Monday Blues v Friday Feeling

There are certain days when my facebook feed gets filled with posts on a theme.  From Thursday evening it’s the ‘don’t worry the weekend is nearly here’ stuff and Sunday evening the ‘oh no Monday’s coming’ posts begin.

I know I’m really grateful that I’m not working a traditional Monday to Friday job and that I love what I do but even before then I think I can honestly say that I didn’t subscribe to this way of thinking for the majority of the time.  Why was this I wonder?

How does talking about the Monday Blues help?

Let’s be honest here – it doesn’t! By naming it, by sharing it we just make ‘it’ seem more real.  Michael Neill introduced me to the concept that our thoughts create our feelings.  If that is the case then by thinking that Monday is a bad thing our feelings will follow.  Realistically is ‘Monday’ a bad thing? No, it’s just another day.  What makes Monday different may be the things we do but it’s mostly the way we think about it.

How can it be better than this?

My friend and coach, Elaine Mitchell, raised this question recently.  She was writing about gratitude for the small things in life, about finding gratitude in the things we weren’t one hundred percent happy with.  So you are in a job you don’t like – be grateful for the job you have, that it pays your bills, that it is an opportunity for you to learn and develop/hone your skills.  How can it be better than this? Ask yourself this question from a place of working with what you’ve got.  What is in your control that can make your job better than it seems right now?

Don’t be flip, take control

Often when I talk about being a coach I find people talk to me about wanting more money or a better job.  When I ask them what they can do to bring about the change they want I know by the quality of their answer whether or not I will want to work with them.  The most common approach is along the lines of ‘win the lottery’, ‘there’s nothing I can do’, ‘I need this job to pay the bills’, ‘there’s nothing else out there’.  Really?  These are the flip answers, the I can’t really be bothered to think about it answers.  The other answers, the ones where someone starts to take control and think about how they can make things different, how they can see things differently, these are the ones that excite, these are the people who can, and will, change their life.  These aren’t the ones posting about how they feel about a particular day of the week, they are getting on with it, seeing it differently and making it happen.

Hooray it’s Monday? What Blues?

So next time you see a post about how great it is that the weekend is nearly here, or bemoaning the fact that Monday is fast approaching, please don’t share it but think instead about how you can go about making every day one that you look forward to and enjoy.