Healthy Minds Compact
Healthy Minds Compact is a complete year's worth of resilience and wellbeing learning delivered entirely through tutor time. Thirty-six carefully structured 15–20 minute activities cover everything from understanding emotions and managing unhelpful thinking, to sleep, social media, strengths, gratitude, connection and future goals — building the full toolkit of psychological fitness without touching a single timetabled lesson. No expertise required. Everything teachers need is built into the package. Just 15 -20 minutes, once a week, and by the end of the year pupils have the skills, language and self-awareness to navigate whatever life throws at them.
Lessons
36 lessons in this module.
HM Compact: Knowing my unique qualities
Students begin their Healthy Minds Compact journey by reflecting on who they are at their best. Through a guided writing or drawing activity, they recall a moment when everything felt good - considering how they looked, sounded, felt inside and how others would describe them - before exploring their unique personal strengths.
HM Compact: What is resilience, what it means and why it is important
Students discover what resilience is and why it matters throughout life. They explore what resilience looks like through famous examples, then define it for themselves — understanding it as the ability to recognise opportunities, learn from failure, regulate emotions, think flexibly, and connect with others.
HM Compact: Understanding how kindness connects with mental fitness
Students explore the science behind kindness — how acts of kindness boost dopamine and serotonin, strengthen social connection, and create a ripple effect of wellbeing. Through a kindness mindmap activity, students then design a personal kindness action plan for the week ahead.
HM Compact: Building vocabulary for the range of emotions that I can feel
Students build their emotional vocabulary by brainstorming and then exploring a wide range of emotions — from happy, optimistic and confident, to sad, anxious and frustrated. They consider the physical signs emotions produce and what situations might trigger them, deepening their self-awareness.
HM Compact: Identifying when emotions are helpful and unhelpful
Students learn that no emotion is simply 'good' or 'bad' — every emotion carries information and can be either helpful or unhelpful depending on the situation. Through story-writing, they explore how the same emotion (such as excitement or boredom) can produce very different outcomes.
HM Compact: Having bodily techniques to calm down unhelpful emotions
Students learn why strong emotions can feel overwhelming, exploring the role of the amygdala in triggering survival responses. They are introduced to the three types of calming techniques (bodily, distraction and social) and begin practising bodily techniques — starting with breathing exercises — to calm strong emotions.
HM Compact: Having distraction techniques to calm down unhelpful emotions
Students revisit bodily techniques with a new breathing practice (Pursed Lip Breathing) before being introduced to distraction techniques. They explore how deliberately shifting attention away from strong emotions — through engaging activities — can restore calm and focus, and practise a distraction technique together.
HM Compact: Having social techniques to calm down unhelpful emotions
Students consolidate their understanding of the three types of calming techniques and focus specifically on social techniques — the power of human connection to soothe strong emotions. They map their own human connections and practise equal breathing, exploring how reaching out to others supports emotional regulation.
HM Compact: The link between thoughts, feelings and behaviour
Students are introduced to the ABC model: Activating Event (the facts of a situation), Beliefs (the story the brain tells), and Consequences (how we feel and behave as a result). Working in pairs, they practise applying the model to a range of activating events, discovering that different people can think very differently about the same situation.
HM Compact: Understanding how I think
Students deepen their understanding of the ABC model by applying it personally — exploring how their own beliefs about the same activating event can lead to very different emotional consequences. Using the scenario of a cancelled trip, they compare how thinking SAD, ANGRY or OK produces entirely different responses.
HM Compact: Recognising unhelpful thoughts
Through a quiz featuring famous people who succeeded after repeated failures — including rejected filmmakers, fired executives, and authors told they had no talent — students discover that the brain can make mistakes and tell unhelpful, fixed stories. They begin to recognise how negative, rigid thinking can make us want to give up.
HM Compact: Sharing my unique qualities with others
Students return to the unique strengths they identified in Lesson 1 and take time to reflect more deeply on what makes them who they are. They then share and celebrate their qualities with others, building a sense of mutual recognition, belonging and confidence within the group.
HM Compact: Nurturing my optimistic muscle
Students explore the difference between optimistic and pessimistic thinking, learning that optimism is not about pretending everything is fine — but about recognising possibilities and choosing to move forward. They practise nurturing an optimistic mindset through activities that strengthen this 'muscle' over time.
HM Compact: Avoiding thinking traps that make us give up or stop
Students are introduced to 'Gremlin Beliefs' — fixed, unhelpful thinking patterns that can trap us and cause us to give up. They learn to recognise these traps in everyday situations and practise strategies to avoid or challenge them, building resilience against the thoughts that hold us back.
HM Compact: Knowing what makes me feel happy
Students take time to reflect on the experiences, people and activities that genuinely bring them joy and happiness. They explore the evidence that experiencing positive emotions is beneficial for both mind and body — and consider how they can intentionally bring more of these things into their everyday lives.
HM Compact: Understanding the link between sleep and mental fitness
Students discover what actually happens in the brain during sleep — including memory consolidation, emotional processing and physical restoration — and explore the research linking quality sleep to mental fitness, mood, concentration and resilience. They build awareness of how their own sleep may be affecting how they feel.
