I’m not sure who said it originally, but with every year that I add onto the clock, I too become more convinced that life really is what you make it…

You see there are many things that we can’t actually control – the weather and the passing of the seasons most definitely falling into that category – and I’m a big believer that if you can’t control it, you should try not to spend too much time worrying about it.

As sure as eggs is eggs, the seasons are going to roll round and the weather will be what it will be, but it’s very easy to fill ourselves with doom about the winter in advance of it actually happening.

Our minds can all too easily think of driving rain, freezing cold, short hours of daylight and everyone being ill when winter comes to mind and we forget about fires, candles and breezing into a warm room from outside, cheeks rosy red from the cold.

We forget to think about the good stuff, even before winter has begun and in so doing, we can think ourselves into a thought pattern where winter is something to be endured, full of trials and tribulations.

And when we start from a frame of mind that is already down about the whole situation, going out to feed animals or work in a field on a miserable morning is going to feel much worse straight away.

The way we talk to ourselves about things really does make a difference to how we feel about them, and if we don’t make a conscious effort to make that self-talk positive, our own brains are working against us.

A National Science Foundation study established that most of us have between 60 & 80 thousand thoughts a day, and up to 80% of them are negative. No wonder we tend to look on the bleak side of things left to our own devices!

But there is something you can do to help yourself…

Whenever you catch yourself being negative about something, stop that thought pattern straight away and replace it with 2 positive thoughts instead.

It’s not easy at first as your brain is inherently lazy and very much likes to just head off down the doom-laden thought path that it knows so well.

But the good news is that the brain has lots of plasticity as well, which means that it is fully capable of changing through growth and reorganisation, but you have to forge those new, brighter pathways by actively changing the way you think and speak about things – and I know it’s not easy to do that sometimes. But practice makes perfect and forcing your brain to rewire by challenging your thought patterns is really good for brain health in the long run.

If you then support your brain further by adding in some exercise, getting in some good hours of sleep and ensuring you eat regularly and keep well hydrated – you’ll be really surprised at the difference it makes.

Over my years of working with clients, my first questions when they are going through a tricky period and not feeling good about things are, “Have you eaten, drunk water, slept and got some exercise in?”

Often the answer is “No,” because they’re so busy, but it is really important to remember to do these things. When they then address them, it obviously doesn’t eradicate the problem they were faced with originally, but they do feel much better about tackling it.

Just to underline the fact that your brain literally cannot concentrate if it’s dehydrated – studies show that you only need to be 1% dehydrated to experience a 5% decrease in cognitive function.

If you’d like to know more, the NHS website in the UK has useful guidelines about what the recommended levels of sleep, hydration and exercise would be for someone like you and it’s well worth taking a look.

Going back to the doom laden thoughts about Winter – it’s also worth remembering that we are actually still only in Autumn. Winter doesn’t start until the 21st December and stretches through to March. The 21st is also the shortest day and every day thereafter we gain a little more light back.

I find that helps a lot, especially as Winter has Christmas and New Year in it, then you have January, shortly followed by February and then it’s a gentle slide into Spring the following month.

Our ancestors celebrated the passing of each of the seasons at the December and June Solstices and the March and September equinoxes, and many people still mark these important dates. Regardless of your religion, I’m minded to think that losing those celebrations removed an important transition marker for us.

Effectively, we stopped appreciating the gifts from the outgoing season and marking the promise of the incoming season, and in so doing left ourselves wide open to regarding some seasons with less joy than others. When in reality, like everything in life, we need the diversity that each of them brings to the table to flourish. (Granted maybe a little less rain than we’ve had over the last couple of years might be nice!)

So for me, late Autumn and Winter bring the promise of fires, dog walks, roast dinners, lighting a candle on a Sunday afternoon and sitting writing in the kitchen as the dogs snore their way through doggy dreams…

So, how about you, why not take matters into your own control this year, let’s work on the glass being half full, rather than half empty?

Have a think and get together some thoughts about what you do like about the Autumn/Winter seasons? Then you’ll have an arsenal of positive thoughts ready to shoot down the negative thoughts as they arise.

Let me know below what the things that you love are…

Thank you for reading and thank you for listening.