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Dear friends,
We are closing in on the end of a rollercoaster year, and I hope you have some rest ahead. I know the future seems very uncertain right now, and I have been alternating between distracting myself and feeling paralyzed by existential dread. The best comfort I have found is in community, focusing on what matters. We are lucky to be doing work that can make the world better, which is its own form of resistance.
I don’t look forward to the winter season, and I recently read a book that I hope will change my feelings. It’s called How to Winter by Kari Leibowitz. The author is a Stanford psychologist who studies the “winter mindset” of people who live in extreme winter climates. I recommend reading it, and I have started implementing some of her advice.
I appreciated the author’s reminder that humans, like all animals, experience physiologic and hormonal changes during winter. Even though we don’t actually hibernate, we do need more sleep and may want to eat and move differently during winter. Traditional winter cultures embrace these changes rather than fighting them. The author calls this attitude “appreciating winter.” For me, that means accepting rather than fighting the sleepiness that overtakes me earlier than I would like every night. I also decided to try a hot winter breakfast rather than my usual smoothie, and I have been surprised at how much it improves those dark, cold mornings.
Her second tenet is “make it special,” with specific winter rituals. I don’t know why it makes a difference to light candles at the dinner table on a random weeknight, but it’s an easy and effective hack. It turns out even teenagers find family dinner less annoying when dining by candlelight!
One of the worst aspects of winter for me is feeling like I never see the sun. Her third pillar of “get outside” is not easy to do when the daylight hours are our working hours. I’m usually an early-morning exerciser, and it’s even harder than usual to drag myself out of bed when it is pitch-black. I experimented with doing some work in the early morning instead. This allowed me to block off some time in the afternoon to exercise outside. I don’t have a flexible enough schedule to make this work every single day, but it was so uplifting that I am now planning ahead to get outside exercise into my workdays whenever possible.
What do you love about winter? Are there winter rituals that help you look forward to this time of year? Drop me a line and let me know. As always, please share widely and, if you are so inclined, sign up for the blog here. Keep in touch and do share good news so I can amplify your successes!
Warmly,
Urmimala