HM Compact: Setting healthy habits for sleep routines
Building on their understanding of why sleep matters, students now focus on the practical side — identifying what helpful sleep routines look like and exploring how small, consistent changes can make a real difference. They take ownership of their own sleep health by developing personalised strategies.
HM Compact: The benefits of analogue and digital spaces for emotional wellbeing
Students consider the emotional wellbeing landscape of their lives — both online and offline. They weigh the advantages and disadvantages of social media and begin to think about what healthy boundary-setting looks like for social platforms, developing their own informed perspective on digital versus analogue life.
HM Compact: Create guidelines for positive use of social media
Students deepen their exploration of analogue and digital spaces, considering the specific benefits and drawbacks each offers for emotional wellbeing. They use this thinking to create their own personal guidelines for using social media in a positive, intentional way that supports rather than undermines their wellbeing.
HM Compact: Explore social media
Students explore the genuine positives of social media — how it supports communication, connection and creativity — while also creating personal guidelines for using it well. The goal is a balanced, critically informed view of social media as a tool that can be used positively when approached with awareness.
HM Compact: Catching sight of thoughts that snowball
Students are introduced to the concept of catastrophising — the Gremlin that tells us the worst possible story about a situation. They learn to notice when their thoughts are 'snowballing' and getting out of control, developing awareness of this pattern as the first step towards interrupting it.
HM Compact: Creating a mental balance
Students learn the WoBbLe skill — a structured technique for taming catastrophic thinking by working through Worst case, best case, and most likely outcome. They practise this alongside other calming techniques to create mental balance when thoughts begin to spiral, building a practical toolkit for emotional regulation.
HM Compact: Learning to dial my strengths up and down
Students revisit their unique strengths and develop a more nuanced understanding of them — recognising that even genuine strengths can sometimes work against us if overused or applied in the wrong context. They explore how to 'dial' their strengths up or down depending on the situation to perform at their best.
HM Compact: Using my strengths in the difficult moments
Students apply their self-knowledge to challenging situations — exploring how their unique strengths can be deliberately drawn upon when things get hard. Through reflection and activity, they build self-awareness about what it truly means to be mentally resilient and how their strengths are part of that.
HM Compact: Feeling connected to others
Students explore the fundamental human need for connection and discover that even small talk plays a meaningful role in building a sense of belonging. They examine how feeling connected to others is a two-way exchange — something we both give and receive — and reflect on the connections in their own lives.
HM Compact: Expressing gratitude to the people around me
Students explore the research linking gratitude to mental fitness and positive wellbeing. They put this into practice by writing a gratitude letter to someone who has made a difference to them — an activity that builds emotional awareness, strengthens relationships, and boosts mood for both writer and recipient.
HM Compact: Understanding the different types of social connection
Students examine the landscape of their social world more closely, discovering that connection comes in many different forms — from close friendships to community ties and everything in between. They map and reflect on their own different types of social connection and consider what each means to their wellbeing.
HM Compact: The art of listening
Students discover that listening is a learnable skill — and a crucial one for building genuine connection. They explore what active listening really means (beyond simply hearing words) and practise it through structured pair activities, developing a communication skill that strengthens relationships and supports others.
HM Compact: Using process praise
Students learn about process praise — the practice of praising effort, strategy and progress rather than fixed ability or outcome. They discover why this form of encouragement builds resilience and a growth mindset, and practise using it with each other, shifting the way they give and receive feedback.
HM Compact: Expressing empathy and compassion
Students explore what empathy and compassion mean in practice — the difference between feeling with someone and extending care towards them. Through scenario-based activities, they practise expressing empathy and compassion in authentic ways, building the interpersonal skills that underpin strong, supportive relationships.
HM Compact: Understanding different communication styles
Students learn that the way we communicate is shaped by the beliefs we hold about ourselves and others. They explore three distinct communication styles — passive, aggressive and assertive — and develop understanding of how each style plays out in real situations, laying the groundwork for more effective, respectful communication.
HM Compact: Exploring hope for my future
Students are introduced to the three elements of hope: goals (knowing where you want to go), agency (believing you can get there) and pathways (knowing how to get there). They apply this framework to their own lives, exploring what they genuinely hope for and beginning to connect hope with action.
HM Compact: Setting personal goals for who I want to be in future
Students move from hope to action by learning how to set meaningful personal goals. They practise creating goals that are rooted in their values and vision for who they want to become — developing the skill of translating aspiration into concrete, achievable intention.
HM Compact: Setting goals that will benefit my school community
Students expand their goal-setting beyond themselves and consider what it means to contribute to the wellbeing of their school community. They set goals designed to benefit others — building a sense of responsibility, social purpose and the understanding that resilience includes caring for those around us.
HM Compact: Creating a school campaign
Students bring together everything they have learned across the programme to create a campaign promoting positive mental fitness and emotional wellbeing in their school. They learn what makes a campaign effective and work creatively to design content that communicates key messages to their peers.
HM Compact: Sharing campaigns
In the final lesson of the programme, students collaborate to finalise their campaigns and present them to others. They give and receive constructive feedback, celebrating what they have created and consolidating the knowledge, skills and confidence they have built across all 36 lessons of Healthy Minds Compact.