actions via taking one step at a time, it is eventually a faster and more secure way to reach your goal than trying to change everything at once. Research indicate that changing habits fails quite certainly, if you try to change many things at the same time.

2. A small step is often the best first step - choose such a realistic goal that you actually can reach in your everyday life. Instead of aiming at a huge leap in changing your actions, first set a small milestone towards the right direction. In this way, the change will succeed more likely, and when succeeded, gives you motivation to proceed with new milestones on your way to your final goal.

3. When learning new practices, the time span needs to be long enough - one or two days is not enough, but instead a new practice needs to be applied purposefully and on a long-term basis at least for several weeks, until it starts to become a routine which does not feel labourious or require struggling. Therefore; if you perceive that you need more than one course week for integrating a new practice in your everyday life, you don't have to choose a new goal for every week, but instead you can continue with the previous one. 

4. Rehearsing new practices requires repetition and regularity - this is, don't give up after one unsuccessful day! When learning new practices, forgetting and failures are part of the process, and they are meaningless in the big picture, in case you always persistently return to the new practice though the previous day hadn't been a success. The most important thing is how you act after the failure - do you give up or do you try to learn from your failure and re-try!

5. Aquiring new practices requires a lot of energy for a start, and this is an investment for the future! - when time and regular repetition make the new practice a routine, the practice is automated, starts to same energy and often also your  time. If the start feels labourious, think of this as an investment for your wellbeing and future.

Promoting wellbeing makes it possible for you to accomplish things important for you, and that is rewarding. In this way, it leads you to the right direction - towards the future you want to live :)

In case you notice during the course that you need more personal support of help with any of the topics in the course, you can search for suitable support at Where to get guidance and support? | Aalto University 


Senast redigerad: onsdag, 20 december 2023, 13:54