A Crusade Against Monday Blues – PART II

The Launch of Strike

In this article, I am going to talk about how I took my first steps to achieve a state of complete freedom from Monday blues and what were the initial results.

Btw, if you haven’t read my first article on this Crusade Against Monday Blues, then please Click Here

Don’t get carried away by the last image of my Previous Blog. It wasn’t like I was actually walking on a setting that resembled the dust spiralling scenes in movies like The Hurt Locker or Braveheart.

On the contrary, I was totally clueless on how exactly I am going to invent a mechanism to beat the Monday Blues. My mind was totally blank and at the very juncture of taking my first step, an overflowing sensation of negativity was waiting for me at work.

The very thought of dressing up at 9.00 AM in the morning to head to work and the very sight of my co-workers & boss, were good enough to convince me that How Can Anyone Conquer the Might Monday Blues?”

Photo by Iswanto Arif on Unsplash

This was very frustrating and mentally exhausting as even before I could start, i am starting to feel that I am up against an impossible feat.

1st Vertical Progress:

Photo by Andreas Fidler on Unsplash

Some initial ideas came rushing to me in line with; if Monday Blues are depressing, then what are the opposite scenarios? What are the opposite zones to my workplace, which in the first place delivers Monday blues?

If I am holidaying at scenic slopes of Kasauli or chilling out with my friends in the fanciest restaurant with great ambience, then I am totally feeling the opposite of depression!

So i was wondering, should I first define and demarcate comfort & discomfort zones? Should I also be separating out time zones as Till When it is that I don’t realise i am stung by Monday blues and the after time?

These random ideas eventually turned out to be a kick-start of my expedition. Some kinda of inner connect to get the mind to work in getting answers to the situation I am in.

These may not be concrete answers but at the least I am beginning to realise that there are two zones, whether or not space/time zones, but internally within me there happens to be two. The one that stops feeling happy at the juncture of an end of comfort zone and the one that starts feeling depressed at the start of discomfort zone.

So after all it’s nothing to do with the faces of coworkers or interiors of the office or the corridor lights, but how I process different settings with different emotions – one where I am happy & time flies and another where I am sad & the clock’s hands are stuck to the frame with industrial adhesives!

So here I am with my first battle victory; it’s all in my mind and I need a formula to control it if I want to get rid of Monday Blues!

Setting the stage for more self-discovery:

Photo by Yousef Al Nasser on Unsplash

In order to formulate my mind better, I need to keep track of how my days progress and the events that give rise to negativity engulfing my mind. So, I decided that I need to maintain a daily diary sort of thing, to record everything I undergo during the day. I would come back home by the evening and start typing swiftly on what people said to me or did to me and how it added to my negativity.

Gradually over the course of next few days, I started feeling like gaining grip on things, thanks to the daily log, which helped me to connect more intensely with myself.

My 1st breakthrough:

Photo by Bogomil Mihaylov on Unsplash

Sometime during these initial days, I accidentally stepped into a breakthrough moment! A serendipity at the time when all things I was randomly attempting!

One of these days, I was heading back very late after a really far off client meeting and stooped onto Delhi metro, feeling bone tired.

Another colleague of mine who works in my team was also working late and headed home separately on a different Metro line.

When I finally reached home at 9 PM, having known about his equally tiresome slogging on the field, I thought I should enquire about his well being. So around 10 PM, I just texted him asking whether he reached home. He replied around 10.40 PM saying, just entering.  

The next day, I opened my mail to see a surprise. A new mail in the inbox from this guy.. The subject line reads “Something I realised today”.

I am not alone on the road to realization.

It was a very long mail filled with heavy duty confessions, sent around 1.30 AM and the entire company is marked on the mail!

I could see him having poured truck load of guilt and sorrow related to how he aimlessly roamed around the North Delhi the previous day, lacking even one bit of motivation to work.

To top it all, he explains how he lied to me during the evening phone conversation where he mentions meeting 3 clients while the truth being actually meeting only one!

I was staring at the screen filled with overflow of emotions that had erupted after my last message with him at 10 PM the previous night.  

I couldn’t help but to think of giving myself the credit of showcasing care and compassion, which made him to pour out his emotions and discuss his situation openly. And I was really feeling contend with my job for the next couple of hours (at the least).

So what does showing care and compassion translate to? Taking Complete Ownership of the piece you handle. Now if this makes me feel contend, then is that the secret sauce I am in search of, that would liberate me from Monday blues by instilling in me some potent thing that I can constantly focus on?

The answer is neither a complete yes or a complete no!

As the daily log is back dated to my writing this article, I would soon be sharing why this aforementioned factor in itself is not sufficient! But why it still is an important factor, if not the only factor for defeating Monday Blues.

Stay tuned for that!