How to Winter: Harness Your Mindset to Thrive on Cold, Dark, or Difficult Days
"Reclaiming winter is a chance to find intentional joy; to let ourselves anticipate and rest. It's an opportunity to notice, with awe and wonder, what is really in front of us. It's a practice in talking about those delights, sinking into coziness, ritualizing the mundane. It allows us to know ourselves more deeply, breath in crisp air, feel the wind in our face or the rain on our skin. It can propel us to adventure or help find us warmth. Embracing the winter is about embracing our life: all of it, the dark parts and the light." Kari Leibowitz
Winter. For three to five cold months we humans are subjected to cold, gloomy days, dangerous storms, and long, dark nights. It's a season that people try to get away from by traveling south, or begrudgingly tolerate as they hide indoors. But like it or not winter comes every year, and maybe it's worth looking at ways to make the best of it.
How to Winter is a book about how to manage your mindset about winter. Mindset is everything in the mental health field, and it can transform depression and boredom into wonder and excitement. Taking a fresh look at this inevitable transformation of our weather is worth the trouble as it opens up fresh possibilities.
The author, Kari Leibowitz, is a health psychologist and writer who has devoted her research into the power of mindsets with a focus on winter. For the book she traveled extensively to the coldest spots on the planet- Norway, Iceland, and Finland, finding the most remote cities with the longest winters. There she interviewed the residents and found some surprising views about winter and how they cope with it.
Make no mistake- winter weather is to be respected. People should dress appropriately and avoid dangerous conditions when necessary. But with the proper precautions, winter activities like skating, skiing, sledding, and even swimming can have beneficial qualities.
How to prepare your mind for winter starts in November and December, when the weather is turning colder and darker. Rather than dreading the coming winter, find things to look forward to besides just the holidays. When New Year's comes and goes, all that's left are the frigid days of January and February. What can you do in winter that you wouldn't do in summer? Rest and sleep are one thing to catch up on. The end of one year and beginning of another is an ideal time to reflect on things and make new plans. And indoor hobbies like painting, jigsaw puzzles, baking or reading are ideal for wintertime.
Winter is a perfect time to slow things down and appreciate nature, people, and the world around you. The author recommends establishing rituals that bring peace and meaning to the darkness- from small daily rituals to large elaborate ones. She sings the praises of Hygge, a Scandinavian term that refers to coziness, comfort, and pleasant unstructured times with friends and family. Warmer months encourage us to pack in too many activities, but in the long Norwegian winters people seek coziness by lighting candles and fireplaces, and focusing on the unique sounds and smells of winter.
They did a study asking people to go on wintertime "awe walks," where they were instructed to tap into their childlike sense of wonder and look at everything with fresh eyes instead of burying themselves in their phones. People who did this experienced health benefits while also finding a sense of awe to make them more spiritually connected to the world and themselves.
In the final section, the author recommends that people face winter head on and enjoy time outside when they can. Many winter days are quite bearable and allow hiking, biking, and general activities that increase endorphins and make us feel alive. Too much time indoors can make one feel trapped and stuck.
Three activities the book examined were bathing, saunas, and winter swimming, most of which are unique to northern countries. In Iceland, people bathe in geothermal pools in large numbers and report positive results. In Finland, they sweat in saunas during the winter to improve their heart health and sweat out toxins. And the Norwegians took on winter swimming- immersing a body in ice-cold waters- which sounds very unpleasant but surprisingly releases powerful feel-good chemicals once the frigid dip is over.
Reading this book made me take a second look at my own attitudes towards winter. I've never been a fan. But where I live it is unavoidable and can have its charms. Life is precious, so wasting an entire season hoping it will end eventually seems counter-productive. Winter is a great time for reflection, reading, and appreciating the circle of life- a life that will most assuredly return with the flowers of spring.
You can also extend the metaphor of winter mindsets to include almost any other mindset that holds you back. Too often we resign ourselves to reluctantly endure whatever nastiness has enveloped us. This book and its focus on mindsets reminds us that we have the power to see things differently and look for new ways of looking at unpleasant situations, (other than moving to Florida, that is.) Choice one is to avoid bad situations entirely, which sometimes works. Choice two is to grin and bear it, which is the easiest choice. And choice three is to seek a better mindset and learn all that you can about adapting and growing from any situation. That's the best choice but not so easy to attain.
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