Hooray it's Monday
Great news, it’s Monday. That’s not such great news? You don’t like Mondays? Always feel tired on Mondays? Okay I’m going to say something you may not like, that’s not Mondays fault, it’s yours. Simple as that. I know it is the first day of the working week but that’s just where the problem starts. You see it’s not that we have five working days straight ahead of us when we rise on Monday morning but that we have just had two days off and what we did during those two days. This of course changes as we get older and circumstances change but most of us continually make the same mistakes all our working lives, even if to a lesser extent when we’re older.
It all starts on Friday, start of the weekend. With that many of us will go out, have a few alcoholic drinks and retire to bed later than during the working week. Saturday morning we sleep late, tired from the night before and with no reason to get up. Saturday night they do it all again, it is the weekend after all. What better way to start a Sunday than by sleeping in late. That is the reason you don’t like Mondays. On Monday you get hit by the results of the weekend.
You see with too much alcohol in your system you don’t sleep properly, you don’t really feel rested when you wake and that’s because your not. The alcohol prevents you from going through the correct cycles of deep sleep and REM. So you wake up unrested and get out of bed, feeling groggy and feeling that you want to sleep but can’t anyway. Added to that you don’t want to sleep too late and waste the weekend. It doesn’t really matter as because you slept late you won’t feel tired until later than normal. This knocks back the time you can sleep. So by the time you go to bed Sunday night you have a sleep deficit that just can’t be made up in one night. So Monday morning is met by a sleepy groggy you wishing the weekend was longer. No doubt if it was there’d by another 24 hours of messing up you sleeping pattern.
You may be thinking that yes you acted this way when you were younger but now, older, wiser and with commitments you no longer party like this at the weekend. Well that will help but, just the act of having a late night can make it difficult to sleep at your normal time the next night. Add to that the old self-fulfilling prophecy and if you did come to dislike Mondays when you were younger, then they will disagree with you now because you expect them too.
So what can we do to like Mondays? As usual the answer to this problem is to change your attitude and actions. Now I’m not saying you can’t go out and have fun, but give yourself time to recover. If you think you need to keep drinking alcohol to have fun then maybe alcohol is the last thing you need. Generally though the best thing to do is remember to stop drinking alcohol long enough before bed for your body to process it so it doesn’t affect your sleep. One late night and one sleep in probably won’t have too much of a negative affect but always try to sleep at the same time every night and get up at the same time every morning. This will soon become a habit and provided the time between the two allows for enough rest will ensure you always wake up feeling refreshed and alert for the day ahead, whichever one it is. Don’t think of Monday as the first day of a working week, just think of it as another working day, nothing special. A day to spend doing a job you enjoy with people you like working with. If you don’t enjoy it or like the people you’re working with that’s a lot of your waking life spent doing something you’re not happy about. Thought of making a change? If it helps to change your attitude to Mondays make a list of anything you like about Monday. I’ll start you off, only four more days to the weekend.