Stop Blue Monday.
Monday morning browse on LinkedIn – I read a great post that popped up on my feed. I didn’t know the person but maybe the whole ‘commenting is king’ theory brought it to the fore.
It was a photographer who described an encounter in his local park, watching deer who appeared to be wandering ‘wild’, enjoying a moment by the river - essentially an uplifting post about mindfulness, mental health, rituals, and a touch point on ‘what habits have you kept since the lockdown days?’ – the fake commute walk around the block with a coffee perhaps? I know I still do that sometimes working from home.
The post was cheerful, light-hearted, and got a lot of positive engagement. But, there is always a troll, a nay-sayer, someone who feels the need to comment negatively for no real reason. A comment that rightly infuriated many, advised the author that ‘there is no place for a post like this on this platform’ …. Says who?
Today is widely dubbed as Blue Monday – a term coined by a well known travel company back in 2005 – a PR stunt citing a formula calculated by psychologist Dr. Cliff Arnall which deemed the third Monday in January as the gloomiest of the year. Apparently, this equation calculates the most depressing day of the year precisely. Maybe the nay-sayer of the positive post about the deer was having a blue-Monday moment!
It got me thinking about resolutions – this is probably about the time those go out the window, right? Do more, be better, drink less, lose weight …. Did you make any? Are they still intact? It also reminded me of the need for positivity and values – now more than ever as we enter another year of challenge and complexity.
We recently refreshed our brand and website and spent a lot of time considering our values and what they should be – do they reflect ‘us’, are they true, and can we live by them? As an employee owned company, we were all involved – our opinions mattered. There was debate, it was hard. Someone said – if you have to write your values down, surely there is something wrong? But we got there in the end and the result is just right. They sit at the heart of what we do at Interaction.
You can read more about us, our values and what we do on our website and I think I can say with conviction that every member of our team is proud to live by our values – Care, Connection, Playful, Grounded ….
Dr. Arnall actually apologised for misleading anyone about the third Monday of January and its depressive capacity, underlining an essential message of maintaining good mental health and taking the necessary actions to maintain it.
So flip Blue Monday on its head and think about the positives of the day, the week and the new year …. Leave the resolutions at the door if you need to!
#STOPBlueMonday