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The time change is upon us.  I’ll spare you another Cher meme.  The end of daylight savings time is a change that we have forced upon us.  We don’t really have a say in whether or not it will happen.  But, we do have to deal with the impact of it.

This simple act of setting our clocks back is often billed as “gaining an hour of sleep.” While that sounds like a great thing it can actually be disruptive for people who have a pretty consistent rhythm of waking up and going to bed.

It can impact many aspects of our lives.  Today I want to talk about how it affects three specific life elements (to understand all nine elements read this blog post).  They are our Environmental, Physical, and Emotional elements.  

Environmental Element

Your Environmental Element is anything around you that impacts your ability to thrive.  For example, if you’re in a office in a basement you may feel drowsy throughout the day because you do not get any sunlight.  You have no frame of reference for time from that natural light. That is an environmental impact.

In the same way, as the clocks fall back and the dusk occurs earlier, many of us do not even see the sun after we get off work.  This is an environmental condition because the government policy changes it for us.  However, it adversely impacts us.  

There are two things you can do to help overcome this change and adjust for this environmental impact.  
First, be sure to spend some time in the sunlight earlier in the day.  Take a walk at lunch or during a break.  Spend some time outside before you go to work.  Get some time with fresh air and sun and help your body feel the daylight.  

Second, take on activity later in the day after work.  Go to the gym and workout in the evening or bundle up and go for a walk after dark.  This activity helps your body not wind down as early and keeps you from getting restless in the evening because of the environmental change.  

Physical Element

The goal of achieving wellness in our Physical Element is to be capable of being active with limited dependency on medication.  When we are not getting adequate sleep our physical abilities diminish faster and our wellness is compromised.

There have been many years I’ve thought I’d try to catch lightning in a bottle with the end of Daylight Savings.  Since my body was used to waking up at 6:00 AM, on this day I’d just wake up at 5:00 AM and get more done earlier.  Then, I’ll just keep doing that moving forward.

In theory, this sounds great.  But, if  we adjust our wakeup time without adjusting our going to bed time, we are now taking an hour of sleep away from our body every night.  This will result in fatigue, weariness, and, as our next section will discuss, emotional instability.

If you are struggling to adjust your waking up time (some of us are blessed and cursed with waking up at the same time every day without an alarm clock), try to make it gradual.  With my example above, try to sleep in until 5:15 for a couple days.  Then move that to 5:30 for a couple of days.  And work your way back to your 6:00 routine.  But, make sure you do the same with your bedtime.  If you’re used to going to bed at 11:00, try to go to  bed at 11:30 for a couple of days to help you sleep in. Then 11:15 and work your way back to 11:00.  Be intentional about working your way back to a healthy rhythm so you can get your body back to the sleep you need.

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Emotional Element

Having wellness in our Emotional Element means that we have clarity around our story and how we engage with it now.  It’s amazing how the changing of our sleep habits and having less daylights can somehow cause us to re-write what we believe about ourselves and our circumstances.  But, for many of us, these changes really do have a substantial impact on our Emotional Element.

Even with getting out during the daytime hours to get some sun the truth is there is less sunlight to take in during these months.  In the Summer months we get nearly 15 hours of daylight so we have a lot of opportunity to be in the sun.  In the winter months we get as low as 9.5 hours of daylight.  This can have an adverse impact on our emotional wellness. The term we usually associate with this is Seasonal Affective Disorder.

The first key to dealing with this is paying attention to how you’re feeling in the shorter days.  If you sense you are feeling down, your outlook is less optimistic, or you are getting less patient with those you love it is important to be intentional about self-care in those seasons.  During these times you need to invest in the things that help you feel emotionally well.  Keep in mind, these things you invest in should be healthy practices like exercise, seeing your counselor, and spending time with friends. They should not be unhealthy activities like excessive alcohol consumption, consuming excessive social media, binge watching shows, or excessive online shopping.  The healthy activities make you feel alive and hopeful.  The unhealthy activities are faux medications to numb the pain while the underlying issue is still present.  With Seasonal Effective disorder, be intentional about investing in your wellness, don’t try to merely cover up your sadness.

Intentional Adjustments

The changing of the clocks is a ritual that is thrust upon us.  We can’t change that….for now. But, we can be purposeful in transitioning with it.

Be aware of the impacts and be intentional about your efforts to make this transition as smooth as possible for your wellness.

Find more great issues of The Neighborhood: An Encouragement Email here.