The winter season can be brutal on your happiness; here's how I fight back.
My meditation this morning focused on happiness — cultivating a sense of peace and contentment in everyday life. This inspired me to write the 10 daily habits to boost your mood. I hope you find something (or many things) on this list that will work for you.
There are a lot of factors that play into the feeling of happiness, but I am a firm believer that ultimately, it is a choice.
I recently spent about a month or two in a serious funk.
It happened slowly and took me a while to realize it, but I had completely lost and isolated myself.
It wasn’t an active choice — it was a combination of small daily decisions that turned into a pattern over time as the winter days got shorter and colder.
I finally decided that enough is enough.
I wrote out a morning routine and decided my mantra is, “I am actively choosing my life every single day.”
I learned a lot through this experience, one of the most important lessons was that we choose our lives every day. It can be a passive or an active choice, but it’s still a choice.
My word for this year is, “Discipline.”
A good mood is something you choose to put on each morning like you would choose an outfit. Actively choosing the pieces you’ll carry with you throughout your day and deciding to leave the rest behind.
When life starts to get in the way and happiness feels out of reach (AKA laundry day, at the risk of overplaying this metaphor), here are ten of the habits I use to take back control.
1. Brain Dump.
There are no rules or structure to it. Write and write until your mind feels blank (for me this takes only a few minutes usually).
When you’re done, take a quick look at the page. I am often surprised by what was actually bugging me or on my mind — there are many times I am acknowledging something for the first time through this process.
Without judgment on yourself for the quality of any particular item, appreciate the quantity — how much brain space each thing was taking up.
Take the important ones down on a fresh sheet of paper to handle later, and let the rest go.
You’ll feel so much more in control once you’ve acknowledged each thing and organized it into higher priority/actionable tasks on a piece of paper you can reference when you’re ready.
Sometimes this is the only trick I need to turn a bad mood into a good one.
2. Gratitude.
Taking a moment once a day to shift your thoughts from the encompassing black hole of negativity to something positive — and not just something positive, something that already exists in your life that’s positive — can make all the difference.
The powerful thing about gratitude is it lets you see how much in your life is going right behind the scenes, even when you choose to favor a negative emotion.
Nothing about your life changed at the moment you chose to look for the positive, it was there all along. What changed was your attention.
I’ll be the first to admit that if I’m in a really bad mood, sometimes it’s hard to set that aside and think of things that I’m thankful for. There are moments that nothing comes to mind and days I, frankly, don’t want anything to come to mind.
If you’re struggling to find something to be thankful for, start simple. The things we take for granted are often some of our most incredible privileges.
The roof over your head, your cup of coffee, the food in your fridge, the electricity that keeps you warm, a hot shower, a light to turn on at night, a warm meal, clean water, access to the internet, your health or safety, the list could go on and on.
Be patient with yourself as you learn to build and flex this muscle, writing down a few things you’re grateful for is a daily habit that will bring lasting happiness.
3. Movement.
Spend at least a few minutes each day in movement. That can be stretching before you get out of bed in the morning, dedicating time to a walk, heading to a local park or gym to jog, or doing an exercise video on YouTube.
Appreciate all that your body is capable of — if you’re lucky enough to be physically able to exercise, then do it.
It will require discipline at first.
Most people don’t wake up motivated to go to the gym or on a jog out of nowhere. The fittest people have taken the agonizing self-negotiation out of it — it’s a habit.
Build a routine that takes the negotiation out of the question and let exercise become something you “just do” because it’s on your schedule.
You’ll start to feel happier in no time.
4. Get Some Fresh Air.
I’ll keep this one brief, but this is especially crucial if you work from home.
Spend some time outside every day. This can be anything — a small walk around the block, sitting in a chair outside or simply stepping out just to step right back inside.
Getting some fresh air every day will keep you from feeling stuck or confined. It’s a brief sensation of freedom — a feeling that starts to put everything back in order in your head.
