Falling in love with the most hated day of the week, Monday!
We’ve all heard of ‘fake it till you make it,’ which essentially means that if you tell yourself something enough times, you’ll end up believing it. If only it was as easy as telling ourselves that we ‘love Mondays’ every time we wake up after a well rested weekend, then none of us would complain about it ever again.
As effective as the psychological power of repeating something is- it’s not always that straightforward. Even though most of us spend two days a week doing whatever we want and then wake up on a Monday for our day job- it doesn’t seem to get easier the more we do it. So, it turns out that it’s not about sticking to a routine, but about shifting your mentality and adopting a positive thought process towards the start of the week.
Mondays don’t have to resemble the start of a 5 day countdown until the weekend. Then you’ll always end up hating them because they’ll always be the furthest away from the Friday evening, or the Saturday morning that you’ve been anticipating.
Approach Mondays as a fresh start to the week! An opportunity to start from scratch and to motivate yourself to smash your goals. When you shift your perspective of how you view Mondays, you’ll start looking forward to them more and start setting weekly goals that you can dive into at the start of the week. This form of positive thinking can end up becoming second nature in your path to success.
I’ve split this blog post into two main sections that I feel work best when approaching Monday with a different mindset: Food and the way you Organise yourself for the week ahead.
Start your day off with your favourite breakfast
If you’re going to hate waking up on time anyway, then you might as well set your alarm 10 minutes earlier and put a bit more effort into how you start your week odd. Why not treat yourself to avocado on toast, instead of just buttered toast? Or make your porridge on the hob instead of popping it in the microwave? This could be a little something to put you in a better mood in the morning and help you enjoy your Monday morning.
Meal prep on Sunday
Presuming that you’ve already woken up and had your Special Monday Morning Breakfast, what better way to leave the house, than to grab a delicious pre-packed lunch from the fridge? Preparing a nice meal on Sunday will help you feel so much more positive and eager to get through Monday.
If I know that I’m having a nice lunch at work, then I’m likely to be more cheerful in the run up to my lunch, and once I’ve had it as well. Whilst meal prepping get a lot of slack for taking up too much time, it’s as simple as making a double portion for dinner the night before and then adding the leftovers in a container for Monday’s lunch. If you have something tasty to look forward to for Lunch, this could help give you that extra push of motivation when preparing face Monday.
Make a list of what you need to do for the week
Do this first thing in the morning, or as soon as you get to the office.
Making a weekly and daily to-do list in the morning will helps you stay motivated, focused, and on track. If your list seems too daunting to approach, then split it up into different categories and group similar tasks together.
You can also split different tasks up throughout the day e.g. ‘things to do before lunch’ and ‘things to do after lunch.’ This will make your tasks slightly more manageable and easier to tackle.
Add easy tasks to your to-do list
Adding simple tasks to your daily list will give you momentum along the way and encourage you to get more important tasks done in the process. Ideally, these tasks should be small things that you would have done anyway that day, such as ‘write this list,’ ‘drink 2L of water,’ or ‘reply to John’s email on ______.’
I’ve found that once I start ticking things off my list, it motivates me to keep going so I can accomplish as many tasks as possible- so, adding smaller tasks that can be ticked off encourages me to continue working on larger projects.