How to create a New Year mood?

New Year is on the nose, and the mood is zero. Such words are not uncommon on the eve of the holidays. This is not a reason to try to artificially induce a smile and fun in yourself, but a reason to understand yourself and try to fix the situation.

You need to start with the fact that blues and even depression on New Year's Eve are a problem for a huge number of people.

Psychologists identify three main points associated with the lack of New Year's mood.

• Loneliness. On the eve of the holidays, the feeling of loneliness is exacerbated. There is a clear association (but it is stereotypical) that the New Year is strictly a family holiday that must be met at a large table and only next to loved ones. But this is one of the traditions, very widespread, good, but not at all the ultimate truth. If loneliness is especially painful during the holidays, you need to revise the list of your expectations and false attitudes, as well as get acquainted with the stories of people who like to celebrate the New Year outside a noisy company and do it with pleasure.
• Material restrictions. Any holidays are minus a certain amount in the wallet. And such massive ones as the New Year definitely entail waste. It is not surprising that you lost your mood even for one reason of the upcoming material expenditures. And here, too, you need to reconsider your view of gifts, their cost and the desire to please everyone, everyone, not to offend anyone.With loved ones, you can always agree on symbolic presentations (or refuse them altogether, but just spend the evening together at a pleasant dinner).
• Summarizing. The change of the year, as it were, obliges a person to take stock. And it may seem that the year was not at all successful, nothing worked out, marking time, etc. This happens not only among perfectionists. But even such sadness, psychologists urge to treat rationally: a person needs emotions of the entire palette. And to be sad, worried, disappointed is normal. This should be taken as an indicator of a change in course. This means that something was done wrong, you need to look for other options for moving towards the goal.

If the festive mood has gone somewhere, this is a good opportunity to be sad. First, not everyone knows how to be sad for a long time. Usually the body takes its dividends from this state (sometimes sadness is needed to reinforce feelings), and secondly, it is also useful. Sadness helps to honestly talk to yourself, relax, distract yourself and even protects you from the sometimes unnecessary New Year's fuss.

There is no mood for the New Year - a frequent story. This happens to those who began to prepare for it too early and simply burned out. A sad mood can also happen to those who had some special plans for the magical December, but the month turned out to be so-so.

How to identify New Years blues:

• lack of activity in general - you don’t want to go to a corporate party, you don’t want to choose gifts, you don’t even have a special desire to dress up a Christmas tree in a banal way;
• no anticipation of a holiday - even the elegant look of city streets does not charge with its magical design;
• thoughts about the upcoming celebration only cause irritation;
• poor appetite, avoiding talking about the holiday with friends, any lack of desire to get involved in the New Year's bustle.

All these signs (and individual ones can be added to them) do not mean that something urgently needs to be changed. If your soul demands to be sad, you can listen to it. And if you want to be sad at home under the covers, it's not bad. And if you just want to take a walk, this is definitely progress.

You can find that very mood at home and literally in one day. If one method does not work, you just need to move on to another and try again.

Let's look at 10 ways to cheer you up.

