Years ago, I came as a visiting graduate student to the University of Washington in Seattle. On a number of occasions, professors would take me apart to ask me if I’d been out with friends recently and if I was eating my vegetables. I thought it was odd, but they all said when the rain and seasonal depression hit, I would need to make sure I see people every day and I load up on vitamins. Then fall came, and my mood started swimming. I could cry at the hairdresser if they didn’t have an appointment for me and not want to go outside of my hose. Seasonal depression had hit me, like many others in Seattle. In my life I have never seen lack of light and grey skies like I did in Seattle (mind you I haven’t been to Nordic countries in winter time but I have lived in England, Ireland and visited northern France many times).
And so it was true, even buried under graduate work and exams to grade, I realized that if I did not make at least a coffee date with someone every day, I’d feel stifled. I also needed to eat very healthily, or I’d feel even more sluggish. And of course, I needed to sleep at night and I needed to have an alarm on in the AM so I would not oversleep, which made me feel even more tire
These principles have followed me to this day and help me every day. No matter what is going on, I try to make sure I get out every day, I have a reasonable social calendar, I eat healthy, and I connect with something higher than me (the power of nature, God, the angels, beauty of the world, you name it).
If you want to feel more in control of your life, start with sleeping 8 hours a night (or whatever amount you really need =the numbers of hours your body sleeps when you’re on vacation without an alarm), eat 5 vegetables today, and go look at something beautiful: art, the ocean, your dog digging a whole. It starts right there!