10 High-Impact Wellbeing Strategies for Stronger Mental Health: The Mind-Body-Heart-Soul Capacity Building Guide for NDIS Participants

Estimated reading time: 13 minutes

This post is for Mental Health Month—but it’s not about awareness. It’s about action: To equip you with 10 science-based high-impact wellbeing strategies.

If you’re an NDIS participant with psychosocial disability, you’ve likely heard the advice: practice self-care, think positively, get some exercise. Fine. But where’s the framework that actually builds your capacity to live the life you want? Where’s the plan that translates “wellbeing activities” into documentable, measurable outcomes for your next NDIS Plan Review?

Beyond Coping—Building Your NDIS Capacity for Life

That’s what high impact wellbeing strategies deliver. They’re not vague suggestions—they’re the evidence-based actions that directly feed into your NDIS goals under Improved Health and Wellbeing and Improved Daily Living. They’re the difference between “I’m managing” and “I’m building a life.”

The 10 strategies in this post synthesise two globally recognised frameworks: MindSpot’s Big 5 (Healthy Thinking, Goals and Plans, Healthy Routines, Social Connections, Meaningful Activities) and the 5 Ways to Wellbeing (Connect, Be Active, Take Notice, Keep Learning, Give). Together, they form a comprehensive capacity-building system—one that addresses mind, body, heart, and soul. And crucially, one that your Support Coordinator can document as functional progress.

The Foundation: Why Mind-Body-Heart-Soul Needs All 10 Strategies

Psychosocial disability doesn’t live in one compartment. Depression doesn’t just affect your mood—it dismantles your routines, severs your social connections, and convinces you that learning new skills is pointless. Anxiety doesn’t just create worry—it keeps you isolated, prevents you from contributing to your community, and makes “taking notice” feel like torture.

That’s why single-strategy approaches fail. You can’t think your way out of isolation. You can’t exercise your way out of purposelessness. You need a system that addresses the whole person.

The MindSpot Big 5 and the 5 Ways to Wellbeing overlap in powerful ways, but they’re not identical. One is clinical; the other is community-focused. One emphasises cognitive and behavioural change; the other emphasises connection and contribution. When you map them together, you get 10 distinct, high-impact wellbeing strategies that cover every dimension of recovery and capacity building.

This isn’t theory. This is the NDIS Capacity Building Framework you can implement, document, and present at your Plan Review as evidence of functional improvement.

The 10 High Impact Wellbeing Strategies (Your Core NDIS Capacity Builders)

1. Connect (Build Strong Social Connections)

In Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection (2025), Charles Duhigg argues that the most important thing we can do in life is build strong relationships. For NDIS participants, connection isn’t a luxury—it’s a documented protective factor against hospitalisation, crisis, and functional decline.

But here’s the thing depression does: it tells you to cancel. It tells you to stay home. It tells you that going out will be exhausting, pointless, awkward. In my 2009 audiobook, How to Master Bipolar Disorder for Life, I taught the Depression Buster: Do the opposite of what the depression wants you to do. If it wants you to stay home rather than keep your commitment to see friends—go out with friends. Every single time.

Because connection is the gateway strategy. It’s the one that makes all the others possible.

How This Builds NDIS Capacity: Social participation goals (Improved Daily Living) become measurable when you document frequency, quality, and sustained engagement in community activities.

2. Build Healthy Thinking Patterns

Healthy thinking isn’t “positive thinking.” It’s recognising catastrophising, black-and-white thinking, and self-blame—and learning to reality-test them. Cognitive distortions aren’t character flaws; they’re symptoms. And they respond to structured challenge.

This is where psychosocial recovery coaching becomes invaluable. A coach helps you identify thought patterns that are undermining your goals and replace them with functional alternatives.

How This Builds NDIS Capacity: Improved emotional regulation and decision-making translate directly into reduced support needs and increased independence (Core and Capacity Building budgets).

3. Set Goals and Make Plans

Bipolar disorder makes long-term planning feel absurd. Your capacity fluctuates. Your energy is unpredictable. So how do you set goals that don’t shatter the first time you have a bad week?

