You might have been ‘passed’ a tip from someone you know or work with – and ended up here to find out more! Please, take a moment to discover what we’re doing and how to share it:
The 52 Project is the brain child of Dulcie Swanston and Iain Price who wanted to combine their skills, knowledge and experience to create something positive in 2021.
Dulcie Swanston
Top Right Thinking
Dulcie is a mum of five, writer, coach, speaker, trainer and fascinated by how our brains work – especially in business.
Iain Price
Think It Out
Iain is a coach, neuroscientist, trainer and mental health champion – fascinated about how people tick and how we can use our brains to release our greatness.
On our blogs we talk about “changing the world, one cup of tea at a time!”
There has been a lot of media coverage about the toll that Covid and Lockdown has taken on our mental health already. How it will impact us all in the long term is still unknown.
As professional coaches, it is our job to help people to perform. With sad and personal experience of mental health issues in our own private lives, we wanted to do something with those skills to see if we could make a tiny dent in the mental health and wellbeing of the nation.
A big ambition! But what if…? We began to imagine what 2021 could be like if everyone tried a few new habits that were scientifically evidenced to make them feel better. Even if everyone just kept up with one, two or three of #the52tips, that increase in good brain chemistry had to be a good thing, right?
So that’s why we need your help to spread the word!
The52Project has been designed to be collaborative. Our part is to find and fact-check 52 tips to make sure they are not snake oil promises that don’t work! We have committed to finding the time to research one tip per week, every week in 2021.
We will bring them to you and explain what to do and why the tip is good for you and your brain.
The idea is that everyone who we reach who tries out the tips along with us, then passes them on to their friends, family and colleagues. That way, by the end of 2021 we will be able to see which of the #the52tips work best and which are the easiest to integrate into our busy real lives.
How you can get involved:
Join us live on Instagram @the52tips every Friday in 2021 at 10am GMT for the week’s live tip. If you can’t watch live, don’t worry. It is easy to watch each episode back via InstagramTV. Comments and questions warmly welcome! We are going to have guests too, so let us know if you have an area of specialism or a suggestion for the #the52tips that you want us to investigate and we might get you on live too!
Try out #the52tips. You can do them in any order. Any time. Once or more than once! Keep us posted as you do!
Share your progress on your own social media, tag us in @the52tips and use our hashtags #the52tips #itsnotbloodyrocketscience #thinkitout. Try and keep any cold shower videos clean please!!
Share your thoughts, ideas and test experiences by sending us a message via this website or send us a DM on Instagram.
We will release a blog each week to give a bit more detail about each of #the52tips. Please share these with anyone you think they might help.
Each blog will contain ‘Tales from our Testers’ – we would love it if you would like your testing experience to be part of this section. Just let us know when you write in if you are happy for us to use your name (or a pseudonym if you prefer).
We plan to turn the blog into a book in late 2021 – so if you have ever wondered how to get your name in the acknowledgments in the front – now you know! All our registered testers will be thanked – and all the Tales from our Testers from the blog will feature in the book too.
We warmly welcome corporate partners. Maybe you would like to share this on your company website or as part of your wellbeing strategy. No problem! Please do – and if we can help by doing a personalised note or video, we would be very happy to – no charge – but lovely if you would donate whatever the business can afford to our charitable efforts. Just get in touch.
Changing the world one cup of tea and one good habit at a time? We hope so and we would love you to join us so that together we can make that happen!
Why the Big Issue Foundation?
A message from Dulcie
Like so many people, I used to buy The Big Issue now and again and not think that much about it. However I became a close follower of the charity after hearing Dr Sab Cohen Hatton on Desert Island Discs
Dr Sab Cohen Hatton is the youngest of just six female fire chiefs in the UK. However at 15 she was homeless, sleeping rough in Newport whilst still attending school. Each day after school she would get the bus to Monmouth and sell The Big Issue in order to try to improve her life for herself.
I was humbled and inspired by her story and often relay how she has subsequently risen through the ranks of the fire service and gained a PhD in behavioural neuroscience. She has also written a book – The Heat of the Moment – based on her thesis and I often use this book in my coaching and public speaking activities.
Lockdown has been tough on everyone. But the Stay At Home message only works if you have a home so I was struck at just how hard Covid would hit some of our most vulnerable. I decided to support the Big Issue Foundation back in Lockdown 1 by creating a set of historical and literature based playing cards to help home schooling and have fun in lockdown. You can still enjoy playing with them and educating your kids (or yourself!) by buying them here!
We are hoping that the message of The52Project – that small things can really make a difference to your wellbeing – matches really well with our charitable intention. The idea is that if you don’t like the look of a tip and don’t want you to try it – that’s fine! Or if you try it once and think it is not for you, the last thing we want is for you to feel guilty about it!
We talk a lot in our early blogs about how guilt, shame and feeling bad about yourself are proven to make you less likely to succeed when you try to introduce a new good habit or break a bad one – so we really don’t want you to feel guilty if you think one of the tips is just not for you – or you promise yourself you will get round to it – and don’t!
We thought that by adding a PAY option and suggesting you PAY £1 each time you want to give one of #the52tips a wide berth you can actively opt out, feel no guilt and do some good!