How to beat the weather

夏バテ

It was about 37 degrees here yesterday. For those of you who work in fahrenheit, 37 degrees celsius is bloody hot.

There is a word in Japanese, 夏バテ. It is pronounced natsubate and would be translated as summer fatigue. You feel terrible. You may lack appetite. You feel drowsy and you walk around in a semi-permanent form of blah!!!

How do you fight this? Well they say that you should drink warm drinks and eat lots of fruits and vegetables and do some exercise. (That sounds like something you should be doing all throughout the year, not just when it is too hot to move.)

I was thinking about how you fight it as well. It seems to me that some of this is a mental thing. For example if you are walking around town thinking to yourself that it is hot, guess what, you are going to feel hotter and you are going to not have a great day.

The same goes with the middle of winter. If that is all you think about that it is cold then you are going to feel freezing.

Come to think of it when you are tired you will become more tired if that is all you are thinking about. This morning for example I woke up in a pile of sweat and I didn't feel very well at all. However, what I found out that I wasn't very sick. I just thought I was. I just thought that I was sick and that I should stay in bed all day and because I probably would have only thought about how hot it was and how awful I was feeling it would have not fixed any problems at all. I would have just woke up tomorrow morning with the same feeling.

I forced myself to get out of bed. I forced myself to go and have a shower, to put my clothes on and get going because I have goals I want to achieve and things that I want to do. In the end I am writing this. I feel fine. I maybe should be drinking more water but it is my goals that have got me here today along with a little bit of willpower and the "don't give up" in the back of my mind.

Sometimes you know that you are sick and staying in bed is the best thing but when you stay in bed to avoid something, the only person you are hurting is yourself and you are giving up on one day that can give you a little bit of a push towards those goals.

Don't let the weather beat you. Organise your life so that you don't need to fear the weather. You know that you are going to be doing the same thing, come sun or rain.