It's fall. Let's get cozy!

Shorter days, less sunshine, rain and snow ... the colder months can be a drag. But they don't have to be! In this episode, we share ideas to help you embrace the seasonal changes, whether you're a fan of the cold or not. We'll cover cozy rituals, dressing for the outdoors, ways to celebrate and gather, and how to use this reflective time of year for contemplation. Follow us on Instagram: @nprlifekit https://www.instagram.com/nprlifekit/?hl=en Sign up for our newsletter here. https://www.npr.org/newsletter/life-kit Have an episode idea or feedback you want to share? Email us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected] Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include sponsor-free listening and convenient playlists of popular help topics like personal finance, getting healthy, and more. Learn more at plus.npr.org http://plus.npr.org/. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 07

  This week on Up First, the midterms, less than 15 days away. President Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, and former President Obama, all crisscrossing the country, rallying voters in key races from Michigan to Georgia to North Carolina. Join us every morning as we guide you through the home stretch of this election season, Up First, on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:24Marielle Segarra?

  Hey, it's Marielle Segarra. You're listening to Life Kit. The other morning, I was wide awake at 5:00 a.m., which is unusual for me. I was jet lagged after a trip to Poland. And it was dark outside, so I lit some candles and I took my time getting up. This simple act of sitting awake with the covers over my legs, surrounded by the glow of candlelight, it got me really excited for fall and for winter.

• 0:53Speaker 14

  Lighting candles, it's such a cliche winter advice, right? Like, it's almost, it sounds so fluffy and meaningless, but I really think when you light candles with the intention of embracing and celebrating the darkness, it actually has a profound impact on your experience and changes the meaning of winter darkness.

• 1:17Marielle Segarra?

  I know that it's hard when the sun doesn't shine as much as it did all summer, and the rain can be a drag, for sure. But I'm telling you, this time of year offers so many opportunities to be cozy. On this episode of Life Kit, how to get cozy this fall. And to be clear, that doesn't mean just sitting at home waiting for spring. But it is about embracing the changes that are coming, whether we like it or not. Which brings me to takeaway one. Transition your space, your clothes, and your diet for the cold weather. Now is the time to bring your velvet curtains and your flannel sheets out of storage and to remember what you love about your cold weather wardrobe. For me, it's the brown leather jacket I got at a thrift store in London, my lace-up

• 2:02Marielle Segarra?

  black boots and leg warmers, among other things. I also love a fall plaid. Carrie Lebowitz is a psychologist and the author of the book How to Winter. And she says we can also switch up our diets, leaning into the cold weather foods.

• 2:17Speaker 14

  So I switch from, you know, a cold breakfast in the summer to a warm breakfast in the winter. And I switch from iced coffee to hot coffee or tea that I drink all day long. So all of these things reorient my attention from the negative things about the cold and the dark and the wet to the things that I enjoy when the temperature drops and it's raining out all the time.

• 2:45Marielle Segarra?

  Speaking of, how about a soup? I, for one, cannot wait to make sausage, white bean, and kale soup with carrots and onions. It's a fave. Sola Elweli is a chef and the author of Start Here: Instructions for Becoming a Better Cook. We talked to her about how to make soups. And she said soup is the perfect communal dish, especially on a chilly day.

• 3:07Speaker 11

  There's something about it that's just cozy and comfy, and it feels so primal, like just eating out of one pot, especially because food gets so complicated these days, you know? Soup isn't glamorous, it's not pretty, but it gets the job done.

• 3:22Marielle Segarra?

  Some ingredients that Sola says go well in basically any soup are alliums, like onions, leeks, and garlic.

• 3:29Speaker 11

  And something about when you cook any allium in fat, it just adds this incredible savoriness and depth. And there's a wide range of flavors you can pull out of it. So if you keep it kind of blonde, you get more of the sharp, oniony flavor. And then you can go as far as you want from there and take it to deep caramel and get it very, very sweet. But it's this really rich base to pretty much everything, but especially a soup. And it's particularly helpful to develop a base with alliums if you're not using the best quality broth. Like, you know, if you're going with a bouillon, starting with some cooked-down onions or shallots will really get you far.

• 4:11Marielle Segarra?

