Reading Material

• 10 Step Brain Power-Up Guide
  From the website Be Brain Fit, this guide offers 10 steps to boost your thinking, memory, mood and focus.
  

• 12 Choices to Help You Step Back from Burnout
  From the website Edutopia, one educator shares active choices you can make to help prevent burnout.
  

• 21-Day Projects Habit Changing
  This article includes four “21 Day Projects” to tackle challenges in your life, from fighting a never-ending battle with clutter, feeling drained by someone else's difficult nature, feel bad about yelling at your kids too much or being out of touch with yourself.
  

• 25 Tiny Changes That Will Make You a Happier Person
  Lolly Daskal, President and CEO of Lead From Within offers changes you can make to feel happier at work.
  

• 45 Simple Self-Care Practices for a Healthy Mind, Body and Soul
  From the website Tiny Buddha, this article offers self-care practices for the mind, body and soul.
  

• 121 Employee Wellness Ideas
  A list of 121 fun employee wellness program ideas that you can easily implement in your building or department.
  

• American Mindfulness Research Association
  This organization shares evidence-based practices for the process, practice, and construct of mindfulness as well as standards for the use of mindfulness research and its applications for professional developlment.
  

• Be Brain Fit
  Read articles and other research on ways to boost your cognitive and mental health and fitness.
  

• Change Your Habits. Change Your Life
  James Clear provides self-improvement tips based on proven scientific research.
  

• Do You Hate to Rush?
  This article provides 11 tips for getting ready faster in the morning.
  

• Five Ways to Be Fully Authentic
  Included are tips to stay true to yourself without letting others down.
  

• Great Dream: Ten Keys to Happier Living
  This article offers ten factors important to our well-being and what we can do to influence them.
  

• How Can Districts Help Teachers Develop Social-Emotional Skills?
  District leaders share insights that in order for teachers to be effective for their students, they must take care of their own social emotional well-being.
  

• How Gratitude Changes You and Your Brain
  Learn more about the research on how gratitude works to improve our mental health.
  

• In Praise of Gratitude
  Harvard Health Publications shares advice for a healthier life and focuses on science of gratitude and ways to cultivate it in this piece.
  

• Let's Go Healthy Workplace Toolkit.
  This toolkit from Let’s Go supports employees in improving and maintaining health inside and outside of work.
  

• Making SEL the DNA of a School
  From the Greater Good Magazine, school and district leaders share stories of how they are infusing SEL into everything they do.
  

• Meet on Your Feet
  Not all meetings must take place in an office or conference room. In fact many of the most creative moments can take place outside of them.
  

• Seven Ways Mindfulness Can Help Teachers
  Patricia A. Jennings explains why teachers should cultivate moment-to-moment awareness of thoughts, feelings and surroundings.
  

• Start a Habits Group
  Better Than Before habits groups are a way to swap ideas, build enthusiasm, give energy and encouragement as well as help hold each other accountable.
  

• The Better Than Before Habits Manifesto
  Gretchen Rubin, author of Better Than Before, provides 12 tips for a habits manifesto.
  

• The Four Tendencies Quiz
  Take this quiz, developed by Gretchen Rubin, author of Better Than Before, designed to help people learn how they respond to both outer and inner expectations.
  

• The Pursuit of Happiness
  Find articles written by psychologists, philosophers and educators from science-based information on life skills and habits needed to enhance well-being, build resilience against depression and anxiety, and pursue a meaningful life.
  

• Your Healthiest Self: Wellness Toolkits
  Each person’s “healthiest self” is different. We have different bodies, minds, living situations, and people influencing our lives. Use this wellness toolkits to find ways to improve your well-being in any area you’d like.

• Choose the Life You Want: The Mindful Way to Happiness

Positive psychology expert Tal Ben-Shahar draws on the latest psychological research on how choices have a direct, long-lasting impact on our happiness.

• Mindfulness for Teachers: Simple Skills for Peace and Productivity in the Classroom

From research in the fields of neuroscience, psychology and education, author Patricia A Jennings offers information about how mindfulness can help teachers manage the stressful demands of the classroom, cultivate an exceptional learning environment, and revitalize teaching and learning.

• Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

Stanford University psychologist Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D. shows how success in school, work, sports, the arts and almost every area of human endeavor can be influenced by how we think about our talents and abilities.

• Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation

With the integration of brain science with psychotherapy, Dr. Dan Siegel offers an extraordinary guide to the practice of “mindsight,” the potent skill that is the basis for both emotional and social intelligence.

• Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain

Dr. John Ratey explores the connection between exercise and the brain with evidence demonstrating that aerobic exercise physically remodels our brains for peak performance.

• The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

Charles Duhigg explains why habits exist and how they can be changed from exercising regularly, losing weight, being more productive and achieving success.

• The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change

Author Stephen R. Covey presents a holistic, integrated, principle-centered approach for solving personal and professional problems with a step-by-step pathway for living with fairness, integrity, service and human dignity.

• Permission to Feel: Unlocking the Power of Emotions to Help Our Kids, Ourselves, and Our Society Thrive

This book combines rigor, science, passion and inspiration in equal parts. Too many children and adults are suffering; they are ashamed of their feelings and emotionally unskilled, but they don’t have to be. Marc Brackett’s life mission is to reverse this course, and this book can show you how.