Lost Your Spark? How to Feel Alive Again When Life Feels Flat

As the light changes, so can our energy. Eimear talks candidly about noticing a seasonal melancholy—darker mornings, cloudy days, and that “dim” feeling—and how she began intentionally tending her inner flame.

You’ll hear:

• Why seasonal changes (less daylight → serotonin down, melatonin up) can affect mood.
• A 5-step Spark Reconnection Practice:
  1. Ground in the body (presence + breath)
  2. Name the numbness (permission, no judgment)
  3. Micro-moments of joy (small, scheduled lifts)
  4. Reignite meaning (one tiny act aligned with what matters)
  5. Integrate with ritual (a simple daily practice to tend your light)
• One proven action that helps many people: get real morning daylight (aim for 10–30 minutes before 10 a.m.).

This isn’t about forcing positivity. It’s about feeding your own light—gently, intentionally, one small moment at a time.

Mentioned in this episode

• Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) basics (light, serotonin/melatonin)
• Polyvagal-informed grounding (Dr. Stephen Porges)
• Micro-moments of joy research (Dr. Barbara Fredrickson)
• Meaning and resilience (Viktor Frankl)
• The Morning Reset Audio : https://www.subscribepage.com/my-morning-reset

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Hi, and welcome back to the podcast. I'm your host Eimear Zone, and this week I wanna talk to you about something that's really, really common and it's not spoken about nearly enough, I think, and that is, you know how we feel a little bit low, a little bit melancholic, maybe like we've lost our spark. And I think that that can particularly happen at a certain time of the year, which is around this autum fall time of the year for lots of people.

So it can feel like life's a little bit flat, it's a little bit bland and it feels like a little bit more of a struggle and a trudge through things, and we feel like we've lost that sense of enthusiasm and joy, and I think it absolutely impacts our ability to show up as our most powerful confident self.

So let's talk about it. It really doesn't mean that we're broken or that we're [00:01:00] lazy, and I think it's really easy when you're suffering a little bit of the Autumn Blues that you can get quite hard on yourself. And I will put my hand up here and say that I had been feeling a little bit flat, not quite, feeling myself not feeling the motivation or the drive.

And just feeling a bit like, oh fuck. And I live in Santa Fe in New Mexico, right? It's like we get a lot of sun here. Like there's 320 days of sunshine in Santa Fe in New Mexico. That's a lot of sunshine. And autumn is very short here. It comes quite quickly or did this year anyway. And then you got a couple of days in a row where the sun, you don't see the sun so much.

And I'm like, oh my God. Energy really drops with that loss of light. And obviously quite ironic because I grew up in a country where seeing the sun [00:02:00] was most definitely not guaranteed. And then I remembered it's not just me. In the Northern hemisphere when daylight shortens, our bodies actually change because less sunshine means less serotonin,

the feel good neurotransmitter, and more melatonin, the sleep hormone. A psychiatrist called Dr. Norman Rosenthal first called this Seasonal Affective Disorder or SAD. Great name, great acronym. So even if you don't have the full diagnosis. And actually it's only, I think in the US the figure that I saw for it is like 5%, but lots of people have a form of it and that is up to 15%.

And I learned that four times more women. Or women are four times more likely to experience this than men. So I think it's really important to talk about because it's really [00:03:00] easy to dismiss it and start telling yourself that you're just not doing enough. You're not trying hard enough. The inner critic can just really take that low mood and go to town, and really we torture ourselves with it.

So if you've been feeling a little sluggish, a little bit off, you're not imagining it. Don't be too quick to dismiss it. It's chemistry, it's circumstance, and it really is a cue to tend to ourselves with a little bit more gentleness and a little bit more care, and to be more thoughtful about how we are tending to ourselves at this time of the year.

when I think about it from the point of view of seasonal change, I think so long ago, we used to really honor the times when season changed. And we've lost, I think I've spoken about this a little bit before, but we've really lost a lot of the ritual around the changing of the seasons and acknowledging how that impacts us.

We [00:04:00] really are getting a lot of external messaging that we then amplify internally as well, that we need to be always on, always doing, always productive. That if you're not always doing and always productive, then you're not worth as much, and that is pretty toxic. So one thing that I feel, when I found myself at the effect of this sort of low mood, feeling a bit sluggish, I was feeling quite disempowered and just feeling a bit off.

