Have you ever heard the lyrics “Rainy days and Mondays always get me down”?
How might we feel when the seasons change and inclement weather occurs more often?
If bad-weather blues bring us down, how might it feel to use our inner power to turn the page and create bluer skies?
At this time of year, the weather begins to change. The leaves turn different colors and fall off the trees. Temperatures vary; it gets rainier in some places, and snowy in others!
Some days it can get so dark and cloudy, it may feel like the day is over before it gets started as the days are already getting shorter and shorter.
After working all week, we may hope for a weekend with clear skies to have fun and relax, even though we may be catching up on things we haven’t gotten to during the week.
Oh boy! Then it’s Monday again! The dreaded Monday! Sound familiar?
What a dreary, sad sensation we can get when it’s so dark and gloomy. Why is that?
Some studies have revealed that bad weather does, truly, affect our moods.
According to the Mayo Clinic, “Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is a type of depression that’s related to changes in seasons — SAD begins and ends at about the same times every year. If you’re like most people with SAD, your symptoms start in the fall and continue into the winter months, sapping your energy and making you feel moody”.1
The good news is it doesn’t necessarily have to be this way.
If we’re concerned about possibly experiencing severe SAD, it is important to check in with a doctor or mental health professional. There are things we can do that will help.2
Neither rainy days nor Mondays have to get us down anymore when we use the POWER that we have within to change how it appears to us.
It’s about choice. We can’t choose the weather. We can choose what we do and how we react to it, which can modify the messages that get sent from our brains to improve our mood.
If we recall a time bad weather had us feeling down, what might we have wanted to do differently to generate a better mood? Who else might’ve benefited from this?
On bad weather days, I used to choose to want jump back in bed, pull the blanket over my head, and wait for the sun to come out again! That just made everyone around me as miserable as I was.
So, what might we do to perk up a bad weather day regardless of where we may live?
Bad weather can offer many new possibilities like providing our kids with a special treat after school to make them smile, engaging in a special dinner focused on family time, watching a funny TV show together, implementing fun family indoor activities on weekends, and sometimes- just experiencing some “ME” time!
After all, when we’re happy, everyone around us might be happier too, right?
Suddenly there can be things to look forward to on bad weather days. The choice is to welcome the smiles that could be had when the storms roll in.
What else might be something we want to do to perk up a gloomy day?
So, let’s determine how we might turn the page so we don’t dread rainy days andMondays anymore!Remember, we can have the POWER to change that.
We can transform our perspective of ‘rainy days’ and ‘Mondays’ to reflect what we want them to!