MM191 - Defeating the Darkness

Every year as winter begins, we are treated to advice as to how to keep our minds and bodies active and healthy during the cold and darkness of the season. Most people will also experience and emotional darkness or winter in their lives. What can we do to get through the dark emotional times until the sun comes back out?

[INTRO]

♫ Trenches by Pop Evil ♫

*Alex*

Welcome to Morning Mindset. A daily dose of practical wit and wisdom with a professional educator & trainer, Amazon best selling author, United States Marine, Television, and Radio host, Paul G. Markel. Each episode will focus on positive and productive ways to strengthen your mindset and help you improve your relationships, career goals, and overall well-being. Please welcome your host; Paul G. Markel.

*Professor Paul*

Hello, welcome back to morning mindset, and if you're listening to this in the morning, either the sun has just risen or you're waiting for it to rise and hopefully, you're drinking a delicious hot coffee beverage. If that is your bag man. If it's not your bag man. Well, then I don't know what else to tell you, drink some tea or something.

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Welcome to the morning mindset podcast, and today we're going to talk about defeating the darkness. Yes, as I sit down in my studio to record this episode. We just had the rollback of the clocks weekend. We just fell back to Standard time. That's where we were on. I know that not everyone on planet Earth and not every state but.

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Where I live we do daylight savings time and whether or not you're in favor of it or it doesn't matter the fact that matter is we just roll them back and we're back on Standard Time and also in the northern hemisphere in the United States of America. We're on that Journey that annual Journey around the Sun and what does that mean?

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It means that the days are now shorter and the Darkness is longer and in the northern hemisphere as I'm speaking the words into this microphone every single day gets shorter and shorter and shorter until we change seasons and they start getting longer again. But what do we do? What is a natural Human Condition every year in the winter time as the days start to get colder and the night's get longer?

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What do we have? We see the local channel news, you know NewsChannel5 does a how to survive the winter doldrums and so on and so forth and that is important. It is important that we physically. Take care of ourselves that we get enough nutrition that we get enough Vitamins because you know, we're not seeing the Sun as much it's cold our bodies and when the temperature is cold, it's harder for your body to physically fight against the illness Isn't So horse.

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You need to keep yourself warm. You need to keep yourself healthy, hydrated, make sure you drink enough water and so on and so forth and that's something that's pretty common every year. You know we do that we talk about how to survive in the winter survival plan from tonight it on news channel 11 or when you know, what have you news Channel 12 tight 11 how to survive the winter doldrums and and basically it's the same advice that they regurgitate every single year if you if you've been on the planet as long as I have you know, that your local news channel 5 on your side.

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They have seasonal stories and every year they Trot out the same story. They might have a different person deliver it and they might you know put in a pop culture reference or something. But basically it's the same story like for instance the daylight savings thing since I was in high school there have been op-eds and opinion pieces and so forth every time we change the clocks.

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They roll a story they run a story about isn't it time to just go ahead and eliminate daylight savings time or you know daylight savings time was an idea invented, you know concocted by Benjamin Franklin to save whale oil and we don't use whale oil anymore. So who cares and you know or daylight savings time was put in place for farmers and most people aren't Farmers.

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So who cares every year. The same story over and over again and that's the same thing we get every year when it starts it's darker. Now you may live in the south where it's not really that cold but it's colder, you know, I've lived in the South and it gets down into the 40s and 30s sometimes and but the days definitely are shorter and it is darker, and so we talked about you know, what can we do? How can we keep ourselves physically? Healthy during the winter during the darkness.  This is another type of Darkness that enters Our Lives. It's an emotional Darkness. Now, like the winter, like the actual genuine season of winter, that is dark and cold.

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It's not there forever. It doesn't last all the time.  Eventually in and it's not Game of Thrones where we're going to have, you know, 18 years of winter. I don't know what planet they live on in Game of Thrones, but it's obviously not planet Earth because they have Winters that last for decades. No, our winters don't last that long.

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Even if you live in the in the north and even if you live in the mountains, it still doesn't last forever even though it seems like it might but we also experience on occasion. We experience an emotional Darkness. We experience Dark Times. In our lives where we feel internal that we're living in darkness whether or not there's actually visible light in front of us here and the sun is out or what have you, we feel like we're living in darkness and the truth of the matter is some of the advice.

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That is given to us every fall when we change the clocks and the days start getting shorter and the night's get longer. We give we get the advice about, you know, take vitamins, take multivitamins, you know to use a tanning bed go to the gym and do things like that, and the truth of the matter is if you're experiencing a time of emotional darkness, which is very natural and it happens to just about everyone some point in time in their life.

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I'm sure it happens to everyone and may not be happening to you right now or it may you may be in an emotional winter. Now tell you this at winter doesn't last forever even in the north even in Michigan even in Montana. It doesn't last forever, but we still have to deal with it. Don't we just because Winters not going to last forever.

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We can open our windows and turn off our heaters and say well in three months this will be over. So no big deal. We still have to deal with it.  many of the same techniques. That people talk about for dealing with the physical realistic seasonal winter and darkness will help you if you're going through in a period a period of emotional.

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Darkness, for instance, one of the things that we have myself and the other the shows that I do when I say we have suggested is keeping your mind active and strong and how do we keep our minds active and strong? Well, we don't keep our minds active and Strong by sitting in front of the television and letting it talk to us.

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We keep our minds active and strong through education. We keep our minds active and strong through Reading. We keep our minds active and strong through exposing ourselves to information and ideas that we may never have before.  To new ideas to new information reinforce old ideas and old information that we've known strengthening your mind through Reading. Strengthen your body through exercise legitimate real physical exercise and no walking back and forth to the kitchen to get coffee is not exercising.

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Okay, exercise has to be really planned and deliberate. It has to be something that you're doing other than your normal routine getting up from your desk walking to the break room pouring coffee and walking back to your desk seven times during the day, is not exercising. So stop trying to tell me it is okay. If you're experiencing emotional Darkness or emotional winter, make sure that you actually are consuming good food. Not a bunch of carbohydrates sugar and crap make sure that you have enough protein in your diet.

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Make sure that you have enough fiber. I know I sound like a commercial but the truth matter is you needed. Make sure your diet is good, make sure you're doing things and I know you may not want to you know that and that's the hardest thing about winter in the cold and the Darkness is, you want to wrap up in a blanket lay on the couch and just stay there until the sun comes back out again.

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But laying there under a blanket isn't going to make the Sun come back out. It's not going to help you. You're going to have to make yourself do it, you know, if the make yourself do the physical exercise you're going to make yourself stimulate your mind through Reading.  Or whatever we talk about winter projects and hobbies occupying your hands in your mind through projects through physical activities doing things.

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I don't care if it's knitting, sewing, building model airplanes. I don't care, do something. Do something deliberate and before you know it and that's a great thing about winter projects and keeping yourself busy physically, and mentally if you do that pretty soon. The winter will be over the darkness will be over and the sun will become will come back out again.

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So you can defeat the darkness and it's not there forever. Alright, ladies and gentlemen that is it for me. I went just over 10 minutes today. I hope you will forgive me. I am your host Paul Markel, I will talk to you again real soon.

[OUTRO]

♫ Trenches by Pop Evil ♫

*Alex*

Thank you for spending time with us today. To get show notes, submit a topic request, for more from your host Paul G. Markel, visit MorningMindsetPodcast.com. That’s MorningMindsetPodcast.com. Please leave a review of this podcast on your favorite podcast player, we appreciate your time & effort, and we look forward to reading your honest feedback.