Despite the freshness of a new year and the promise of making 2015 your time to shine, its also at this point that the winter blahs set up shop. Here are a few tips to get back your mojo:

1)   Take something off your plate—We often push off what we couldn’t get to in the fall or through the holidays, onto the new year. Except it’s not like there are extra hours in the day that emerge once the calendar turns. Get clear on how something is adding to the quality of your life. Then ask if it would do more for you to nix it, at least for now.

2)   Break with routine and do something new—The winter months can leave us more susceptible to falling into ruts. Changing up your routine can antidote just going through the motions as it wakes up the brain. Even better is to engage with something that you’ve never done before or something you love but have not tried in a while.

3)   Go inward–If we consider the rhythms of nature, winter is a time to invite in the quiet, to heal and to contemplate. For some, fighting that rhythm is like swimming upstream, leaving a feeling of exhaustion and even frustration. Consider journaling, meditation, drawing, taking a spiritual retreat, or giving your energy to that which stokes your imagination, (maybe its time to start gathering your thoughts about that memoir you’ve always wanted to write).

4)   Assess your Vitamin D levels–A trusted physician recently told me that everybody in the Northeast could use more Vitamin D through the darker months. One way we get Vitamin D is when it is synthesized through uncovered skin with the help of sunshine. It may be worth investing time in getting blood work done to see how low it is within your system and then addressing the deficiency through appropriate diet, supplements and sunlight exposure.

5)   Pay attention to how foods are affecting you–We look for comfort foods at this time of year. That includes starches and sugars that often lead to crashes in energy and you only wanting more of the sweet stuff. If you are going to have treats, eat them mindfully, really tasting them so that your brain satiates on the experience. Also then pay attention to how any of your food and drink impacts how you feel both in terms of mood, attentiveness and physical energy so that you can be better equipped to break any downward spirals or prevent them from happening in the first place.

Debra LeClair Psy.D is a doctoral level psychologist and certified life coach, who helps people to find greater access to creative flow, career fulfillment and inner wisdom.