You build flexible structure. I work off a Master Checklist—an idea from Dr John F Demartini’s The 7 Secret Treasures: A Transformational Blueprint for a Well-Lived Life (2022). It’s a list of daily actions that constitute a well-lived day, regardless of my mood state. Some days, I execute my long-term goals (like my life’s mission to end global homelessness through entrepreneurship). Other days, I just read. Both are on the checklist. Both are valid.

I also layer my goals across time perspectives: short-term (publish a directory of free food in my council area), medium-term (write a business plan for my charity), long-term (start the charity), and “sage” goals (provide a 100-year plan to guide the work after I die). But the checklist keeps me functional when those feel overwhelming.

How This Builds NDIS Capacity: SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) are the language of NDIS Plan Reviews. Documenting your goal-setting process is evidence of increased self-management.

4. Establish Healthy Routines

Routines are the scaffolding that holds you upright when your brain is trying to collapse. They’re not about rigidity—they’re about reducing decision fatigue.

I practice mindfulness meditation using the Headspace app: 20 minutes in the morning, 20 minutes in the late afternoon or early evening. That routine anchors my day. It’s non-negotiable, and it’s also forgiving—if I miss a session, the routine is still there tomorrow.

How This Builds NDIS Capacity: Consistent routines demonstrate improved daily living skills and reduced reliance on external prompting—both key NDIS functional capacity measures.

5. Be Active (Move Your Body Regularly)

I don’t “exercise.” I’m an athlete. That reframing changes everything.

Setting goals around physical activity—like beating my time in Adelaide’s City to Bay quarter marathon or walking 60 kilometres during October for Black Dog Institute’s One Foot Forward fundraiser—gets me more active than I would otherwise be. It’s not about fitness; it’s about identity and achievement.

Physical activity is one of the most robust interventions for mood regulation we have. It’s also one of the most documentable.

How This Builds NDIS Capacity: Improved physical health and stamina directly reduce support needs and increase capacity for employment, education, and community participation.

6. Take Notice (Practice Present-Moment Awareness)

“Take notice” sounds gentle. For someone in a hypomanic phase, it’s overwhelming—every sensation is too vivid, every input too loud. For someone in depression, noticing means confronting how much you’ve lost.

But when you practice mindfulness consistently—not as a crisis intervention but as a daily discipline—it becomes regulating rather than destabilising. My morning and evening meditation sessions aren’t about achieving bliss. They’re about creating a pause between stimulus and response. That pause is where capacity lives.

How This Builds NDIS Capacity: Improved self-awareness and emotional regulation reduce crisis episodes and improve your ability to self-manage symptoms.

7. Engage in Meaningful Activities

Meaning isn’t something you find when you’re “well enough.” It’s something you build, deliberately, as part of recovery.

For me, that’s Toastmasters. I currently serve as an Area Director, providing leadership to four clubs across Adelaide. That’s not a hobby—it’s a contribution. It’s also evidence of sustained functional capacity in a demanding volunteer role.

Meaningful activities aren’t always grand. They can be creative projects, advocacy, mentoring, or simply showing up for something you care about. The point is that they connect you to something beyond your symptoms.

How This Builds NDIS Capacity: Meaningful activities demonstrate social and community participation—core NDIS outcome areas.

8. Keep Learning (Pursue New Skills and Knowledge)

Learning is an act of defiance against the narrative that psychosocial disability makes you incapable. It’s also a documented protective factor for cognitive health and self-esteem.

This doesn’t mean formal education (though it can). It means deliberately pursuing growth: a new language, a new skill, a new understanding. It’s reading. It’s courses. It’s curiosity as a discipline.

How This Builds NDIS Capacity: Skill development feeds directly into employment and education goals and demonstrates increased independence.

9. Give (Contribute to Your Community)

Depression tells you you’re a burden. Giving proves otherwise.

Contributing to something beyond yourself—whether through volunteering, mentoring, advocacy, or creative work—isn’t a reward for being stable. It’s part of the work that creates stability.

How This Builds NDIS Capacity: Community contribution is a measurable outcome under Improved Social and Community Participation and demonstrates reciprocal relationships (not just support received).

10. Maintain Financial Wellbeing

Financial stress is one of the most significant predictors of poor mental health outcomes. Yet it’s often ignored in wellbeing frameworks.

Managing your NDIS budget, understanding your plan, and building financial literacy are all part of psychosocial capacity building. Your Support Coordinator should be helping you with this—not just managing your funding, but teaching you how to manage it.

