Curb your End-of-Summer blues with these five little hacks!
One of the biggest reasons we miss summer is because we start to spend so much time indoors. Suddenly, we're spending more time in our cars, in our offices, in our homes, and our time outside gets cut with shorter days and busier schedules. I love to counter this by making sure I spend more time outside first thing in the morning. We no longer have the luxury of long summer days to “eventually get outside,” so it’s super important that we make sure we make time to be outside in nature a priority.
1. These small changes can amount to a lot of extra outdoor time each day: I have my morning coffee outside, skip the gym and go for a morning walk instead, get up from my desk and go for a midday walk. Sometimes, I'll even take a stroll around the block when I get home before I start making dinner - so many options! The more time we can get outside every single day as the days get shorter will help us curb those end of summer blues.
2. I have also found it incredibly helpful to invest some money in a really good oral vitamin D supplement. I prefer to take any of my vitamins in liquid form so they go into my bloodstream rather than having to go through my digestive tract. Most of us don’t realize that vitamin D is a hormone and helps our mood by reducing symptoms of depression. One of the reasons we get the summer blues is our reduced access to sunlight. Vitamin D can help replace some of the mood, immunity and health benefits of daily sun exposure, or at least lessen the impact of their absence. PLEASE make sure you check with a holistic doctor, or health practitioner for the best vitamin D along with the amount you want to take for maximum results.
3. Give yourself permission to rest! Fall is a natural time for endings. So many of us start to jam our schedules in the fall, and just get busy, busy, BUSY when it is actually the perfect time to do the opposite. There is no shame in getting quieter and slowing down when the days get shorter as we head into our season of endings. Fall is the perfect time to take a page out of nature‘s book, and letting what no longer serves you stay behind with the season that just ended and allow yourself the time to rest, ponder, regroup, and strengthen for your next season.
4. Summer is filled with long evenings with friends, socializing, travel, and shorter sleep nights (given the longer days and the early mornings). Which makes this time of year perfect for recalibrating and resetting your body clock. I use the fall as a time for fasting, spending time taking more intentional care of body, having baths, instead of showers, more time alone, journaling, all the things that - I don’t know about you, but - I can definitely neglect during the very social summer season. It’s also a very good time to go through our closets/drawers and donate items we haven’t touched in a long time and give to those around us who have need. Fall is the perfect time to reconnect to self and listen to our bodies; because if we listen our, bodies will always guide us to what it is we need.
5. Finally, I always use this time of year as the time where I take stock of my relationships. I go through the roster, and I ask myself the real tough questions of which relationships I want to continue to invest time, energy and love into. And which ones I no longer want to. There is nothing wrong with admitting that a relationship has run its course, and fall is the perfect time to naturally let these relationships come to an end. After all; time is finite, and we have every right to determine who gets our time. So, if you know there are people that you have been giving too much energy, love and light to, let go of the guilt, let go of whatever is holding you to that relationship and let it go. If we stop insisting on always being right, we leave room for healthier, mutually beneficial relationships, and we can better choose which ones deserve our time. After all; we all know that who we spend our time with can - and often does - play a big part in our moods, and can even take a toll on our health. So choose your people wisely, feed the souls of those who matter and your soul in return will be fed!
