Last week I was biking with some of my buddies.

"Look at the mountainside," Mike yells to us.  "The colors are already changing and I'm psyched for winter - skiing, hiking in a snowstorm, hot chocolate!"

"Bad news for me," Wally yells back.  "I hate winter! Cold, dark, depressing."

Of course they will both be right. They will each create their own reality about winter precisely by how they choose to frame it in their minds.

For good or ill, our mindsets are that powerful.

My daughter, Alia Crum, and Harvard professor Ellen Langer published a study they did involving 84 hotel room attendants in seven different hotels. On the first day, they administered a standard physical exam (including weight, blood pressure, body fat) and asked questions about the room attendants' current diet and exercise habits.

Then they split the group in two.  The experimental group was given a presentation on how the tasks they were doing - lifting, pulling, cleaning - really were good exercise, similar to workouts people do in a gym and enough to meet the Surgeon General's requirements for a healthy lifestyle.  The control group was not given this information.

Four weeks later Ali returned to take the same physiological and psychological measures again.  What did they find?  The 44 women in the experimental, "exercise-savvy" condition now perceived themselves to be more active than before. Fascinatingly, the increase in perceived exercise was accompanied by significant changes in physiological health - the women in the experimental group had lost an average of two pounds, lowered their systolic blood pressure by almost 10% and logged statistically meaningful reductions in body mass index, body fat percentage, and waist to hip ratio.

 The 40 women in the control group, who did not receive the information about how good their exercise was, showed none of these health benefits.

What is most important is that the positive effects occurred without any change in behavior: all room attendants cleaned the same number of rooms and did not report any more exercise outside of work. They also reported that their diet and physical activity was the same.

So, what changed? Simply their mindsets.

Mountaineer Ed Viesturs has summited all fourteen of the world's mountains over 26,000 feet in altitude, and he has climbed them all without the usual oxygen support!  When asked about possible brain damage from such taxing oxygen-deficient endeavors, this very healthy and intelligent 49-year-old mountaineer just replied, "No, I don't believe that is so for me."

Lovers walking hand-in-hand never seem to mind the pouring rain. Football fans tailgate in the worst of blizzards; polar bear club members dive into frigid waters on New Year's Day without a sniffle - these are healthy and happy activities when one chooses a corresponding mindset.

So, when your "winter" approaches, which mindset will you choose?

Tom Crum