You wake up Monday morning, pour yourself a glass of orange juice, and get breakfast ready for your clan.
Off to the office, you battle the traffic, thinking about how to tell your rebel employee that there have been complaints about his behavior.
You dread the meeting and yet know it can’t wait.
Pulling into the parking lot you feel a wave of frustration, seeing that someone has parked in your reserved spot and the rain is now coming down in buckets. Glad there is an umbrella on the back seat, you make a run for it hugging folders from last night’s homework close to your chest.
The demands for your time never stop.
By noon, it feels like this Monday has been a month long and you start to wonder what it’s all about, why you work so hard and why there are so many demands on you that just don’t stop. Then you take a deep breath and realize,
“Ah, this is called BLUE MONDAY”.
This Monday, at the end of January, has been dubbed the most depressing day of the year, and you’re in the thick of it!
Now, step back and take a minute.
How many other Mondays do you feel depleted, discouraged, depressed?
This is a perfect time to take a cup of green tea, sit quietly for, oh, five minutes or so and quantify the amount of time you take care, really take care of yourself.
In research for my book “GUTSY: How Women Leaders Make Change” I was shocked that women STILL take so little time to nurture and nourish our personal selves. You would think that after the entire “stand up and be counted” era from the 1960’s till now, we would have gotten the message that self-care is a #1 priority.
In our GUTSY WOMEN WEEKEND RETREATS we teach that “self-care is not selfish care”. We spend time looking at the individual behavior patterns that we learned from our mothers and grandmothers and from the culture in which we grew. Then using this image: “A hungry waitress makes a very poor server”, there is time to develop YOUR action plan that includes personal time to do whatever makes you feel enriched.
It’s late in the afternoon and you find yourself calling your favorite massage therapist.
Tonight you will tackle BLUE MONDAY to the ground. You go girl!!!
Sylvia Lafair
Sylvia Lafair, PhD, is President of CEO – Creative Energy Options, Inc., a global consulting company focused on optimizing workplace relationships through her exclusive PatternAware™ Leadership Model. Dr. Lafair is the author of Don’t Bring It to Work: Breaking the Family Patterns That Limit Success published by Jossey-Bass. As an executive coach and leadership educator, she has more than 30 years of experience with all levels of management from leading corporate officers of global companies to executives of non-profits and owners of leading family-owned businesses. She is now offering GUTSY Women Weekends, giving women the opportunity to dialogue and clarify next steps.
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