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.

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.