Changing the Monday Mindset

I was watching Instagram stories this morning, and I came across this graphic shared by someone I follow:

As I sit here today, working from home because of a migraine and some wintry weather, this graphic spoke to me about the way that we normally think about Mondays. I am as guilty as anyone of starting to dread Monday on Sunday afternoon. In fact, I have seen several memes about how Sunday just can’t be enjoyable because it is Monday Eve.

This has really gotten me thinking about how much of the bad feelings about Monday are made worse by our mindset? It is interesting that I talk about mindset to my students, and even to my kids at home, but I still can’t manage to make it past those Monday blues. When I saw that graphic this morning, it really stuck with me that this would be a great way to try to change my mindset about Mondays. These are things we can do every day, but it seems like it is even more important on Mondays.

I also think it is very important to keep in mind the A from this graphic. It seems like most of us spend way too much time down on ourselves instead of acknowledging what we have actually accomplished. It has been far too easy in my life to look at the to-do list and see how many things I didn’t get accomplished during the day instead of acknowledging how much progress I actually made during the day. We so often try to give others the benefit of the doubt or try to make up the difference ourselves, when we have already taken on more than what we should have. Once we have taken on all the things, we beat ourselves down for not getting everything accomplished. Perhaps it is wanting to check everything off the list or maybe it is a quest for perfection. Either way, the tendency that we have to keep adding to the list and then beating ourselves up for not getting the list finished is extremely harmful to the way we think about ourselves overall. In other words, we really need to be giving ourselves a break instead of constantly striving for perfection. Don’t let your Monday Mindset be a negative start to your week.

Life is too hard for us to be continuously hard on ourselves. There are enough people waiting to knock us down or criticize us without us leading that charge. This week, I am issuing a challenge. Start your week with a better Monday Mindset and live the week being intentional about not beating yourself up over everything that doesn’t go wonderfully.