Since my last blog I've done some investigating following all your excellent advice. Thanks to all of you who read my blog and to those who added comments - I felt really appreciated and now feel I have a whole new set of friends or friends in the making too!

I was standing in the pharmacy last week waiting for a newly prescribed anti-anxiety med. As the minutes passed inordinately slowly, I felt panic rising. You may well know the signs - sweaty palms generally rising temperature, the thud, thud of my heart beat echoing in my ears, the overwhelming sense of a need to run. I looked desperately round for something to distract me, and there it was, an uninspiring rack of curled and slightly sun bleached leaflets promoting immunisation against the flu, attending cervical cancer screening and so on.

So, you like me have probably heard of the 5 ways to wellbeing, but I'd never really considered how significant all five are in ensuring my own wellbeing day to day. At the bottom of the rack, a still quite colourful leaflet from my local CCG about the 5 Ways to Wellbeing. So this provided an immediate distraction and then a longer term intention to think more about what the actions might mean for me. As it says on the leaflet, 'The 5 ways to Wellbeing are simple actions you can build into your daily life.'

Back in 2008 the New Economics Foundation was commissioned by the Government's Foresight project on Mental Capital and Wellbeing to develop a set of evidence-based actions to improve personal wellbeing. From this research they developed the 5 ways to wellbeing.

Today, and over this short series of blogs I invite you to think about each one: its presence or absence in your life and to consider how you might embrace each more fully.

The first of the 5 Ways to Wellbeing is connect. So here I am connecting with all you Moodscopers! You may already be great at this one, but I know I've a little way to go with it. The leaflet suggests that we think of our connections with people around us as cornerstones of our lives.

It was that phrase that got me thinking - can you ever have too many cornerstones? I don't think I've got enough, so I need to invest time in developing them.

What am I going to do about it? Well tiny steps are all I can manage at the moment so whilst I know making new connections is vital to me in my current situation, I'm going to firstly strengthen the ones I already have. I've invited a good friend out for coffee and we can put the world to rights over a flat white first thing tomorrow.

What are your ways of connecting and have you any further suggestions for me and other Moodscopers about how we can do more of it?

The next of the 5 ways to wellbeing is being active so after my coffee I'd better walk home...

Ellie

A Moodscope member.