depression

I freely admit that winter is my least favorite time of year. I don’t mind it so much in December and January, when I welcome the excuse to hibernate, cook hearty foods, and do more reading. But by mid-February, crankiness sets in. I’ve always chocked this shift from tolerance to twitchiness to the gradual build-up and onset of Seasonal Affective Disorder—a sort of mini-depression induced by a lack of sunshine experienced by an estimated 11 million Americans each winter. To compensate, I always planned a late-February/early-March visit to see my grandmother in Florida—which provided a mega-dose of sunshine and could carry me until April.

Recently, I heard that around $50 million was raised during a telethon for Haiti. This raised my spirits enough to get me through another round of sun salutations. Sometimes I feel so helpless when dealing with the larger tragedies of life that it puts me into a depressed tailspin.

A few weeks ago, I taught my Core Immersion Training at the Century City Equinox in Los Angeles, Calif. Each day, we valet parked our cars before entering the club. Those who live outside of Los Angeles may have to re-read the prior sentence: Yes, we VALET PARKED our cars to go to the gym, as do thousands of other Angelenos all around the city, where valet parking is an unfortunate fact of life in a city where the car is king, and vast distances separate us from getting here to there.

Ah, summer — longer days, a less structured lifestyle … NOT. If you’re stressed out by your kids’ summer activities, friends, meals, constant messes and late night hours (I have three teens; I can relate!), you know it’s easy to feel you can’t fit in workouts on top of everything else. But study after study has shown that regular exercise is one of the best things you can do when you’re stressed.

For many people, this is a time wrought with pain and suffering from failed relationships, financial challenges, job dissatisfaction and self-worth issues. Today I want to share a tool to help you or someone you love transform feelings of depression by looking at circumstances as gifts.