We are in the UK, where we are blessed with the glory of four seasons. We have occasional snow in the winter and occasional sultry hot summer days.

Throughout the year we recognise how the seasons impact our mood. For many, their disposition is often sunny when the sun shines and they are more somber and be downcast in the gloom of an early winter’s day.

Seasonal Adjustment Disorder is the name given to the genuine depression that some get where the state of depression is linked to the seasonal changes. Winter-pattern SAD is much more common than summer-pattern SAD. SAD can be hard and often require intervention to help the individual afflicted.

For many, the changes do not lead to clinical depression – it’s just their mood is impacted by weather – they can be somber in the summer when the day is grey and drizzly (a frequent occurrence in the UK) and they can be cheery in the sunshine of a mid-winter day with azure skies (a distinctly less frequent occurrence).

Our reaction to our environment is natural, biological. The light and the weather impact our hormones and drive different emotional responses. We’re more likely to linger outside in good weather, and just this time outside helps with our health as our bodies breathe in the natural environment and our circadian rhythm moves towards the synchronicity required for our place on the earth.

But our natural emotional reactions to the outside world need to be managed. We should harness the positivity we receive from external influence whilst tempering the negativity. It’s good for neither our health nor our relationships with others to be subject of mood swings as a result of the simplest of changes over which we have no influence.

Exercising this control is hard work but, as thinking beings, we need to build the skillsets that allow us to exercise control over our emotional reactions. We need to train these base reactions to seasonal or meteorological influence. The training makes control do-able, it doesn’t make it easy.

But it is precisely this discipline that allows us to manage our reactions to other influences outside of our control – and we will face many of these throughout our lives.

Our happiness does not depend on our circumstances or our environment and neither does our success. They depend on our reactions and our ability to stay positive, focused and balanced against the multitude of harms, idiots and obstacles that face us.

We should be the sunshine in our own lives and being so we become the sunshine in the lives of others. Being so helps us bring stronger and more meaningful connections which will fill our lives with joy and opportunities.

So, be sunny.