I love twinkly lights. The school I most recently worked in adopted them year through as part of our immersive classrooms in the belief that ‘Twinkly lights are for all of life, not just for Christmas!’ But those lights shone most brightly on the darker days, the days when it rained persistently and the days when the sun forgot to come out.
This last week in school is a mad one. So much to fit in before the end of the week! And that on the back of the longest term and possibly most pressured time of the year. Children are excitable and fractious in equal measure and many of us have been to more social activities in the last week than we have in the whole of the rest of the term put together! We’re tired and our bodies and minds are fuelled mostly by adrenalin… how many more get ups until we finish?!
It’s no accident that many of the world’s religions have a festival involving light in the winter months. It’s at the darkest time of year that we need to be intentional about focussing on light.
Wellbeing is dependant on the same principle. Life, in varying degrees has it’s darker, more stressful and overwhelming seasons. At those times, our attention can be focussed on all that is wrong. The trouble with that is that our brains are more ‘plastic’ and ‘maluable’ than we sometimes realise. Focussing on the negative creates a vicious cycle of negativity and if we’re not careful, we can be all consumed by the ‘darkness’. It’s at those times that we need to be more intentional than ever at switching the lights on; that is, bringing our focus and attention to what is good. We might only be able to muster the energy to switch on one small twinkly light but once we do, it becomes easier to find the other light switches around us.
Shawn Achor’s research into happiness found that people who recorded three good things at the end of each day and then wrote in more detail about one of those things for three weeks consecutively, started to think more positively overall. The process allows new, more positive neural pathways to be created.
So if today, the season feels darker, more stressful and overwhelming, know firstly that the season will pass. But also know that while we shouldn’t ignore the darkness, our best defence against is to spend some time focussing on the light.
Winter and Wonder - our Winter Wellbeing guide is available to download from our website today.