Many people find their mood dips during the coldest months. While this might seem inevitable, the truth is that you can learn how to keep positive in winter. In doing so, you can remain healthy, happy, and productive over the holiday season.
Achieve your potential and stay at your best by learning how the winter impacts your mood. Then, take the right steps to overcome these struggles and live more positively in winter.
How Winter Impacts Your Mental Wellbeing
If you ever feel less positive during winter, then you’re not imagining it. There’s plenty of scientific evidence that the seasons really can have a profound effect on mental health. It’s not clear how many people experience this dip in mood but it is known that around 3% of UK adults experience a serious condition called seasonal affective disorder (SAD).
SAD is a type of depression that causes low mood, irritability, loss of interest, and fatigue during the winter months. While you might not be at this level, you might recognise some of these symptoms in yourself. It’s very common to feel low during the winter months.
That’s largely because of a lack of natural sunlight. The sun provides your body with vitamin D, giving it a healthy dose of serotonin at the same time. During the winter, it’s difficult to get enough sunlight. Therefore, your mood is likely to be lower.
On top of this, you’re likely getting less exercise, sleeping too much or too little, stressed out by the holiday season, and bored by the limited choice of daily activities. All these add up to a lower quality of life compared to what you’d have in the summer.
Now you understand the effect of winter on your mental health, it’s time to learn how to keep positive in winter.
Seek Out Nature
The first thing you’ll want to do when the days get shorter and colder is stay inside. You need to try and overcome this inclination. Getting outside is so crucial, especially in a world where we spend 90% of our time indoors.
The inside of your home may be warm but it lacks sunlight and clean air. As a result, it’s no wonder that you might feel tired and irritable. To overcome this, consider spending more of your winter among nature.
Invest in a warm coat and some thermal underwear and get outdoors. Nature has amazing healing power. It helps you feel calm during periods of stress and anxiety. Beyond that, though, exploring nature means getting more exercise and soaking in as much vitamin D as the winter sun has to offer.
Both of these things increase your serotonin levels, naturally inducing a positive mood. No one wants to be outside in the cold in winter but it’s essential to try and get out as much as possible. This will also make your warm bed so much more inviting in the evenings, allowing you to fall into a sound and pleasant sleep.
The coldest countries in the world cope by embracing the natural world. Take a walk by a frozen lake, wander through a snow-dusted forest, or explore the Christmas markets.
Plan Indoor Activities
Another important way to keep positive in winter is to ensure you have plenty to do. An active mind is a happy mind. Making sure your brain is stimulated can help prevent cognitive decline and stop you from falling into a pattern of negative thinking.
Be prepared for the winter by planning out indoor activities. Yes, you want to get out as much as possible. However, it’s inevitable that you’ll spend more time inside. Make sure you have healthy ways to spend these moments.
This will give you a constant source of attention, keeping you occupied and ensuring that you end each day with a sense of achievement. Take up a hobby, learn an instrument, write a book, play board games, do yoga, cook new recipes, or decorate your home. There are countless activities you can choose from to keep you busy and feeling positive in winter.
Ideally, try to find activities that don’t involve staring at phone, computer, or television screens. Also, remember to take breaks. While keeping busy is the aim, don’t let it stress you out. If you’re starting to feel overwhelmed or anxious, then embrace meditation as a way to return to a healthy and positive mindset.
Focus on Your Nutrition
When thinking about how to keep positive in winter, nutrition has to be a part of the routine. It’s the lack of nutrients that causes your low mood and fatigue. Therefore, you can return to positivity by reintroducing vitamins into your diet.
Consume fewer processed foods and increase your intake of whole fruits and vegetables. Winter is the perfect time to improve your diet as a way to increase your emotional and mental wellbeing. If you’re finding this difficult, though, then you can also turn to supplements.
Select supplements based on your needs. There are supplements for mood, sleep, energy, and any other area you want to improve. This winter, make sure you’re getting all the nutrition that your brain needs to function properly. Cognifuel is a perfect solution to get your brain and body firing on all cylinders.
Once you know how to keep positive in winter, you can start living to your full potential. Don’t waste a third of the year feeling unproductive, unmotivated, and depressed. Even if you live somewhere dark and freezing cold, you have the power to achieve a more positive mindset.
Spending more time in nature is one of the best ways to ensure you get as much sunlight as possible while exercising and breathing clean air. However, you should also plan healthy indoor activities to keep your mind active and alert.
Beyond this, getting the right nutrients in your system can help to offset the lack of natural sunlight. First and foremost, this should be achieved by adopting a healthy diet. To give your brain the extra boost it needs this winter, though, consider taking supplements that foster a positive mood.