Case of the winter blahs?

Has winter knocked you off your normal routine? Struggling to get up in the morning or finding the race to the end of financial year is taking over your life or just feeling meh...

Here are my 5 top ways to shake off those winter blahs

1. Establish your minimum

2. (Wo)Man up about protecting it

3. Be in the moment

4. Enjoy the moment

5. Take planned time out

Establish your minimum

What are the things you do that form your foundation for wellbeing? Do you already know you feel crappy if you have less than 8 hours of sleep,  skip breakfast, don’t meditate or skip your weekly yoga class? Choose just 3 things that you know you need and put your efforts into making those as strong as you can.

(Wo)Man Up About Protecting It

Next step is MAKE SURE that you get these 3 things. It’s only 3, right? Do what you need to to ensure these happen, whether it’s setting your alarm 10 mins earlier to meditate in the morning, putting breakfast stuff out the night before or book out your yoga time in your calendar and call it ‘health appointment’. Do whatever you need to do!

Be In The Moment

This is one of the most important tips of all and one of the hardest- cutting back on multitasking. Focus on one thing at a time as much as you can. I know, I know we all multitask, all the time. But while this makes us feel productive, studies prove again and again that we are actually less productive and the quality of our work decreases. Worse, it has negative implications for our mood and mental health.

Can you find one or two slots of time each day where you can work without distractions? If you can’t do it at work, try paying complete attention while you’re eating your lunch, or walking to work. It all helps.

Enjoy The Moment

What’s the point of any of this if we aren’t enjoying life? Run your mind over what you have to do today and see if there’s a way you can make a couple of things more enjoyable. Hate your commute? What about listening to a good audiobook, or cranking up the music while you do a boring task at work (with headphones maybe) or making dinner. It could be rewarding yourself somehow after you finish a task at work. It can surprising how hard we make things for ourselves. If I’m having a bad day, I head down to my local park where there’s a mini trampoline. Much as I feel stupid if someone walks past, it never fails to make me laugh - at myself! - and feel better for the rest of the day. Where are you making things less enjoyable than they could be?

Take Planned Time Out

This applies to every day, week, month and year. Workplaces don’t provide annual leave just for kicks, they do it because it’s a recognised fact that people need, and work better when they have, time off. The steps above will help you to build in time out moments to your days, but if you really want to reap the benefits and stay energetic and inspired, you need to plan for time out and rest before you need it. There’s simply no better way to re-gain perspective on life and remember what really matters. Look at your calendar and work out when you’ll next take some time off, even if it’s just leaving work an hour early.

And if you want to take this to the next level, come away with me on a workshop or Way of the Happy Woman mini-retreat. Sign up for one here.

Ready to scream? Why not roar instead?!

Have you ever had a day where you start out on the wrong side of the bed and things just seem to get worse from there? Where things at work seem to just add to your frustration and the phone messages and emails just keep mounting up?

If you’d seen me a few years ago would have seen this was a normal day for me. It took me years of suffering through jobs I hated and working with people that drove me mad before I found a better way to live. But I’m not about to tell you my solution was leaving the corporate world (eventually I did, but not for this reason). My solution was to develop a daily morning routine that changed how I reacted to all these things.

I learned how to shake off tension, how to slow down my immediate reactions to people, events and things and how to feel calm and focussed even while I was more productive than I had ever been. Did I never have a bad day again? Of course not. But I had a LOT less of them, and when they came, they were milder.

One of the thing I learned to do was when I wanted to scream, find a way to move that energy through me. If you’re at home, you can scream into a pillow but if you’re at work a walk around the block can work wonder OR you can try one of my favourite yoga tools - Lion’s Breath. If you’ve ever seen the New Zealand All Blacks do a Haka dance before a rugby game, this reminds me of that!

Lion’s Breath is very simple

Take a deep inhale through your nose

Exhale through your mouth, open wide and stick your tongue out as far as you can towards your chin making a ‘ha’ sound. You can do it with your eyes closed or do crazy eyes and really go for it. The ‘ha’ can be done with just the breath sound or if you have privacy you can say it loud or even yell. Do this  3 - 6 times or more if you want to. 

The benefit of doing this breath is you will get a release of deep held tension from the face, jaw and deep core muscle meridian of the body. It’s considered ‘facial’ yoga, helping to prompt collagen production and tone the skin. But best of all it create a huge energy shift and will leave you feeling better - it’s hard to do a lot of lion’s breath without finding yourself smiling or laughing at how silly you feel after!

I would love to know, what do you do to feel better when you're having 'one of those days'?