What’s the deal with Mondays?
It starts Sunday night… my Facebook newsfeed starts to fill up with the posts and memes about the dreaded next day. It gets worse the next morning. More posts about the most dreaded day of the week: Monday. I get it. I used to dread and hate Mondays too. In fact, I dreaded each weekday when I was at the end of my tolerance for my corporate career. It felt awful to go to sleep Sunday night, knowing I would wake to the start of another Monday, another five days of feeling imprisoned – having to spend my time doing things I didn’t want to. And yet, it was always a choice. I chose to allow myself to feel imprisoned and continue to do something that I didn’t want to. I chose to allow myself to hate Mondays. I chose to give my power up to external circumstances – to a day of the week and everything that came with it. Until I didn’t. Until I decided that I loved my life and myself to much to continue to spend the majority of my time doing something that no longer fulfilled me. I didn’t want to hate Mondays anymore. Monday is just a day of the week for heavens sake! Why couldn’t it feel like Saturday? Well, because it’s not – it’s Monday…
But in reality, it can feel like Saturday or whatever your favorite day of the week is. In fact, every day can feel like that – if you choose to allow it. Because, when it comes down to it, the dreaded feeling isn’t about Monday – it’s about what Monday represents. For me, eight years ago, and for all those people posting on social media about how much they hate and dread it, it’s about giving up our freedom when the workweek begins. We tend to associate work and the workweek with “hands tied”, “my time isn’t my own”, and everything we “have” to do when we’d much rather be doing what we want, with untied hands, and be free to spend our time as we choose. Monday steals that from most of us – it steals our freedom. Damn thief. But, the fact is, it’s all a choice.
Why stay in a job or career that steals you freedom and makes you dread Monday when you most certainly can find one that doesn’t? I know, I know… there are the stories in your mind of, “but it’s not easy to find another job making this much money or with these benefits” or, “I’ve been doing this for 20 years, what else could I do that would support my family and me?” Or, any variety of your own story that keeps you dreading Monday. It’s also choice to tell the stories that keep you stuck in “Monday dread” or instead, come up with the ones that enable you to live a life that doesn’t include hating Monday, or any other day of the week.
Perhaps the choices you are making are most reasonable for you and your life right now. That’s fine. Then accept them as what you need to do now and find the goodness in that so you don’t have to dread any day of your week. Monday doesn’t have any power over you nor does the job or the boss or whatever you dislike so much about the beginning of a new work week. It only has the power you give it. You get to choose how to spend your time and whether or not you actually enjoy waking up each day and what you have to do that day. Don’t assume that Mondays have to suck. They don’t. Mondays can be as fun as Fridays and as relaxing as Sundays. Mondays can be your favorite day of the week. As with everything in your life, it’s all up to you, how you want to spend your time, and ultimately, how you want to spend your life. There are only a certain number of Mondays you get to live. Why waste another one? Choose differently. You deserve it.
