July 10, 2024, by Sean May

Utilising “The Grid of Life” to Build Resilience

Blog by Natalie Mack, Microbiology, Brewing and Biotechnology. 

On Tuesday 25th June 2024, I presented at The University of Nottingham’s online “Empowering Us All” Conference, which was open to both internal and external delegates. I was one of nine speakers on the programme and my session aimed to communicate a useful tool to help individuals enhance their wellbeing and resilience.

The tool I presented is one I have adapted from a fabulous book by Susan Jeffers “Feel the fear and do it anyway” that is available from our University library. The essence of the concept is to use a grid to reflect on the different areas of your whole life.

Suggested reflection grid

I have 9 boxes with the following headings:

• Family and Pets
• Work
• Hobbies/Me time
• Friends
• Travel
• Health and Exercise
• Relationship
• Home maintenance
• Finances.

The headings should reflect what is important to you and therefore will vary between individuals and you may even wish to add a few more boxes to your grid. I suggest that for each box you reflect on how it currently looks for you and estimate a rough percentage effort level you are putting into that area of life. Next, estimate the percentage of your satisfaction/success for that area.

You can then reflect on those percentages and identify if you are putting more effort into certain areas of your life, possibly at the expense of others, and also work out which areas you are less happy with. From this standpoint, you can begin to think about ways you may start to improve some life areas, developing an action plan of achievable things you could do to enhance each area.

Building a satisfying and well-balanced life

This exercise is designed to help you foster a proactive and positive approach to building a satisfying and well-balanced life. Committing to and “filling up” all areas of your life will enhance your overall wellbeing and resilience. If one area of your life falls down, you would still have a rich and fulfilling life based on all of the other areas and those will help you to navigate challenging times.

Approaching life in this way can enable you to better manage stress and challenges both within and outside of the workplace.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Further self-help including UoN wellbeing and free counselling links

Please consider visiting the University wellbeing site which includes:

1. Togetherall an external support app (UoN staff have free access) 
2. Care First – qualified confidential professionals for conversations about personal or work issues (e.g. domestic / family, consumer rights, bereavement, bullying, financial, debt support). Up to 6 free face-to-face counselling sessions per year are available.
3. MyPossibleSelf app – Clinically certified content using cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT).

– For UoN login/organisation codes or further details, please see the Employee Hub, or contact your EDI representative.  

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