Resilience Skills Foundation
Everyone faces setbacks. What separates those who bounce on is a set of learnable skills. This module introduces students to the science of resilience: how the brain works, why we think the way we do, and how to identify and challenge the unhelpful thought patterns that hold us back. It's the foundation everything else is built on.
Lessons
6 lessons in this module.
Resilience & Harnessing Positive Emotions
This is the opening lesson of the Healthy Minds Foundation module. It introduces students to the concept of resilience, the skills that help us navigate the inevitable ups and downs of life.
Connecting the Brain, Emotions & Thoughts
Students explore the neuroscience behind why we react the way we do. The lesson introduces a simple three-part model of the brain (Primitive, Feeling, Thinking) and explains how emotions and thoughts are connected.
Introducing Gremlin Beliefs
Building on the ABC framework from Lesson 2, this lesson introduces the concept of Gremlin Beliefs — four types of common unhelpful thinking patterns that distort how we see situations and drive negative emotions and behaviours. Students learn to identify these gremlins in scenarios and practise replacing them with more accurate, flexible thinking.
Optimism & Evidence
This lesson teaches students to challenge Gremlin Beliefs by seeking evidence and thinking flexibly. Using an optical illusion, opinion-line debates, and a story (Mia and Ava at the arcade), students discover the difference between optimistic and pessimistic thinking, and learn that our brains can tell inaccurate stories when they lack evidence.
WoBbLe: Taming the Catastrophising Gremlin
This lesson focuses specifically on the Catastrophising Gremlin Belief — the tendency to snowball a small problem into a catastrophic chain of disasters in our mind. Students are introduced to the WoBbLe skill (Worst case → Best case → Most Likely), a structured thinking technique to bring balance to runaway catastrophic thoughts.
Resilience Planning
This is the final lesson of the Foundation module — a consolidation and celebration lesson. Students revisit all five resilience skills taught across the module through a structured review quiz, then create their own individual Resilience Plan that captures what they have learnt and how they will apply it in their lives.