1. Empowering Beliefs
Lesson 1 What are
Empowering Beliefs?

2. Welcome to Weaving Well-Being
Welcome to the Weaving Well-Being Empowering Beliefs Programme! Soon we will be learning about how our beliefs affect our well-being. Let’s start by reviewing what well-being means.

3. What is Well-Being?
What do you think well-being means? Share your thoughts in pairs or with the class.
Now we will look at the definition of well-being from the Weaving Well-Being Programme.
You may remember it if you studied the programme before!

4. What is Well-Being?
“Well-being means feeling good and strong in our minds and bodies, having energy, getting along with and helping others, knowing our strengths and feeling proud because we are doing our best. It means we can cope with the little problems and disappointments of life. It means enjoying life, being grateful for what we have and accepting ourselves just as we are!”
Weaving Well-Being
We have seen that it is useful for us to be aware of what well-being is and how we can self –evaluate it. We will now talk about how to give children an understanding of what well-being is, and how they can self-evaluate also.
We can start to do this by teaching the children the language of mental- health from an early age. The Weaving Well-Being programme has adapted and expanded the WHO definition for use with children to make it clearly accessible to them from around the age of eight:
‘Well-being means feeling good and strong in our minds and bodies, having energy, getting along with and helping others, knowing our strengths and feeling proud because we are doing our best. It means we can cope with the little problems and disappointments of life. It means enjoying life, being grateful for what we have and accepting ourselves just as we are!”
Weaving Well-Being
How does this compare with your thoughts on well-being?

5. What are Empowering Beliefs?
What do you think a belief is?
A belief is something we accept to be true.
Sometimes we believe things without checking out the evidence properly!
We often have a lot of beliefs about ourselves which we have built up in our minds over time without us really noticing. This can affect our well-being in lots of ways. Let’s find out how.

6. Quote What do you think this quote means?
It means that if we really believe we can do something, it gives us the energy to take action and the confidence to keep going when we run into challenges. That’s what an empowering belief does for us.

7. What are Empowering Beliefs?
Some beliefs we have about ourselves are very positive and helpful.
They help us to believe in ourselves and to act in positive ways which make us feel good.
We call these Empowering Beliefs because they give us power!
Not all of our beliefs about ourselves are empowering. Sometimes we have beliefs about ourselves which damage our confidence and stop us acting and feeling positively.
We call these Limiting Beliefs because they limit us from achieving our potential.

8. Empowering or not?
Let’s have a look at some beliefs and decide if they are empowering or not. Remember, to be empowering they should be positive and helpful. ‘I’m too shy to make friends easily.’ ‘I’ll never be good at maths.’ ‘If I work hard, I can improve my ability at almost anything.’ ‘I can cope with disappointments and problems.’

9. Link between Beliefs and Actions
This diagram shows the link between beliefs, thoughts, actions and results.

10. Link between Beliefs and Actions
Let’s look at how an empowering belief is linked to positive action. Belief - ‘I can improve at maths if I work hard and ask for help.’ Thoughts - ‘I will really try.’ Feeling - Confident. Actions - Great effort and concentration, asking for help. Result - Success at the topic!

11. Try out some Empowering Beliefs!
This programme is all about trying out some empowering beliefs for yourself.
In each lesson, you will learn about an Empowering Belief.
You can think about it and try how it feels to have this belief over the course of a week.
Then you can review it and see if it had any positive effect on your feelings and behaviours.
If it did, you might choose to keep this belief and use it from then on!

12. How are Empowering Beliefs like Batteries?
It might be helpful to think of each Empowering Belief as a battery.
Can you think of any ways in which an Empowering Belief is like a battery?

13. How are Empowering Beliefs like Batteries?
Here are some ways:
They both give power and energy. Batteries power objects. Empowering Beliefs can give you power and energy in your own life.
They can be recharged. Batteries can be recharged. Empowering Beliefs can also be recharged through thinking about and trying out things differently.
We sometimes take them for granted. Batteries are often hidden from view and we often don’t think about their power. Our beliefs are invisible and we can also forget their power on our feelings and actions.

14. Have a look!
This trailer for the Paralympics reminds us of what amazing things people can do when they have empowering beliefs – when they believe they CAN. (3:12)
Yes, I can! Channel Paralympics ad (3:11)

15. Pupil Book Time
Now it’s time to do some activities in our Weaving Well-Being Pupil Books. We will also have a homework challenge to try this week to help us to create our own well-being. So now let’s start Weaving our Well-Being!