  She also suggests adding to your soup a pinch of MSG or Parmesan rind, because it's a natural source of MSG. All right, takeaway two: this time of year can also be an opportunity to slow down. When the clocks change in November, Carrie, the psychologist, her friends tell her, you know, I've been so tired lately, I don't know what's wrong with me.

• 4:35Speaker 14

  And I'm like, there's nothing wrong with you. You're a living being on a planet with a climate, you know? And if you look at every other living thing on Earth, plant or animal, they are all changing their behavior in winter in some way, right? They're either migrating or hibernating, or they're slowing down, they're shedding their leaves, they're storing up their energy for spring. And yet, I think our sort of modern societies and modern conveniences have convinced us that it's a personal or moral failure if we want to slow down in the winter, if we

• 5:15Speaker 14

  feel less able to maintain the same schedule 365 days a year.

• 5:21Marielle Segarra?

  Some suggestions from Carrie's book are to take a family nap, where you stay in your PJs, make a pillow fort, watch movies, and just embrace the slumber party vibes all day. And also to let yourself take longer with everyday tasks, you know, slower meals, slower walks, longer bath times. Tricia Hershey says rest shouldn't be an afterthought. She's the author of the book Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto.

• 5:48Speaker 02

  I believe resting is generative. It's not frivolous, and it's not a luxury, and it's not some afterthought. It truly is something that will allow us to tap into the inventive and imaginative ideas that are going to get us to the next dimension.

• 6:04Marielle Segarra?

  Tricia likes to plan her rest, so she puts a rest day on her calendar every week.

• 6:08Speaker 02

  I don't even look at my email. I don't even respond to anything work-related. I'm all about laying around the house. I'm not engaging in any type of labor outside of what feels good to me.

• 6:21Marielle Segarra?

  Another idea is if you don't currently observe the Sabbath, set aside one day a week to rest. And for you, that could mean no email, no phones, no technology in general. We talked with Catherine Price, author of How to Break Up With Your Phone, in 2020.

• 6:37Speaker 06

  We take an evening a week, and we light a candle at dinner, and we turn off our screens and we keep them off until the following morning. People can customize that as they want. You could have your phone on, do not disturb, but allow calls from important people to come through if you feel anxious about that. But I find in general that just having a ritual where I know that I can not be on call to anything feels really good sometimes, and I want to give myself that opportunity.

• 7:04Marielle Segarra?

  You can start small, too. Maybe you just put your phone on airplane mode for dinner and an hour or two after, while you're cleaning up or you're watching a movie. Or maybe you pause the episode here and take a minute's rest. But come back, all right? Because after the break, we're going outside.

• 7:25Speaker 08

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• 7:29Speaker 09

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• 7:55Speaker 00

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• 8:17Speaker 04

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• 8:42Marielle Segarra?

  All right, now that we've slowed down, it is time for takeaway three. Bundle up and get outside. Carrie, the author of How to Winter, studied seasonal affective disorder in a Norwegian city called Tromsø. It's about 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle. And every year, it goes through something called the polar night, which is about two months of darkness where the sun doesn't rise above the horizon.

• 9:08Speaker 14

  In Scandinavia, in Norway, they have this saying, there's no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing. And I really learned how to dress for the winter when I was living in Norway. And she's picked up some tips on how to dress for the cold. I'm going to be wearing my leggings underneath my jeans. I'm going to be wearing layers on my top. I'm going to be wearing waterproof outer shell, waterproof boots. You know, you want to be warm enough.

• 9:35Marielle Segarra?

  In the book, Carrie talks about the Norwegian principle of frie lufsliv. It translates to open-air life. But she says it's really about finding freedom in an open-air life. And we can do that in the colder months by continuing to enjoy nature and move around outside, even when it's cold or overcast. Carrie suggests that you go on an awe walk, where you take time to feel awe or wonder while you're looking at the world around you as it is, that tree with the bright orange leaves or the shops on the street illuminated with sparkling lights.

• 10:08Speaker 14

  If this is new for you, start small. Just take a walk around your neighborhood, bring a thermos of tea or coffee, go for 15 or 20 minutes, see how it feels. If there's a place that you like to walk in other seasons, so a park or by a river or by the beach, try going in the winter and experiencing it at that time of year, right? What looks different? What sounds different? What smells different?

