How to Beat the After-Christmas Blues

Christmas is an emotional storm, and next comes Valentine’s, so take a break. Move from emotion to thinking and action.

1.Start planning a Valentine’s Party, or Martin Luther King Party. If you were running a day late and a dollar behind for Christmas, learn from it. Budget and start sooner, but have the fun of another “party” on the horizon. NB: Planning is a cerebral activity, i.e., neocortex.

2.Get active – add an extra hour to your daily workout. This creates physical energy, clears the mind, and flushes out toxic emotions. The less you feel like doing this, the more you need to. If you're an introvert, tai chi, yoga or meditation may work better.

3.Clean your house til it shines, and do the work yourself. This is a tradition for New Year’s in many cultures, symbolic of getting rid of bad stuff and making room for new stuff. Buy a special floor cleaning product. Sweep toward the doors, or vacuum, then remove the bag and carry it out to the garbage. Out! Out! Clean the furniture with something like Murphy’s oil, a soap and water-based product, not oil. Then clean the floors with the special cleaning product.

4.Clean the yard, shovel away dirty snow, clean the gutters, wash the windows, rake the leaves. It will be time to plant the daffodils and prune the roses before you know it.

5.Take a vacation. Go somewhere warm like a cruise to the Caribbean. The sun will do wonders for an attitude adjustment, as well as SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). At home, get outside more, sit in the sunlight in your house for half an hour a day.

6.Hunker down and last it out – read good books, curl up by the fire, sleep, don’t fight it. It’s a hibernating time anyway. Get massages. Take naps.

7.Start a new intellectual project at work or at home. At home, start a new physical project - building a greenhouse or painting the guest bedroom. It will give everyone a lift. Focus on thinking and moving, not feeling.

8.Kickstart your brain by taking a new course. If you’re an extravert, go to community ed classes. If you’re an introvert, enjoy yourself online with distance learning coures and take teleclasses.

9.Change your diet dramatically. Do a juice fast, or something very cleansing and healthy within the constraints of your physical condition. Get that sugar and alcohol out of your system and replace it with vitamins and minerals. Don’t forget your vitamin C. If you live in an area where it's peak allergy time (like texas, USA), watch your diet – it’s cumulative – the pollen PLUS what you eat PLUS the dust and mold in your house. Get you’re a/C ducts cleaned.

10.Get rid of “stuff.” Grab a garbage bag and fill it with stuff. Put the bags in the garage or barn. Then clean the garage or barn, and get rid of it all. (Nice to donate to charity of course).

If you think you might be clinically depressed, please see your personal healthcare professional.