Dealing with Blue Monday!

Dealing with the dreaded Blue Monday

Festivities over, Bank balance is low, new year resolutions have already been broken and the weather is dreary and today you are garnering all the effort and strength you can to get into work on time to a job that you are just not inspired by — it is Blue Monday and you are not alone. Research shows that today is the most depressed day of the year after the highs of the festivities reality sets back in and all that is wrong with life is now heightened and seem glaringly overwhelming.

Today is the day when we will have the most arguments in our relationships as we express our misery and frustration on those nearest to us. Today is the day we will feel the loneliest and that will be aggravated as we scroll through the dozens of tweets and status updates of millions of others on social media who are feeling the same, of course making us feel worse.

Today is the day that we are most likely to start breaking our New Year Resolutions, which unfortunately make us feel even worse leaving us with a sense of failure, self loathing and low self esteem. This can create a vicious cycle that can take weeks to get out of and gets added to all the other beliefs we hold about ourselves that are limiting and all the while as the years go by becoming more and more disillusioned with life rather than inspired with life.

It is wiser to ‘Thrive life rather than Survive Life’ and here are some tips on dealing with Blue Monday today which you can apply every day which will also assist you in changing your ‘physical state’ which then allows you to start taking action that inspires you rather than despairs you and create a thriving life. These tips revolve around building self love which builds self esteem and confidence. We can not thrive in life unless we are confident and to have confidence we need self esteem.

• One of the easiest ways to change our state is to do something kind, compassionate and loving for someone else. Do something today that brings a smile to someone else. That could be a significant other or a complete stranger. The more you focus on doing something for loving for someone else the more inner happiness and gratitude you will feel for yourself and that will dramatically change your state.
• Take a good look at your life — do you have a life plan? or are you surviving from day to day, month to month or even year to year? very often New Year Resolutions focus on ‘fixing what you feel is wrong with you’ van Niekerk suggests instead to create a life plan. A life plan of 1, 2, 5, 10, 15 and even 20 years and beyond. Doing this will take you out of the sense of gloom that harder times may present and helps you stay focused on your bigger picture. Once you have your life plan then start mapping out action steps to achieve that plan.
• This one is possibly the hardest to do today but yet it will be the greatest gift you can give yourself, when we are feeling overwhelmed like you may be feeling today the last thing you want to do is consciously change your state because we naturally want to lash out to the world and blame everybody else for all that is wrong as we see it. So today commit to doing something that will bring you joy, something inspiring, even if that is taking a walk, listening to the music you love that you have not listened to in ages, do something, anything that brings you happiness because so often we get caught up in the day to day life chores, we totally lose touch with ourselves and what we love to do.

It is nothing more than a choice, acting on these tips is a decision that can irreversibly alter your life forever as you apply them each and every day.

More about Judy van Niekerk

Judy is an international bestselling author, business and relationship expert, founder of Charge Your Challenges and International Day to Celebrate Your Challenges. She works with emerging entrepreneurs in developing countries to empower themselves materially and also works with people globally to transform their lives from Surviving to Thriving. She believes that the greater your challenges in life the greater the opportunity you have to thrive as you have gained gifts and skills that you can apply to thrive and create the life you would love. She has studied and researched her theories for decades using her own traumatic life experiences to thrive in her own life. Judy’s work has been featured in numerous media around the globe in USA, SA, UK and Ireland for the past number of years.

More info on Judy — www.JudyVanNiekerk.com