I’m a reformed winter-hater. I grew up in a beach town in the U.S. where summer reigned supreme. And I, like so many others, used to bemoan the changing seasons as the nights got longer and the temperature dropped. Winter felt like the most depressing season, a gloomy time lacking light and cheer.
But a little over a decade ago, I moved to Tromsø, Norway, a city over 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle. There, the winters are extreme: The sun sets in November and doesn’t appear again until January, a two-month period known as the “Polar Night.”
I expected to find winter misery. Instead, I found that people in Tromsø celebrate winter, embracing the polar night as a season of coziness and beauty. They focused not on winter’s limitations, but its opportunities.
My research as a psychologist supported what I was experiencing firsthand: that people in Tromsø tend to have a positive “wintertime mindset.” I’ve spent the last decade helping others around the world change their relationship to winter.
If you find yourself feeling down, try these evidence-based strategies for making winter wonderful.
Slow down and rest
It’s normal to feel tired in winter. Light makes us feel more alert, and so shorter days can make us feel sleepy. But instead of viewing this as a personal failure or a sign of winter depression, we can acknowledge that we, too, live in a cycle of growth, productivity, rest, and recovery.
Tromsø island at night as seen from the cable car.
Courtesy of Kari Leibowitz
Use winter as a time to experiment with different ways to rest. Early bedtimes, late mornings, and naps, when possible, can feel luxurious on winter’s dark days. It can be restorative and rejuvenating to take unhurried walks, do arts and crafts, read by the fire, meditate, and journal. A break from screens — an evening without phone or TV, in low lighting, alone or with others — can provide a psychological respite from the onslaught of information always available to us.
Even amidst work, family, and life obligations, see where you can grab moments of rest in this season where the natural world, too, is slowing down.
Practice ‘friluftsliv’
In Norway, time spent in nature is an essential part of daily life, not a bonus or a luxury. The Norwegian word “friluftsliv” captures this cultural concept. It means “open-air life” and refers to the freedom found outdoors. They say over there that “there’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing,” and people dress appropriately to get outside year-round.
Movement, fresh air, and connection with nature are all natural anti-depressants; research finds that just two hours a week spent in nature — that’s even less than 20 minutes a day — improves overall health and wellbeing.
The outdoor “snow screen” in Tromsø’s main square, where people sit outside to watch movies in the Arctic in January during the Polar Night as part of the Tromsø International Film Festival.
Courtesy of Kari Leibowitz
Start your morning by stepping outside with your coffee, breathing in the cold air. Sneak outside on your lunch hour to be outdoors during the brightest part of the day. Or take an evening walk, noticing the city streets slick with rain and the moon and stars visible in the night sky.
However you practice friluftsliv, learning to get outside in winter weather will help you feel vital and refreshed all season long.
Split winter into three parts
We tend to think of winter as one long, unchanging season. But the Sami, the indigenous people of northern Europe, traditionally split winter into three seasons: autumn-winter (“čakčadálvi”), winter (“dálvi”), and spring-winter (“giđđadálvi”).
Spring-winter is perhaps the most important season to distinguish; it’s the time of year when many feel tired of winter, and eagerly put away their winter coats at the hint of a warm breeze, only to need them the next day when the temperature drops again.
The sun returning after the Polar Night, northern Norway.
Courtesy of Kari Leibowitz
You can make your own subjective markers to distinguish between autumn-winter, winter, and spring-winter. Maybe where you live, spring-winter begins when the sun sets past 5:30, the first shoots of spring flowers come up from the ground, or you start noticing a particular bird’s song on your morning walk.
Splitting winter into three parts helps us notice the changing of the season and can be particularly useful at helping us appreciate the tail-end of winter, when spring is close but winter has not yet let go.
Look on the cozy, magical side
Winter, like most things in life, is not all good or all bad. Winter can be gloomy, dreary, and depressing. It can also be cozy, magical, and special. Winter is objectively dark and cold. But whether the darkness is oppressive or peaceful, and whether the cold is biting or refreshing, depends, in part, on our mindset.
Kari Leibowitz working on her book “How to Winter” at a cafe in Tromsø, Norway during the Polar Night.
Courtesy of Kari Leibowitz
When we consciously try to adopt the mindset that winter is wonderful, we’re suddenly oriented not only to winter’s unpleasantries, but also to its many delights. We see the rain and snow as romantic, and the cold as invigorating. The evening darkness becomes an excuse to eat dinner by candlelight and snuggle up with a book.
Suddenly, by changing our mindset, we’ve changed our experience of half the year.
Kari Leibowitz is a health psychologist, speaker, and writer, and the author of “How to Winter: Harness Your Mindset to Thrive on Cold, Dark, or Difficult Days.” She received her doctorate in psychology from Stanford University and served as a U.S.-Norway Fulbright Scholar. Read more of her work at wintrymix.substack.com.
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