Inviting Ease Into Our Mondays

Setting the tone for the week ahead

I'm sending this week's email on Monday since it's focused on the start of our week.

I find that for a lot of people Mondays are their most hectic day. The adjustment back into the work week is tough. Mondays always seem like they have the worst traffic and the most meetings. I once read that more people have heart attacks on Mondays than any other day of the week. There is something about the start of the week that is just stressful for us. There are people who start the week already pining for Friday and it’s four days away. 

calm in Antiparos, Greece

Knowing that Mondays can be a lot, it is important that we think about ways that we can prepare for the week ahead, and practices we can incorporate that will allow us to ease into the week and mitigate some of those anxious feelings. 

In preparation for the start of the week you can:

• Use the weekend to decompress. 

Rather than packing your Saturday and Sunday with activities, you can be intentional about taking some down time. 

• Set boundaries when you have things you have to do on the weekend. 

You can designate a time for when it has to be over so that you still have time to unwind.

• Look at the week ahead and make a strategy for managing your activities so that you feel prepared going into it. 

Maybe you don’t schedule your most difficult client on Mondays. Maybe you order out instead of cooking. 

Once Monday has arrived you can:

• Decide to take the first two hours of that day to just check your email rather than jumping right into meetings first thing in the morning.

• Establish “No Meeting Mondays” if possible. If you work in a space where that’s non-negotiable at the moment but they have a suggestion box, you could submit an entry about later meetings, or no meetings on Mondays. 

• Take a break at some point during the day. At lunchtime, go for a walk or sit outside with a book and a cup of tea. 

• Engage in self-care. Make sure you eat breakfast and drink a bottle of water.

We have to be strategic about what the energy of Monday looks like for us. The systems we live in are set up to keep us busy. It is easy to fall into the trap of feeling like we have to hit the ground running, but how we start the week typically sets the tone for how we feel the rest of the week. This makes it really important that we get off to a good start. 

Journal Prompt

What is a practice you can adopt that will make your Mondays easier?

A Few Things That Caught My Attention This Week

• Does Being a Gifted Kid Make for a Burned-Out Adulthood? by Constance Grady in Vox. 

• I Switched to a Flip Phone and Dramatically Improved my Well-Being, by Mark Lukach in The Washington Post. 

• The Family Plan. Any movie with a family man living a secret life instantly grabs my attention. This movie starring Mark Wahlberg feels like a modern-day True Lies to me.