• 10:35Marielle Segarra?

  The point is, you can feel cozy outside, too. You just need to dress right. You can also have outdoor celebrations in the winter. Gather around a fire and toast marshmallows, have a barbecue in the park. In general, takeaway four, look for moments to celebrate and gather. One of the hardest parts of this season is when it gets so cold and dark that nobody leaves the house and you end up feeling isolated. But you actually have the power to change that by inviting people over and creating your own traditions. There are, of course, lots of holidays coming up. Halloween, Dia de los Muertos, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas. But we can also make our own holidays. Andrea Banyer is a psychologist at Georgetown.

• 11:20Marielle Segarra?

  And she says you can start by asking yourself, what do you want this particular celebration or holiday to mean? What is it about, really? Is it about giving back to others? Then maybe you volunteer at a food bank with your family this October. Is it about finding the light in the darkness? You could go on a hike with your people on the day of the winter solstice. Or you could invite friends over for a gorgeous candlelit dinner with light as a theme. You could bake cookies in the shape of stars or serve foods that offer a pop of flavor, like a salad with citrus or duck with cranberry sauce. I like to create holidays in times of the year that can feel slow. So last January, I hosted a domovik gathering at my apartment.

• 12:04Marielle Segarra?

  I'm Polish on my mom's side. And in Slavic folklore, the domovik is a mythical gnome or house sprite who lives behind your hearth and takes care of your home while you sleep. So I ordered a little domovik figurine online, cooked traditional Polish food like pierogies and pickled beets, lit some candles. And then my friends and I offered crumbs and coins to the domovik, asked them to protect the house, and talked about a memory that reminded us of home. For me, what was driving the gathering was the importance of home as a sacred space and also my desire to invite my friends into it. Samine Nosrat is a chef and the author of the cookbooks Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, and Good Things.

• 12:49Marielle Segarra?

  And one of her tips is to gather for a meal routinely with your community, say, every Monday night or every first Sunday of the month. And she says you want to do this differently than a regular dinner party. You want it to be communal and also sacred in a way.

• 13:03Speaker 03

  I think by breaking it up so it's not a thing that's all on your own shoulders and it's a shared effort, but also, I think, by making it a regular effort and ritualizing it, that's probably step one of making it holy. There's community buy-in.

• 13:23Marielle Segarra?

  Some other tips that she offers, choose one location and stick to it. And make sure there are enough chairs for everyone to sit and eat at the same time. Because this gathering is supposed to be about the people. It is not about one person sweating in the kitchen to make a perfect experience for everybody else. After the break, we set aside some time to reflect.

• 13:52Speaker 12

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This episode's sponsor is HubSpot, which offers the following message. What if, instead of updating your CRM, your CRM updated you? No catching up on manual edits, no more guesswork. HubSpot's self-updating CRM keeps your customer context current and helps you understand what to do next. So marketing builds more demand, sales wins more deals, and customers keep coming back. Learn more at hubspot.com.

• 14:22Speaker 08

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• 14:38Marielle Segarra?

  One thing that's great about the fact that it's getting darker earlier or that it's staying overcast all day is that it gives you permission, in a way, to say no to some stuff and to be a little bit of a hermit, even for a day, to go inward. Takeaway five, reflect. Spend some time alone and think about what you want in your life. Graphic novelist Nicole J. Georges says alone time helps her to be more creative and to listen to her own voice.

• 15:06Speaker 13

  Because for me, I'm so codependent that if other people are around me, I will have a hard time figuring out what I feel and what I want, because I will be trying to respond to the needs of the people around me. And so it's really important for me to take some time alone. So whether that's a little walk by yourself, even like a 20-minute walk by yourself, or whether that's journaling or just drawing by yourself for 20 minutes or an hour or meditating, like, those are the times where I'm away from people for a little bit helps me kind of fill up my cup and figure out what I actually want.

• 15:38Marielle Segarra?

  Maybe you want to get back into drawing or to keep doing your woodworking project.

