3 Revealing Realities About Mondays We Need to Stop Avoiding
Monday is the ultimate mirror to our lives
Outside of a personal tragedy, I struggle to think of a worse feeling than hearing that piercing Monday morning alarm pulling me back into a reality that just a few days ago seemed a million miles away.
I got what I wanted. I got the break that I worked all week towards, but now it’s time to pay the piper.
Like many of us, I am guilty of branding certain days with labels, writing them off from ever being anything more. From Monday blues, Hump Day (Wednesday), and Thank God it’s Friday!, it’s as if it’s already been prophecized of what our immediate future holds before we even have a say in the matter.
But does it need to be?
Is it even remotely possible that we could find empowerment these days or use them to shed light on where we are in our lives and where we want to be rather than become victims?
1. The higher the pedestal, the greater the fall
It seems the higher we set an expectation or our estimation for happiness on one thing, the greater the downfall is.
Arguably we see this with the January blues and Blue Monday, where the sheer hope we were riding from the Christmas buildup has gone, and now we find ourselves floundering for something new to clasp our hope onto.
The turnaround from a Sunday morning to a Monday morning is arguably a greater fall than Lucifer’s, which means the rest of the week is dedicated to climbing out of the hell we find ourselves in.
According to the Journal of Positive Psychology, due to the overwhelming hatred we have towards Mondays, any day not labeled Friday or the weekend was found to be hated just as much.
But why do we need to feel compelled to hate as a default approach? Why the complete write-off?
I’m not saying Mondays and its close cousins don’t have their stigmas, but by deciding its destined meaning before even participating, are we then closing ourselves off for even some hidden positive meaning to enter? Would we even know where to look if we were dwelling too much on the lack?
2. “Just five more minutes”- The Choice
I often find it weird that on the days where I’m working on a schedule, I desperately yearn for a lie-in, only to find myself waking up at the same time that I usually do when I don’t even need to!
The biggest difference? Choice.
I chose to wake up on my day off, whereas on weekdays, the decision is chosen by circumstance.
When we have the choice, we have the freedom. When we don’t have the option, we become victims of circumstance, unable to do anything about it.
As sucky as it may sound, there’s a power in choosing to get up earlier that may not initially feel gratifying at the moment, but in terms of building momentum for the day, it speaks volumes.
When we take the responsibility for our lives, the burden may be ours to bear, but so will its successes.
3. The words we speak over ourselves and the company we keep.
We’ve all been there having a moan about our life, probably more so on a Monday. When we get into the office, there’s something tribal about talking about how shit our life is, engaging in one big shit-fest of who has the shittier life to gain some significance. I’ve done it, but looking back, nothing good can come of it when the bar is set so low.
Bitching about Monday may bring us closer, but arguably are we not locking ourselves into the victim’s identity as individuals and groups if we keep having these types of conversations?
“Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.”
- Lao Tzu, ancient Chinese philosopher
It may not sound like it matters as an isolated incident, but the real damage lies in the accumulation. The more we make a habit of doing an act, the more it etches into the person we are and the path we end up taking.
Jim Rohn famously stated that we are the average of the people we spend the most time with. If the reality does not help grow us as individuals, then maybe it’s worth reevaluating the company we keep.
The Monday mirror
To me, happiness is a muscle. Like anything, mastery comes from the reps. The more we make a habit of trying to find happiness in our lives, the more likely we are to have it come our way.
The same can be said about finding multiple sources of happiness rather than depending on one.
Putting all of your eggs in one basket is a set-up for the ultimate downfall. For me, I like to have at least five things or more I can hang my happiness on so that if one of the legs of that table breaks, then the whole foundation doesn’t collapse.
To me Monday is the ultimate mirror, that not all of us are taking enough advantage of because it tends to lock us into a cynical mindset rather than one that can help us come up with solutions for the hard questions we’ve been avoiding.
Most of us tend to look to a New Year to set our lives straight when really, we can plant the seed of who we want to be every day, especially when we’re on the back-foot of a Monday.
I myself have been one of these people who has felt the heaviness Monday brings, but if anything, it inspires me even more to rewrite what Monday means to me.
I’ve often talked about David Goggins in my articles because I feel he exemplifies the indomitable capacity of the human spirit to triumph over adversary no matter what is stacked against it. The biggest takeaway I learned from reading his book Can’t Hurt Me was the Accountability mirror, an exercise where a person smothers their everyday home mirror with sticky-notes of the hard truth that they are avoiding, even though deep down, it would change the very landscape of their lives if they but confronted it.
Tony Robbins says that “the quality of your life is the quality of where you live emotionally.”
If it’s only two days out of the week we feel most like ourselves, maybe that’s the indicator we need to stop avoiding and finally address why the other five days are just wish-away days.
Monday is gonna be Monday no matter what, but if any of us can have the answers that Monday asks of us at the ready, maybe someday we’ll be able to dictate the questions.