Build Your Psychological Fitness Self Paced CPD
About Invest in You
Invest in You gives educators meaningful, protected time to understand and strengthen the psychological skills they rely on every day.
This self-paced, evidence-informed professional development session explores how mental resilience and emotional wellbeing work together to support psychological fitness: our capacity to regulate emotions, recover from setbacks, adapt to change and respond more intentionally to everyday pressure.
Rather than treating wellbeing as something separate from professional life, the session examines the psychological processes that shape how we experience and respond to demanding situations.
Participants explore how emotions influence thinking, behaviour and performance; how beliefs affect the meaning we give to events; and how familiar habits in our thinking can either support us or make difficult situations harder to manage.
The session also introduces the role of hope, realistic optimism, self-efficacy, connection and self-compassion in building a psychologically fit mind.
Through relatable examples, accessible explanations and guided reflection, participants are encouraged to connect the learning to their own experiences. They can notice their patterns, recognise the strengths and strategies they already use, and identify practical approaches they can begin applying immediately.
The emphasis is not on fixing people or suggesting that educators are failing to cope. It is about investing in the psychological skills their work asks them to use every day.
By the end of the session, participants will have a clearer understanding of their own psychological fitness and a personal toolkit for:
- regulating and working more effectively with emotions;
- responding more intentionally to pressure and change;
- developing more flexible, realistic and helpful thinking;
- strengthening hope, optimism and self-efficacy;
- using connection and self-compassion as practical psychological resources.
The learning also extends beyond individual staff wellbeing. Educators who understand and practise these skills are better able to model emotional regulation, flexible thinking, realistic optimism and healthy help-seeking for the children and young people around them.
For schools and organisations, Invest in You provides a flexible and accessible way to invest in staff development at scale. It can support individual learning, whole-staff development, inset or a wider professional development and staff support programme.
Practical information
Format: Pre-recorded, self-paced professional development session Audience: Teachers, support staff and education leaders Delivery: Individual learning, whole-staff development or inset Structure: Complete in one sitting or divide into shorter sections Includes: Evidence-informed content, relatable examples, guided reflection and practical strategies Outcome: A personal psychological fitness toolkit and a shared language for staff teams
Psychological fitness is not something we either have or do not have. It is something we can understand, practise and strengthen over time.
Learning Outcomes
Outcome 1:
Explain psychological fitness and understand how mental resilience and emotional wellbeing work together.
Outcome 2:
Recognise that psychological fitness can be developed, rather than viewing resilience or wellbeing as fixed personal traits.
Outcome 3:
Identify key capacities that support mental resilience, including flexible thinking, self-regulation, optimism, connection, self-awareness and compassion.
Outcome 4:
Understand the function of emotions, including the value of both positive and difficult emotions.
Outcome 5:
Recognise when emotions are helping or hindering them in a particular situation.
Outcome 6:
Use practical strategies to regulate and harness emotions, drawing on bodily, cognitive, relational, imaginative and physical approaches.
Outcome 7:
Apply the ABC model to distinguish between an event, their beliefs about it, and the emotional and behavioural consequences that follow.
Outcome 8:
Notice habitual patterns in their thinking and consider how these may influence their wellbeing, relationships and responses at work.
Outcome 9:
Question automatic interpretations by looking for evidence, considering alternative perspectives and identifying reasons their first conclusion may not be completely accurate.
Outcome 10:
Develop more flexible, realistic and optimistic thinking, without dismissing genuine difficulty or forcing positivity.
Outcome 11:
Understand the role of self-efficacy, including how a sense of agency influences the way people approach challenge and change.
Outcome 12:
Identify personally relevant tools and habits that they can use during difficult moments, periods of change and ordinary daily life.
Outcome 13:
Create a personal psychological fitness toolkit and identify practical actions they can continue practising after the course.
What's included
A quick look at the classroom-ready resources that come with this lesson.
Available after purchase
Available after purchase
Contributing Experts
People who helped produce this lesson.
Lucy Bailey
Lucy Bailey is Founder of Bounce Forward and Healthy Minds for Parents. With two decades of experience in mental resilience and emotional wellbeing, and training 1000s of teachers, parents and other adults around children and young people. Lucy is proud of her early career in youth work and children services. Lucy had a poor experience of school and that has driven her passion to influence UK policy to form a positive system of change with psychological fitness at the core. Lucy has directed national research projects (including the Healthy Minds five year study), is certified by University of Pennsylvania, has an MSc in Practice Based Research, a BSc in Social Policy and Criminology, and a Post-Graduate Certificate in Education. Her published book Raise Resilience: Teach your teenager well has led to the creation of the Psychological Fitness Nana bridging old school wisdom with modern psychology for parents of the 21st century.
About the Organisation
Bounce Forward is the UK’s psychological-fitness charity.
We help children and young people — and the adults and environments around them — develop the understanding, skills and shared language to regulate, recover and adapt through challenge, change and everyday life.
Our work brings together mental resilience and emotional wellbeing, shifting the focus upstream: building capability before crisis, rather than waiting for something to go wrong. We translate evidence from psychology, resilience research, cognitive behavioural approaches and positive psychology into practical learning that can be taught, modelled and used in real life.
From evidence-informed curricula and staff development to family support and whole-community approaches, our work recognises that young people do not develop in isolation. What happens around a young person shapes what becomes possible within them.
Everything we create is practical, grounded in evidence and designed to build something that lasts — psychologically fit people and communities, better prepared to meet life.