Regret

Filled with regret and feeling bad about past actions? Feeling like your life is out of control? The old Sikh gurus of the Punjab had a recipe for solving these situations: vegetarianism, meditation, and fasting. The Sikhs believed that the mind was a separate entity that the soul picked up on its way to the physical world. It was used as a sort of diving suit to enable the soul to experience life through the physical body. The idea was to eliminate the ego (the "I" aspect of the mind) and reduce the emotions' control over your physical actions. This would allow the soul (the real you), through its connect to the universe (intuition), to make your every day decisions. This form of existence allows you to feel "right" about the results of your decisions whether they are seen as good or bad by others. This will keep regret from forming in the first place and allow you to feel in control of your own life.

This whole process is based on reducing your energy input through vegetarianism and fasting. These actions will calm the mind and keep it from filling your moment-to-moment experience of the physical world with constant chatter, speculation, regret, animosities, and insecurities. These various mental states color subsequent decisions, creating quite the tangled mess. Once your energy (and thereby the mental chatter) is reduced, you can use meditation to retrain your mind, disconnect your emotions, and allow your natural connection to the universe to shine through. Once the mind and the "I" separateness from the universe is reduced or eliminated, all of your past action regret will be dissolved by the total acceptance of yourself as okay and a natural part of the universe, regardless of outside or internal judgments.

Stress Reduction

US election results got you stressed? Freaking out over the first 100 days? Arguing with family members? Consider modifying your "one truth reality" or "one dimensional thinking" (your way is the only way) to include the possibility of other truths, other realities, other ways of thinking that are just as valid as your own.

Reduce stress and conflict by being more inclusive and understanding of other belief systems. No matter how irritating, stupid, hurtful, or bigoted they may seem to you, they are just as righteously held as your own. Escalation of conflict can only be avoided by negotiating compromise which can only begin through acceptance.

Reducing your energy input will help you be more accepting. Have a few beers, a glass of wine, or a hot fudge sundae, and open up and relax.

Weather

Cold, cloudy weather got you down and depressed? Winter weather naturally sucks energy from you while at the same time forces your body to use more energy to maintain its optimum operating temperature. Keep your energy burning hot to be comfortable physically and mentally. Cut out all those energy depleting foods and substances, and focus on consuming more high energy input.