Mahrukh Khwaja, creator of The Mind Flossing Toolkit, shares some of her favourite cards with The Dentist.
The Mind Flossing Toolkit consists of a deck of cards to nurture greater well-being and resilience. Mahrukh – AKA Mind Ninja – discusses the challenge of selecting her favourite cards, explaining, “Sharing my favourite cards is a bit like choosing a favourite child. For me, their creation was a labour of love for the dental profession, with the aim of using positive psychology intervention to help my colleagues throughout the UK foster positive thoughts, feelings and actions.”
The Mind Flossing toolkit in its entirety is packed with easy-to-follow activities, that can be used both when you are with patients and at home.
They are designed as a pocket-sized guide you can carry with you, to nudge you to take intentional well-being actions. Bite-size activities range from meditation and journaling to creative exercises.
They offer the opportunity to explore well-being under the umbrella of mindfulness and self-compassion, including team resilience, gratitude, optimism, character strengths, values and meaning.
Our ability to become aware of our emotions and thoughts and regulate them, manage stress, increase our emotional literacy, communicate more authentically, live according to our values, connect with our patients and peers, and feel more engaged at work are all potential benefits of using the pack.
The cards also address common negative thoughts such as imposter syndrome and perfectionism – a trait commonly occurring in dental professionals.
A few of my favourite cards...
“All of that stated, I do have a few that are perhaps a little closer to my heart, although they do not necessarily showcase of all the great attributes the deck as a whole offers, including mental health, journaling, mindfulness meditation, strategies with patients and creative processes.
“There is a card which explores our energy and emotion levels and helps us to reflect on how we feel during different times of the day or periods in our life. I love this card as it explains, in a very bitesize way, the features of burnout.
“It also highlights other zones of energy, such as the performance or recovery zone. If we are in the survival or burnout zones, this card guides us in thinking of small steps that can help us move towards the recovery zone.
“I love how conveying this model in a pictorial way helps us to think of those steps visually and creatively. This is a card that dental teams could utilise in team meetings to check in with each other, and create a culture of support, compassion and kindness.
“Alternatively, it is a card dental colleagues can use to help identify if others are need of support or to give us a framework to talk to our peers about our energy levels.
“ Another of my favourite cards explores how to use mindful self-compassion in real time! That is, with our patients, in the moment, when we feel stressed, we notice a negative thought, or feel overwhelmed during treatment
“The card takes you through, step by step, what you can do to support yourself better in those moments. Self-compassion practices, like this one, are validated in the research to help dental and medical professionals, increasing our compassion satisfaction; that is, the pleasure we get from helping other people, as well as increasing our focus, engagement and resilience.
“A journaling card features in my favourites because it creatively gets us to think about our inner dialogue and increase our self-awareness.
“The latter is an essential skill and building block to greater resilience. I love that you can write down your thoughts in the thought bubbles on the front of the card.
“The journaling prompts then guide us to reflect on our common thinking patterns and how we can reframe them in a way that helps serve us better.
“Some of the cards in the toolkit are based on art therapy; an evidenced-based method that can help us connect with our emotions and thoughts in creative ways. I love the creative aspects of these cards so much.
“One such card highlights an engaging and fun way of increasing our emotional awareness. It guides us in expressing our emotions as a landscape. You definitely don’t need to be an artist here! It’s much more about engaging with our emotions in new ways and reaping the benefits of slowing down and playing with colour!”
“Mindfulness meditations don’t need to be boring! One of my favourite cards is the ‘Best Possible Self Meditation’.
"I love this card because it explores my all-time favourite positive psychology exercise, visualising an optimistic future, and integrating it with breathwork.
“In the research, this activity can help increase positive emotions, hope, engagement, our happiness levels and even goal setting.
“Our brains are naturally wired for negativity bias and so building optimism through activities like this one is so important in helping us to feel good, engaged and creating a life of meaning.”
Hope and vision
“With so much on our plates, we in dentistry can use all the support we can get, and the cards fit in beautifully with our busy lifestyles and emotional needs.
“You can pop them in your bag or pocket and carry them around with you, as well as being something you can use at home and at work, individually and in a team setting.
“I would love to see people supporting one another other, checking in on each other’s emotional well-being.
“That, in celebration of their friendship and to promote all round happiness at work, individuals might purchase the cards for a dental colleague or the whole team, to show how much they care.”