Your Guide to Cultivating Joy
As we enter the month of February, we felt prompted to write about the need to cultivate joy as we continue to march through winter. Current statistics show that 5% of American’s experience SAD (seasonal affected disorder) each year, and 38% report feeling down but not quite depressed during the winter months. That’s nearly 17 million people with SAD’s and 126 million people generally feeling blue!
These numbers are staggering, so what can we do to combat and positively influence a change in this trend?
Here at Holistik, we believe guided introspection can help us better understand ourselves. If you’re struggling, we encourage you to consider answering the below assessment questions:
Have you noticed any changes in your thoughts, mood, or energy levels that feel different from other seasons? How do you typically respond to stress or challenges during winter?
Are you getting enough sunlight exposure during the day? How are your sleep patterns, physical activity levels, and diet affected during the colder months?
Do you feel connected to a sense of purpose? Are there practices (like journaling, and/or prayer) that you might have neglected lately?
Does your home or work environment feel bright and welcoming, or do you spend most of your time in dim or enclosed spaces? Are there changes you could make to bring more light and warmth into your surroundings?
Have your routines or social interactions changed significantly in the winter? Are you maintaining connections with loved ones, or do you feel more isolated at this time?
Throughout the last decade spent working with hundreds of clients, we’ve determined that the most successful individuals were those who proactively pushed themselves to become ridiculously resilient. Here are the top 5 methods to improving your mood and increasing your resiliency:
Building a Community: Our most successful clients have a community that supports them through thick and thin; walking buddies who bundle up rain or shine to get their mileage accomplished, gym-goers who meet up with friends after work in the evenings to crush a hard workout, and like-minded homesteaders who get together to can food from their gardens together. Bottom line - find a tribe if you want to thrive.
Bulletproof Habits: Human beings are creatures of habit, but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing! Building habits that have merit ensures that circumstances don’t cause a domino-effect regression. We provide our clients with habit-stacking tricks, tips, and tools (sorry, these methods are exclusive to our peeps!), and we’ve seen it work wonders as they stand the test of time and unexpected situations. Bottom line - be unwavering in what you know to be critical to your lifestyle.
Binding Commitments: A child is adopted and their papers have finally been signed, a couple walks out from the county courts with marriage documents in hand; these are both examples of binding commitments. There is a reason these choices carry weight and are subject to due process - because both choices greatly impact the individuals involved. When we are committed to understanding our purpose and acting upon it, we behave with determination that no feeling of the moment can shake. Bottom line - if you know who you are, what you do will align you to your purpose-driven commitment.
Beneficial Thought Patterns: We cannot emphasize this enough if we had a million exclamation points behind this sentence - what you think WILL cause you to act accordingly. Let’s say you start your morning by taking the kiddos to school, and it was a tough time getting everyone to be clothed, fed, and in their right mind. You back out of the driveway and hear a distinctive crunch as the tire of your vehicle runs cleanly over that toy you specifically told a certain child to bring inside. The wailing begins, the furrowed brow makes its presence known on your face, and the morning is off to a great start (sarcasm implied, lol). If upon returning from home you meditate on that event and you let it taint the way you view your day, certain sentences are bound to leave your lips. What starts off as, “Ugh, this morning was a train wreck” quickly turns into, “What a crappy day. I can’t wait to go to bed and just be done with it!” Bottom line - If we know when and how to hit the “reset button” as we experience challenges, we can keep our thoughts beneficial and our actions on track with our goals and values.
Beauty in the Mundane: Hear us out on this one; if you’re Type A and enjoy a clean house, you know how satisfying it is to get a room put back in order, wipe up a countertop, or arrange items in an aesthetically pleasing way on a bookcase. While there are some disorders that can take the concept of orderliness too far, by and large, this is a healthy desire! What we should strive for is an environment that leads us to notice the beauty right before us. If our head and heart are where they should be, then we will notice what ultimately brings us joy - a coworker speaking kindly to a confused customer, your husband smiling at you from across the room, a friend who encourages you to pursue that goal or dream, and every beautiful part of creation right outside each of our front doors. Bottom line - We get to choose whether we notice the beautiful parts of our life that bring us joy, because ultimately, it’s up to us to be intentional with what we see, hear, taste, smell, and become.
We hope you feel encouraged by the end of this post, and we’d love to help you create a lifestyle driven by your purpose and aligned with your values.
If you’re not quite ready to hop on board with 1-on-1 coaching, we’ve designed a Perpetual Goals Planner that many have found to be incredibly helpful as they walk through the year.
Click the underlined text above to check it out, and don’t forget to sign up for our monthly newsletter below so you won’t miss out on exclusive deals and early-access to content!