• 15:43Speaker 13

  I mean, the point of it is to actually have a little spaciousness so that you can get new ideas, getting other people's narratives out of your head so you have space for your own narrative and so you can check in with yourself and be present in your own life.

• 16:00Marielle Segarra?

  Writing is a go-to way to reflect. But of course, sometimes you're staring at a blank page with no idea what to say. So here's one prompt. Write a thank you letter to someone in your life.

• 16:11Speaker 05

  Somebody that you have not had the chance to thank. Can be the past year, can be the past 10 years of your life. Just think, why are you grateful for that person? Maybe a specific instance that they helped you. And either send them a letter, send them an email, or even better, deliver it in person and read it to them. That sort of shows the most significant effect.

• 16:32Marielle Segarra?

  This is psychologist Christina Costa. She says gratitude can improve your mental and physical health. It's associated with greater happiness, and it can decrease our levels of stress hormones. Now, if you're not sure who to thank...

• 16:45Speaker 05

  Think of a teacher. I was a teacher, so I always, that's my first two is like, think of a teacher or K-12 that you haven't talked to. But really, it could be anyone. And that's going to give you a big boost.

• 16:56Marielle Segarra?

  Another way to reflect is to keep a simple journal. Here's Rashonda James, a licensed therapist and a big advocate for journaling.

• 17:04Speaker 10

  You know, if you're a person who is kind of scatterbrained and finds themselves overwhelmed a lot, a journal can be a place for you to kind of keep your thoughts and organize them. If you're a person who is like, I need to write down this goal, I need to write down the steps to be able to get to this goal, journaling can be a great way, because you can kind of follow your process, follow your thoughts, follow your actions.

• 17:25Marielle Segarra?

  Another idea? Take this moment to dream about your future. Lama Rad Owens is a Buddhist teacher. He says to start, you want to suspend any doubts you have about what's feasible or possible and let yourself imagine.

• 17:39Speaker 01

  What is my ultimate, complete, golden scenario vision for, for the future?

• 17:48Marielle Segarra?

  Lama Rad used this approach to dream up his most recent book, called The New Saints.

• 17:52Speaker 01

  It was like, OK, I'm going to go really big. For me, my dream was to offer something that could help people get free from suffering.

• 18:02Marielle Segarra?

  From there, he found the space to get going. Lama Rad says he also loves a vision board. And yeah, he knows that sounds cliche.

• 18:09Speaker 01

  However, some people that I deeply respect in this world are very adamant about a visioning board for the upcoming year. And so I started doing that and found that to be really helpful. So instead of just like hoping for something to happen and having a vague aspiration, get concrete. Like, this is a time to get concrete about what you want to see next year. And that makes it much more likely for results to happen.

• 18:41Marielle Segarra?

  Me? I love a vision board, too. I made a whole vision journal one winter with pictures and words cut out from magazines. And I still look back at it and think, you know what? I'm on the right path. All right, time for a recap. Takeaway one, transition your space and your habits. Takeaway two, slow way down. Takeaway three, bundle up and go outside, even when it's cold and rainy. I think nature can be beautiful in the rain, by the way. Takeaway four, look for moments to celebrate and create your own holidays. And takeaway five, reflect. Remove yourself from the crowd for a moment so you can get back in touch with what you want and what you dream of. All right, that's our show.

• 19:25Marielle Segarra?

  One more thing, by the way, before we go. Do you follow Life Kit in your podcast app? If not, would you do it right now? Just tap Follow so you never miss an episode. This episode of Life Kit was produced by Claire Marie Schneider. Supporting for the episode includes work by Shereen Marisol Maraji, Anya Kaminetz, Andy Tagle, Andrew Limbong, and Kyle Norris. Our digital editor is Malika Gharib, and our visuals editor is CJ Riechelmann. Megan Cain is our senior supervising editor, and Lauren Gonzalez is our executive producer. Our production team also includes Margaret Serino and Sylvie Douglas. Engineering support comes from Simon Laslow-Janson. I'm Mary El Segarra. Thanks for listening.

• 20:10Marielle Segarra?

  And happy fall. Happy spooky season.

• 20:17Marielle Segarra?

  So spooky.

• 20:23Speaker 08

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• 20:45Speaker 12

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