Originally posted on Facebook HERE
Up and at it early today. Bit dark out there yet. As Winter approaches, I think mentally I sometimes regress a bit. I’m not a huge fan of Winter. The cold and snow. The change in seasons. It feels like a grey cloud envelops my mind sometimes. Almost like impending doom, or something like that. My already active mind starts thinking about having to start to wear warmer clothes and coats, warm the car up, clean snow off of it, drive in it… ugh. Not a fan. So – move?… buy a second home?… do winter in another state?… certainly options I’ve seen used by many people I know. I doubt we’d ever move from our house in WI, though – we love it here. But doing Winter in a warm state becomes more appealing to me every year. This year isn’t going to be the year we try it, though – and it’s not really just me who gets to make that decision, right? In our family, it’s quite likely actually, that it’s just me who would even consider it. So here we are. Impending seasonal doom and grey mind gloom. Which is really what I want to write about today. We all have periods, for whatever the reason, where we just aren’t “in the zone”, you know? Where everything seems a bit off, sometimes for no reason we can put our finger on at all. When this happens to me, I have a laundry list of things I do to pull out of it. The first thing is to get introspective. I write three pages a day, every day – but during times like this I’ll go way more than that – five pages, sometimes more. Just writing down everything as it comes into my head. And any idea I have to turn it around as well. Then I tend to get physical. Really focus on making sure I’m doing at least one healthy thing for my body every day – walking, yoga, running, biking, lifting weights, or any combination thereof. Physical activity can lift mental clouds faster than anything. Then I try to change the channel in my mind. Not focus on the gap, but on the gain. Stop letting the change in seasons dominate my thoughts and be grateful I’m even here to see it at all, in this beautiful house, in this beautiful area, with the people I love. We really want for nothing. We have more than enough. So, with so much to be thankful for, why is this even an issue at all, right? It really isn’t. But our minds are a funny thing sometimes, because they’ll latch onto something like that and pull us into the abyss if we’re not careful. We control our thoughts, our beliefs and our attitudes. Not the other way around. The greatest prayer we can give is simply to say “thank you”. It’s one I say over and over several times every day, along with “I am so grateful”. Grateful is so much better than hateful, don’t you think? I find that by writing things down, I can clarify what’s going on within myself. It’s not always so easy to see. I know that staying active is a great way to clean up mental fog, and pull out of the days we’re just not feeling it. And being grateful is just a way of life for me now. With so much to be grateful for, why on earth would I let anything bring me down? Easy to say, but we all know the reality is that some days will be better than others. We can learn a lot about who we are, and what’s important to us during those times if we take the time to listen.
