Combating the Wintertime Blues
by The components that make up a winter day add up to feelings of sadness and emptiness – things such as short gray days, long cold nights, fuel bills, whining kids, lonely empty rooms, and more. Here are a few helpful tips to keep winter outside where it belongs and kick the depression.
Seven, take a nap. Now, I’m not talking about sleeping all the time. But adults in the United States (and I suspect in other places as well) tend to be chronically short on sleep. If you have been getting less than 6 hours of sleep a night or if you are a person who really does better on 8 to 12 hours of sleep per day, if the opportunity presents itself: go take a nice, cozy nap. Cuddle up in your favorite blanket, take an animal friend to bed with you, cuddle with your significant other or even that fractious preschooler that’s been whining all day and driving you nuts. (He or she probably needs a nap, too.) Take a good book, or a video of something fun and positive or just turn on some gentle up-beat music, and have a nice snooze. Chances are, you will wake up with a solution to the problem that has been bothering you, a little more distance from the things you can’t change; at the very least, you will be more rested and prepared to deal with life’s battles.
Eight: Check your hunger levels. When did you last eat? Have you been involved in a project and put off eating? Have you been sitting around nibbling on junk food instead of eating a real meal? What about caffeine? How much have you ingested in the last 8-10 hours? We may not be what we eat, but it does alter our attitude. Know what makes you feel good, and what will make you irritable or ill.
Nine: Learn to accept the things you can’t change, and know what they are. Among those things are the attitudes/minds of others. You are the only person in the world over whom you have full control; you are the only person in the world for whom you can make life-changing decisions consistently over a long period of time. We teach our children, we influence our spouses/friends/family; if in a position of authority, we make decisions that affect others either directly or indirectly; but it is only ourselves that we can change from the inside out. Work on changing yourself, not those around you.
Ten: Forgive yourself, and forgive those around you. It isn’t as easy as saying “I forgive”, it takes work. But unless you can forgive, all those mistakes, wrongs and little unhappinesses will eat at you unbearably. Fix what you can fix, try to do better, and then get on with doing the things that need to be done.
Eleven: Clean something, or fix something. It may be shining your shoes, doing your laundry, rummaging out that file drawer that’s a year or so over-due for a good throwing out. It’s something positive in the world that you can change when it seems like everything is pressing in with the unchangeable.
Twelve: And my very favorite: seed catalogs. I love gardening, although plants don’t grow the very best for me. But seed catalogs-in paper or online-have bright, colorful pictures of growing plants with green leaves and bright blossoms. They have pictures of mouthwatering, healthy foods that can be grown in gardens. All that pictured summer bounty lifts the heart.
So, throw off those winter blues: go dancing in your living room, sing to the grumpy children, scrub out those grubby corners and put up some fresh holiday greens. You don’t have to be a Pollyanna to think happy thoughts. And you don’t have to think them all the time-but pick out a happy memory, and run with it for today. Make sunshine inside, and the sun will come up tomorrow.
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