I found myself kind of waiting for something externally to change for that energy to come back. And then I kind of woke up a little bit to that and said, okay, I need to tend to my own sort of inner spark myself. And that's when I began to really lean in to some important practices, really remembering that they were particularly important at this time of year.

And so I wanna [00:05:00] offer you a practice that I hope will help you too during these grayer days, maybe these shorter days. And obviously I'm speaking about the Northern Hemisphere here. I've called it the Spark Reconnection Practice, and it's a gentle research-backed practice to help us nourish and nurture ourselves at this time if we're having these feelings and to give ourselves what we need.

And this is it. So the first step, it's a multi-step practice, and the first step is really, that I find most helpful is to ground ourselves in the body. I think it's so easy to get lost in our heads and to get out of our body. We often have this really bizarre and unhealthy relationship with our body, particularly as women.

I know that I have where I'm always trying to control my body and it should look a certain way and be able to [00:06:00] do certain things, and it's very combative and negative and it has been many times. So it's really helpful for me to remember some of the teachings around getting grounded into the body and having a much more healthy relationship with the body.

And so when I find that I'm disconnected. Our nervous system, right? It can be in this low energy or kind of freeze state. Have you ever heard of the polyvagal theory? It's like blown up a lot over the last five years, and it was developed by a gentleman called Dr. Steven Porges, who created that theory, and it's that freeze state is what he calls dorsal vagal shutdown. And

that's that kind of low energy state. So we wanna counter that. So one way to do that is, you feel your feet on the floor, right? And I find it really helps, like I'm barefoot right [00:07:00] now and I'm doing this, take off your socks. Just feel your feet into the ground, into the floor, and then breathe in slowly through your nose.

Or through your mouth if that's more comfortable for you. I find it helpful to close my eyes when I'm doing these practices and just notice your shoulders and imagine your breath, a sort of oxygen that's feeding a small flame in your chest. Just 90 seconds of mindful attention like this can really help to shift your state. So feet on the ground, slow breathing if it feels comfortable and safe for you.

Just gently closing your eyes, noticing the shoulders, maybe on an [00:08:00] exhalation, letting them drop down a little bit and imagining that breath, sort of feeding that small flame within. There's a neuroscientist and her name is Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, and she found that the emotional surge that we're feeling lasts about, 90 seconds long, unless we keep feeding it with

thoughts. We keep giving it fuel. So when we do a mindfulness practice grounding into the body like this, and we really concentrate on the breath and the body, we are sort of releasing from the hook of feeding and spinning an emotional state that isn't supporting us. Presence is that really important first step?

Then the second step I find helpful and that I include in this practice is really about permission. I think when we feel a bit disconnected, a bit flat, [00:09:00] sometimes we are looking to avoid it, run from it. Or maybe your instinct is to try and fix it, but really sometimes we're just feeling numb, and that's a form of protection.

It's not that we're failing or something's necessarily wrong. It's important to remember though, that when we dull, Particular emotional states, we can't really selectively dull them. I think Brene Brown talks about this, you know, if you're trying to dull say pain, you end up dulling joy as well. So instead of judging our emotional state, we simply allow it to be, and maybe look to name it.

It can be helpful to reflect and inquire within and maybe ask a question like, where in my life right now am I numbing or sort of dimming [00:10:00] to feel safe? Maybe it's at work. Maybe it's in a relationship. You know, maybe it's your creativity. And we don't have to force clarity. Sometimes I sit with a question and,

I can be sitting with it for days or carrying it and sort of just having it in the background of my awareness and not trying to force an answer. And I think that's when I get more clarity because it reveals naturally without being forced. I think naming your numbness is sort of the moment when you stop being lost inside it.

A gentle inquiry can be really powerful. Wow. And then step three is inspired by the work of Barbara Fredrickson, who's a psychologist. And her research shows that even small positive emotions broaden our perception, like they make us more alert to those emotional states and they help us to build resilience.[00:11:00] 

This is like step three. So once, once I've grounded, once I've named what's dimmed, kind of named that numbness as best as I can, I start looking to invite moments of joy or even awe and wonder back in, you know, this can feel, once you say words like joy, awe, and wonder,

they can feel like a heavy lift, right? I'm feeling pretty shit. What you mean joy or wonder? That feels like really remote for me and I just want to acknowledge and honor that if that is what you are feeling. It's really about micro moments. It's really about cultivating micro moments of these beautiful, beautiful,

sort of nourishing emotional states and it can be the tiniest thing. So you could ask yourself in the morning, what is one small, tiny, [00:12:00] micro thing that would give me a lift today that would brighten things just a little bit for me, and that might be listening to a certain song. For me, it is really powerful for me to go for a walk outside.