How This Builds NDIS Capacity: Financial self-management is a core independence skill and reduces reliance on external financial administration.

From Strategy to Goal: Documenting Your Success for Your NDIS Review

Here’s the Support Coordinator’s nightmare: a participant is clearly doing better—more stable, more connected, more capable—but there’s no documentation. No evidence. No measurable outcomes. So at Plan Review, the funding gets cut.

This is where SMART goals save you.

A SMART goal is:

• Specific: What exactly are you doing?
• Measurable: How will you track it?
• Achievable: Is it realistic given your current capacity?
• Relevant: Does it connect to your NDIS plan goals?
• Time-bound: When will you do it, and for how long?

The 10 strategies in this post are the actions that feed into SMART goals. For example:

Strategy: Connect
Action: Join a local gardening group
SMART Goal: I will attend the community gardening group at [location] twice a month for three months to improve my social participation and reduce isolation (Improved Social and Community Participation).

Strategy: Be Active
Action: Walk 10,000 steps daily
SMART Goal: I will walk 10,000 steps at least five days per week for the next eight weeks, tracked via my phone app, to improve my physical health and mood regulation (Improved Health and Wellbeing).

Your Support Coordinator documents these. Your Support Workers help you implement them. Your Psychosocial Recovery Coach helps you troubleshoot when they’re not working. And at your Plan Review, you present evidence of sustained, measurable progress.

That’s how you turn wellbeing into capacity.

Conclusion: Build Capacity, Not Just Coping Skills

Coping gets you through the day. Capacity builds your life.

The 10 high impact wellbeing strategies in this framework aren’t about managing symptoms—they’re about expanding what’s possible. They address mind, body, heart, and soul. They’re evidence-based, NDIS-aligned, and documentable.

But they only work if you implement them. And implementation requires structure, accountability, and a plan.

Action Steps

Start This Week:

1. Identify Your Gateway Strategy: Based on your current capacity, which of the 10 strategies feels most accessible right now? If you’re deeply isolated, start with Connect. If your days feel chaotic, start with Healthy Routines. Don’t try to implement all 10 simultaneously—that’s a recipe for overwhelm.
2. Turn One Strategy Into a SMART Goal: Choose your gateway strategy and make it specific. Not “I’ll be more social” but “I’ll attend the Wednesday evening art class at [venue] for the next four weeks.” Write it down. Share it with your Support Coordinator.
3. Document Your Baseline: Before you start, record where you are now. How many social activities are you currently doing per week? How many days do you follow a routine? How often do you practice mindfulness? Your NDIS Plan Review needs before-and-after data, not just good intentions.
4. Schedule a Planning Session with Your Support Coordinator: Book time specifically to map these 10 strategies onto your current NDIS plan goals. Which strategies support which goal categories? Where are the gaps? What support do you need to implement them?
5. Commit to One 10-Week Cycle: Pick three strategies (not all 10) and commit to implementing them consistently for 10 weeks. Track them. Adjust them. Document them. Then assess what worked and what didn’t before adding more.

If You’re a Support Coordinator:

1. Use This Framework in Your Next Plan Review Prep: Map your participant’s current activities onto the 10 strategies. Identify which strategies are absent or inconsistent. Frame your Plan Review evidence around capacity building, not just service hours.
2. Create a Strategy-to-Goal Translation Document: Help participants understand how “joining a walking group” translates to measurable progress toward Improved Health and Wellbeing goals. Make the NDIS language accessible.
3. Challenge “Maintenance” Thinking: If a participant is stable, don’t just maintain—build. What’s the next capacity frontier? What skills, connections, or contributions could they develop with the right support structure?

FAQs

Need support implementing these strategies? The SALT Foundation offers these services: Psychosocial Recovery Coaching, Support Coordination, and Support Workers who specialise in capacity building for NDIS participants with psychosocial disability. Let’s build your plan together.

Daniel G. Taylor

Daniel G. Taylor has been writing about the NDIS for three years. His focus has been on mental health and psychosocial disabilities as he lives with bipolar disorder I. He’s been a freelance writer for 30 years and lives across the road from the beach in Adelaide. He’s the author of How to Master Bipolar Disorder for Life and a contributor to Mastering Bipolar Disorder (Allen & Unwin) and he’s a mental health speaker.