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Most people don't realise that their beliefs about winter are subjective. They feel like they're just someone who hates the winter and there's nothing they can do about it... But once you put it in people's heads that mindsets exist, and that you have control over your mindset – I think that that's tremendously powerful.

As the days have been getting shorter I've been reminding myself to reset my framing - night time is also a time! A time where things can happen, conversations had, art made, loved ones canoodled etc.

I always think back to that one angry-at-having-to-move adolescent summer when I programmed myself to despise summer camp with "I hate everything about this place" becoming such a personal catchphrase that I startled myself when a random thought starting "Oh I hate..." auto-completed with the rest of the mantra.

Like I once said about a tendency to rage against being stuck in traffic: "Whether I'm furious about it and making myself angry or accepting of it, the traffic is still there. So why be furious? The only counter-example is if my rage now helps me avoid future bad traffic. But I could probably do that via rationality, not just gut level rage..."

Of course the ability to dispassionately connect varies from person to person, though I think practice helps. I don't know if the abilities I have to not let emotions roil is more like adult self-control or just low-grade depression or what not. (I know it has its roots from a time when keeping on the religious straight-and-narrow felt like the most overwhelmingly critical thing I could possibly be doing, at peril of my immortal soul.)