I live in a beautiful area and I just immerse myself in noticing beauty in nature in the most mundane things. So I'm really actively looking to cultivate these micro moments of awe. Really, I'm telling you it's just like a leaf, flowers. Even those flowers that are fading at this time of year, the way the light is, the shadows fall, the smallest, smallest thing.

It's really not about grand gestures at all. And another thing I love to do is just to,text somebody who makes me laugh or who just makes me smile, has great sense of humor. Just these moments of connection that can bring a spark of joy. So I think scheduling [00:13:00] on purpose, making it not accidental is really, really helpful.

And once we begin to cultivate this environment where we're naturally going to be noticing these beautiful moments, beautiful views, the warmth of the connection and we begin to feel these little sparks of joy and wonder. As psychologist, Dr. Frederickson's research shows us, that begins to broaden our perception.

We begin to notice more and experience more, and it helps us to build resilience from these sort of emotional states of flatness and low mood. So we don't wait for the spark to return. We do not give over our power to external forces. We cultivate that within, we feed it and nourish it [00:14:00] within, and it's just micro.

It's not like giving yourself a big onerous job. So that's step three, these micro moments of joy. And then step four, I think, meaning really being connected to meaning is so important. Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, who you may well have heard of and his very famous book, Man's Search For Meaning, he taught that meaning is

really the antidote to despair. And so many modern studies back his insights and his work. People with a sense of purpose, experience higher wellbeing, and even stronger immune function. So we feel better and physically we're healthier. I mean, it's just a win win. So ask yourself, what used to light me up that I may [00:15:00] have drifted away from what feels important for me?

How would I like to contribute? What would make me feel proud? What would a day well spent look like? Just questions like that. Whichever one or your own one sort of resonates for you. Doesn't have to be really, it does not have to be that you're saving the fecking planet, right? It's, we're looking for the small, meaningful thing, and that might be visiting a sick friend, doing a small service for someone who you know or you don't even know.

It really can be in the smallest thing . We find so much meaning in being of service to others. So much meaning in that. So maybe what small way can I contribute and serve today? And don't [00:16:00] judge the scale of the contribution or the service. So step five are really, I think ritual is really important.

Ceremony and ritual and getting it connected back into that is really powerful. So think about integrating this with a ritual. When we're feeling a bit flat, like we've lost our spark, it hasn't really gone, it's just buried. it's just a little bit latent under distraction and ritual is often how we can bring it back into the light.

We can begin our end our day with a five minute ritual that reconnects us to ourself. I use so many different forms of this, and I created one called The Morning Reset, which you might find helpful. That's a little audio under five minutes, and you can find that, it's totally free. It's in the show notes.

You [00:17:00] might like to just have a quiet five minutes in the morning when you're having your first cup of coffee. You might like to just go outside in the morning by yourself and just notice, one thing that you hear, one thing that you see, one thing that you smell. Just really connecting into your senses.

Whatever makes sense for you from the perspective of your life. It could be as easy as lighting a candle and just sitting in silence. It could be prayer. It could be a stretch, a couple of yoga poses. Whatever it is, just make it your daily way of saying, I'm choosing to reconnect or to connect with myself.

I deserve this time. And just ritual, ritual, ritualize it. Make it something you really look forward [00:18:00] to. It's not a chore. So if you felt that you're feeling a little bit flat at this time of year, or maybe you've been feeling it for a while, please hear this. You're not broken. Your light has not gone out.

It's just been waiting for a little bit of fuel, a little bit of oxygen, a little bit of attention, and today I just invite you to give it one breath. Step outside, move your body, put on a song that you love, that wakes you up. Dance a little bit. One thing that reminds your body what aliveness feels like. It's just for you.

It doesn't, you don't have to tell anyone about it. It can be silly, a little bit crazy, a little bit cringey. Who cares? Your spark that will respond. It always does. That's all for me this week. I hope this has [00:19:00] served you. I hope I find you well. Look after yourself. You are extraordinary, and thank you for the privilege of your time.

Take care. I'll see you next time. Bye.