Why Your Habits Fall Apart in Winter (And How to Fix It)

Sub, yeah

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the kind of return to school, um, for most of, honestly, most of the people we work with, most of the people that listen to this podcast are people who are returning to education in school form or as teachers or university, whatever.

But also the idea, um, and you talked about how our routines need to change and how we know we talk a lot on this show about building positive habits, positive wellbeing behaviors, and kind of, uh, how important that is for our bodies and brains.

But one of the things we kind of neglect to talk about is kind of once you have those habits, maintain them is a whole different thing.

And I think the perfect example of this stuff is as, as we always seem to go to fitness-wise, spring and summer for fitness, obviously, uh, aside from extreme heat days, it's pretty good for fitness, right? 'Cause if you wanna, if you're someone who wants to start a running habit, you're someone who wants to be outside more, it's nice to be outside in summer.

You know, like that's, that's kind of the whole thing.

We want to be outside.

We're more likely to go for a run.

We're more likely to wanna go to the gym just to be outside.

And in the meantime, you know, we wanna, like, it's kind of incentivized by the weather.

Um, and if we're including summer holidays now, people have time off in summer, obviously they can, they have more time, more flexibility in their routines to be able to build in this time for these certain habits.

And one of the things that we find quite a lot is when the, the, you know, we start returning towards winter, we start returning to school, we have all this structure in our lives now, again, massive amounts, or maybe there's new structure in your life.

You've got a new job or you're starting a new course or whatever it is.

Those habits that we've built that are really, really positive for us, we feel really good about, sometimes they then have to adapt to this new remit of time.

And even like thinking about if you've built a morning running routine into your life, the light levels, you know, they are changing.

And depending on who you are and where you live, come, running in the nighttime may not be very possible for you because if you live in the middle of nowhere, for example, there's no street lamps, you could wear a head torch and stuff, I guess, but that's not a very fun experience, you know? So what we want to talk about today is kind of flexibility in adapting those routines.

And I think it's really important to immediately kind of point out this is something that we struggle with a lot.

Like, this is something that I'm literally going through right now in trying to work out how my very structured life adapts to, and it, um, um, a large change for me, but also just the kind of changing weather.

You know, if you are a regular to the show, you know I run a lot.

Um, now that the light levels are turning, I can't just do a whole workday and go for a run in the evening because by the time it gets to the evening now, the light's gone, and I don't really wanna run in the dark, you know? So it's, it's these kind of habits and how can I...

Now it's like, do I have to sacrifice a run on this day because I've obviously got more important things I have a need to do in this time.

So I think it's, it's really worth reflecting on the fact that this actually is quite complicated, and we'll get into it a little bit later.

But when you link your wellbeing to these wellbeing behaviors because they make you feel good, obviously, as soon as you have to start sacrificing them and adapting them and making changes to them, they're gonna make you, therefore, your wellbeing is gonna reduce, which leaves you in a kind of a, a, a difficult space.

Yeah.