Stop waiting for good weather | Blog Post by Rob Crews

I’ve always been aware of a correlation between my mood and the weather — If the weather is terrible, I’m more likely to be in a bad mood; if the sun is shining, there’s a good chance that I’ll feel great.

In the past I assumed that it was just some kind of in-built part of being a human. I figured that happy memories of being outdoors in great weather played some part, but I’d never really thought about whether it was something that I could change.

But really, it’s like with anything else — we frame our perception. I find myself naturally thinking of rainy weather as ‘bad’ — so much so that I actually just call it ‘bad weather’. By framing things this way, I automatically find myself feeling negative about that kind of weather. And my mood suffers.

But this perception isn’t fixed! One example of how you can change your perception is by simply making the most of bad weather. Josh Waitzkin explains on Tim Ferris’ podcast that he spends storms outside with his son, having as much fun as he would in ‘good’ weather. When the weather is ‘bad’, his son gets excited — there’s fun to be had!

Ultimately, this is just another example of how the quality of our lives is heavily influenced by our mindset — although we can’t control everything that happens to us, we can think deeply about how we perceive things as positive / negative and how this affects us.

Also published on Medium.