• Cooking with music. Just something, many will think in disappointment, but it really works. And it is not necessary to download a huge playlist of exclusively New Year's melodies. You can make a list of what you really like by including holiday tracks between your favorite songs. And make it a habit: soup is being prepared - Frank Sinatra sounds (for example). If it doesn't work from the first day, then from the second day the person succumbs to the charm of music and already begins to purr something under his breath.
• Watch the Christmas episodes of your favorite TV series. If "Irony of Fate" and "Love Actually" are already fed up, then you can stop at the special episodes of the series that once made an impression. Nowadays, special Christmas episodes are filmed very often, this is an occasion to get pleasant emotions from your favorite TV series, and even in the context of the holiday.
• Create a mood board. It is easy to make: the base can be plywood or cork. To put it simply, this is an activity board where you can gather visually pleasing holiday information together. For example, attach your favorite children's New Year's card, find the same "Bear in the North" sweets in the store and send the candy wrapper to the mood board. Pictures with beautiful winter landscapes, an alpine village (or, perhaps, a New Year's Eve beach in Rio) can quickly cheer you up if they are in front of your eyes all the time.
• Prepare caramelized apples. They look very festive, and they can also be associated with childhood memories. You need apples, a dye (if you want them to be smartly red, sugar, water and skewers). According to any suitable recipe, you need to cook caramel, bathe the apples in it, thread the skewers and leave to freeze on the balcony. Very nice and delicious! Recipe variations are welcome (chocolate, nuts, coconut, etc.).
• Sign postcards and send them in beautiful envelopes. Everything is traditional, by hand (you can even take a couple of video calligraphy lessons). The process itself sets you in the right mood, at the same time you can please your friends.
• Fulfill a little forgotten dream. Actress Natalya Fateeva once said in an interview that one of the best New Year celebrations for her was this. By some miracle, she managed to get hold of Boris Pasternak's book Doctor Zhivago (for a long time it was really difficult), and she climbed into a chair with the book and read it for hours. And even after the chimes. Unusual, but is that less happy from this? Perhaps a similar example that once inspired someone is worth repeating.
• Start serving the table festively, without waiting for New Year's Eve. A candle with a pleasant aroma, themed napkins, a cup with a New Year's inscription - to get the mood, sometimes you just need to make simple moments of everyday life a little more "smart". The dinner itself can be as simple as possible.
• Repeat something from the series "as in childhood." Maybe you should just cut out snowflakes from napkins with your own hands or make a garland-chain of colored paper. The prejudice that such decor is not relevant today. Everything that pleases, gives rise to pleasant associations, “lives” is actual. For example, in one of the radio broadcasts, which is conducted by a psychologist, his listener said that she did not like the New Year for a long time. She met him alone with her little daughter, always the same way. Once in Children's World, she saw a doll, exactly the same as her cousin had in childhood, and which she had always secretly dreamed of. She bought a doll and it suddenly became a trigger. The joyful purchase lifted my spirits, I wanted to decorate the house, restore recipes for my favorite dishes in childhood, the process carried away! You just need to listen to yourself.
• Decorating the tree is not the usual way. Think over an outfit in one color or vintage, only from new toys or, conversely, from old ones found in the country. In a word, take some concept as a basis and get carried away with it. Creating such a special Christmas tree is already a quest, and it is absolutely New Year's.
• Make a New Year's Eve mini-party for the very best. Nothing expensive: tangerines, tea (or champagne, or mulled wine), homemade cakes. Call friends on the eve of the holiday, ask for help to decorate the house. And in order not to bother with gifts, you can buy all sorts of little things (inexpensive, but necessary) and put them in the basket. These can be packs of tea, face patches, scented soap, Christmas tree toy, delicious chocolate, a beautiful cup, etc. (as many items as there will be guests at the party). And invite everyone to choose a gift in the basket for themselves. It is unlikely that adults will fight over gifts, and the very prospect of choice is already pleasing.

And, of course, you can improve your mood in simpler ways: call a friend and invite him to tea with herringbone cakes, go to the bathhouse, buy a new dress, recharge the festive atmosphere at the skating rink, borrow a book from childhood in the library, arrange a movie show with popcorn and aromatic cocoa at home. You need to evoke a mood not with what is fashionable (for example, a New Year's photo shoot is not a sacred duty, but not at all an obligatory item), but with what you like.

Perhaps, sometime on the New Year's Eve, something unpleasant happened, maybe even tragic. And the brain persistently associates this event with the New Year, associates it directly. Hence the lack of mood, blues, and even depression on the eve of the holidays.

People who are faced with this should heed the recommendations of psychologists.

• You shouldn't build expectations, scale events in fact overnight. The New Year should be treated playfully, remembering that if the script is violated, nothing bad will happen.
• You need to change associations, build new connections in the brain. For example, you can give up the hustle and bustle of buying groceries, buy the bare minimum and practically on the holiday itself (early in the morning or late in the evening the day before). Quite a bit, but my favorite. And give up the night feast in favor of an early dinner.
• It's time to control your emotions. They are always the subject of choice, no matter how persistently a person assures himself that he cannot do anything. If this is not clinical depression, but blues, lack of mood, only the person himself decides what to do with them. He is in command of the situation.