With nights drawing in, it’s clear we are getting closer to winter. Waking up when it’s dark, getting home from work when it’s dark and generally getting into hibernation mode.
Wait! Winter doesn’t have to be depressing.
At Arthur Ellis we work within our Banana and DoughnutsTM framework. Now, if you were to imagine introducing a banana to your diet every day, what benefits will it have?
- You can eat it on the go, it’s built into your life, and you don’t really have to stop to enjoy it
- It’s full of great minerals and nutrients
- It’s not too big that it’ll spoil what you need or want to do for the rest of the day
- Over a couple of weeks, you’re only going to get healthier.
That’s what our wellbeing behaviours are like, we all have five of them.
- MOVE – physical activity
- FOCUS – having one thing to concentrate on
- DISCOVER – accomplishing something new
- COMMUNICATE – chatting, face to face
- HELP – supporting others
MOVE is probably the one that most of us struggle with throughout winter. Whether this is because it’s too dark for us to go out in the evening for our typical walk, maybe there’s not enough time or energy for the gym or maybe it’s too wet and flooded for us to go for that bike ride.
Winter is notorious for interrupting what we do for our wellbeing.
This is where our doughnuts come in. Doughnuts are our indulgent behaviours that take a banana’s place. So, for example, we were absolutely going to go for a walk after work. We get home, but then we sit down on the sofa and guess what… we get our phone out. We scroll and scroll and scroll until we look at the time. What? Half an hour? Now it’s too dark and we are too cosy to get up and get out for that walk, so we don’t, and we stay on the sofa.
What we have described is a change in behaviour. A banana (the walk) has been replaced by a doughnut (doom scrolling). Now, there’s nothing wrong with this from time to time and there’s no cause for guilt, however, if this starts happening more and more, consider your doughnuts.
Just like we did with our bananas, imagine having a doughnut a day. How would you feel after eating a doughnut every day for six months. That’s just over 180 doughnuts in a row.
You may like it to begin with, I mean, who wouldn’t? But after six months, the general amount of time is takes for our relationship with something like anxiety to change, we may start noticing other changes i.e. feeling sluggish, skin conditions worsening, looking dishevelled, feeling lethargic, unmotivated and ashamed.
This is exactly how our behaviour changes before we start seeing a negative impact on our mental health.
So, coming up to winter, this is the perfect time to start making adjustments. This could be working with our team to see how we can all get our MOVE in throughout the working day, in daylight. It might be that we adjust what we do for our exercise as a whole and admit that a lunchtime workout is too much during this season, so we adjust it to a team sport or a lunchtime walk/run.
When we exercise, serotonin is released. This helps us regulate and stay more in control of our moods. Helping us to have good relationships and abilities to manage things like anger, irritability and even sadness.
So, this winter, get your teams together to prep for winter, it is coming, but it doesn’t have to have a negative impact on you or your teams
Arthur Ellis runs preventative wellbeing workshops and preventative strategy sessions. This goes towards funding the charity that provides children, young people and vulnerable adults with help when they need it.
To discuss workshops and strategy sessions or discuss how the charity could support you, your colleagues and your families visit www.arthurellismhs.com