Trust me on this one. You’ll never regret taking a walk.
5. Keep a Steady Flow of Calories.
Plan your day around your energy levels.
Maintaining consistent energy is one of the biggest productivity hacks I can give you (a topic for another article), and one of the best ways to feel happy is to feel accomplished.
If you get to the end of the day and feel like much of your time was wasted, you’ll feel unsatisfied with how the day went and may have feelings of frustration, resentment, or annoyance.
Your productivity is a result of your energy.
While, again, exploring ways to maintain consistent energy levels is a topic for another time, I will say the biggest driver of your energy is your caloric intake.
If you are someone who experiences a “midday slump” around 2–3 in the afternoon, I’m going to guess that either your breakfast wasn’t big enough (or didn’t exist) or your lunch was too big.
Pay attention to your energy levels and experiment with the foods you eat and when. You can keep your blood sugar from spiking or falling (and your mood from doing the same) with consistent caloric intake.
6. Vitamin D.
Disclaimer: I’m not a doctor. I’m explaining what works for me. For any questions on supplementation, I would direct you to your doctor.
I used to live in Southern California and spent a lot of my days in the sunshine. Vitamin D is one of the only (if not, the only) vitamin we can essentially ‘photosynthesize’ from the sun like a plant. While living in Southern California, I was able to get an adequate amount of Vitamin D from the sun.
I now live in the Netherlands. It’s a cold, wet, and cloudy climate with limited opportunities for direct sunlight.
I had no idea how much this could impact me.
All I will say is that the addition of a Vitamin D supplement has a noticeable impact on my mood, so if this may be an issue for you too, talk to your doctor about supplementation.
7. Meditation
This post opened on the topic of meditation, so you didn’t think I’d leave it out, did you?
Meditation is the practice of sitting in stillness with nothing but your thoughts and learning to understand and control them.
A great visualization I learned from the Headspace app is to imagine your thoughts as cars on a highway. You can ride in the car and let it carry you away into the distance, or you can take a step outside, sit on the side of the road, and watch it go by.
Meditation is the art of learning to separate yourself from your thoughts. Observing them with interest instead of attaching your identity to them.
It builds mental strength which will cultivate a sense of happiness over time.
8. Change Your Environment.
Something simple I’ve done is change my phone and desktop backgrounds to something motivational or awe-inspiring.
You look at your desktop or phone background several times a day (potentially several times an hour). What do you see when you look at it? Do you even notice it?
Updating these to something positive or beautiful gives me a pick-me-up several times a day. I’ve talked about this before, but having the city of Oxford as my desktop and phone backgrounds helped me work my way to graduate school. It was a constant reminder of what I wanted.
Try updating yours to a place or person (or puppy) you love to look at and see if it micro-boosts your mood throughout the day.
9. Pick Up Around the House or Office.
If my home is cluttered, my brain is cluttered. It’s as simple as that.
Spending a few minutes each morning to tidy my kitchen, living room, bedroom, and workspace can set my mood off in the right direction. Something is unsettling about knowing you’re coming home to a mess, (or trying to work in a mess), so get up a few minutes earlier to tidy before you start your day.
10. Write Everything Down.
We all tend to rely on our brains too much. We have a limited capacity for short-term memory, and many of us grossly overestimate it.
Instead of putting yourself in a bad mood because you forgot something at the grocery store, can’t remember what you needed to get done, or completely forgot about a commitment you made, start writing it all down.
You can start to carry a notepad with you or use the one on your phone. Either way, get in the habit of relying on and checking it for the important things instead of your memory.
pin it for later!
This is great! I’m your cousin from Morton and I’m 80, but I really needed to see this. It’s all things I know, but I haven’t had a reminder in ages.
I get down in the winter and I am committing myself to use these hints for the next month. I know I will feel better.
Hi Lynda! I’m so glad you found something useful. Thank you for your comment, I hope you start to feel better soon! 🙂
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