Case of the Mondays? Try this 5 Second Mind Trick

What happens when you wake up on Monday morning? Does your heart sink concurrently with your brain waking up? Do you have a flash of hope that maybe, just maybe, it’s a 3 day weekend and you don’t have to go to the office today?

We’ve all been there! It’s totally normal, especially if you have a job that isn’t challenging anymore or doesn’t give you a sense of accomplishment at the end of the day. Work can become a total drain, a place you go to feel empty, restless, and underutilized for 40+ hours a week.

Fortunately, because you’re reading this article, and because you’re a go-getter who’s all about trying new things… today will be different. You will take charge of your day, change the way you feel, and turn it all around to feel amazing and productive!

In this article we will go over a simple (note that simple doesn’t mean easy – this is really hard!) exercise for banishing that case of the Mondays for good. Your assignment for today is to follow these steps every time you start to feel down about your day.

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Ready?

Step 1: Acknowledge How You Feel – and Dismiss It (2 Seconds)

Notice how you’re feeling, the words your brain uses to describe that feeling. You want to do this because your thoughts directly impact the way you feel. Take, for example, the last time you thought negatively about someone. Maybe when someone didn’t return your phone call or email and you thought, “ugh! She doesn’t take me seriously”! When you think about that time, can you connect your negative thoughts to the resulting negative feelings? Maybe you felt hurt, annoyed, or disappointed. And you probably didn’t enjoy feeling that way, did you!

So today, when you start to feel your case of the Mondays – acknowledge that you’re thinking crummy thoughts and get real with the fact that those thoughts aren’t doing you any favors. If anything, they’re ruining your day!

Address those thoughts like you do with telemarketers – say hi, be nice, but tune them out and say goodbye before they have a chance to steal even more of your time.

Sound good? Now let’s review.

Step 1 is to recognize your negative thoughts when they pop up, then immediately dismiss them. Step 1 should only take about 2 seconds, but the first couple days you try it, you’ll see that you have to do it multiple times. In fact, when I first started doing this exercise myself I had to dismiss them multiple times an hour!

This step is critical because every time you consciously acknowledge negative feelings, you flex your mental muscles and build a new habit that will eventually make it an automatic, no-thought process with tons of feel-good thoughts (and therefore feelings!) as your payoff.

Step 2: Think of a Better Way to Feel (2 Seconds)

Whenever you feel poorly, there’s a positive alternative. Just like you can pick out different outfits to wear every morning, you can pick out different thoughts that result in different feelings.

Don’t believe me? Try it!
Identify a negative thought or feeling that’s crawling around in the back of your mind right now. Then think of a radically different, totally audacious and positive way to feel instead. Just try it on, like it’s a new shirt. You don’t have to commit, you just have to see if it fits. Share your new thought with us in the comments below!

Here, I’ll do it with you. Right now I have a nagging thought that I’m going to mess up in a presentation I’m giving later today. As a result, I feel anxious and nervous. A better way to feel would be excited that I have an opportunity to go outside my comfort zones, and therefore grow!

Step 3: Choose to Feel the Better Way (1 Second)

Now you have 1 second to choose to feel the better way. That’s it, just 1 second. The time limit is there for a reason– because as human beings (especially as ambitious, high achieving human beings like yourself) we like to over-think things to death.

When you acknowledge your negative thoughts and feelings, and realize there are alternative ways of thinking and feeling, you are left with a choice. Do you choose to continue thinking those negative things? Or do you choose to go with the alternate?

So go ahead. Choose! You have 1 second.

Share Your Results

Did you find this exercise useful? How many times did you find yourself catching negative thoughts? How do you feel now versus how you felt before? Share with us in the comments!

About the Author

Joyce Akiko helps 20- and 30-somethings in unfulfilling 9-5 jobs get new, exciting careers (even those where they have little-to-no previous experience) so they can come home every day with a strong sense of accomplishment. Get her exclusive 3-step guide: “Find Fulfillment When Your 9-5 Doesn’t Provide It” – free for Your Life After 25 readers.