Don’t let Monday w[h]in[e]

It’s Monday, the start of a new week and i want to encourage you to let that thought inspire you.

How you feel about Mondays may very well affect the trajectory of your week, so start with your head looking up, filled with optimism for the possibilities that lie ahead and see what happens from there.

i jumped on to Facebook early this morning to see a post from my friend Justine Beukes which called people to the idea that Mondays don’t have to suck, and i believe she is right.

Choose your trajectory

Life might be hard for you right now – it is for a lot of people – and yet your circumstances really do not have to determine your attitude.

i believe quite strongly that my attitude about something will likely play a huge role in how that thing is experienced. If i start my week thinking Monday sucks, then i’m already on a negative spiral before anything has even happened. My radar has been set to pick up things that suck about this particular day so that i can verify the truth i have already called into being. So any tiny little thing that does suck will confirm my idea that Mondays suck and just add to that belief.

But if i start the week speaking life into the day and the week ahead, then i am more likely to be on the look out for things that are great about the day and they will inform the narrative i am creating and speak truth to the idea that Monday is a great day.

Change the Tune

On Friday night i spent a few hours with a relatively new friend who basically walked me through his love of Led Zeppelin, playing me music videos from his favourite songs from their albums. We moved on to some live U2 performances and then bounced back between songs he loved and songs i loved and how many of those were the same with U2’s ‘One’, Springsteen’s ‘Philadelphia’ and Coldplay’s ‘The Scientist’ all being in there, until the women finally joined us and culminated in a live Brett and Heidi rendition of ‘Ice, Ice, Baby’…

But it was so great – i know Led Zeppelin are such an iconic band for so many people but have never really explored their music beyond some of their classics and so getting to see them through Darroch’s eyes and excitement was incredible.

So if you have the ability to listen to music while you work or whatever it is you do during the week, what can you put on your playlist that will give you a lift.

For me, it’s the theme song to Pirates of the Caribbean which i just bought [the soundtrack of the first movie] – it’s largely classical and just so uplifting. R.E.M.’s ‘It’s the end of the world as we know it’, Black Eyed Peas ‘I got a feeling’, Flo Rida’s ‘Jump’, ‘Crazy’ by Gnarls Barkley, Moby’s ‘In my heart’, ‘Uprising’ by Muse, P!nk’s ‘Raise your glass’ and ‘Just Like Fire’, P.O.D.’s ‘Alive’, Queen’s ‘Somebody to love’, ‘That’s not my name’ by The Ting Tings, Walk the Moon’s ‘Shut up and Dance’, Billy Joel’s ‘We didn’t start the fire’, AC/DC’s ‘Thunderstruck’ [of course!], M83’s ‘Midnight City’, Mumford & Sons and Baaba Maal’s ‘There will be time’, Wilson Phillips ‘Hold on’, ‘Something just like this’ by The Chainsmokers and Coldplay, and of course ‘Me Too’ [If I was you I’d wanna be me too!] by Meghan Trainor… those are just some of the songs that would make it onto my list.

What are some of your top ten songs that will give you a vibe and help lift you emotionally and help you to believe that this is actually going to be more of a kick ass day than you might have initially anticipated?

Let’s make this a good one

So that’s it – choose to seize this Monday and not let it get you down. Opportunities to thrive at work, invest in relationships, put right some things that went wrong last week, try that new thing you’ve been wanting to do for a while and try an experiment in the kitchen [a food one i mean, not a bringing a monster to life kind of experiment – that won’t end well!] or get started on that book you’ve been meaning to read for a while.

Anyone with me?

And if you need further inspiration to be lifted, here is my all time favourite Gary Larsen:

Have a super good amazing week. i’m going to.