Don’t let this stereotype ruin your week 

A lot of bad things can happen on a Monday. 

I mean, how many times have you tried to have a good start to your week only to have everything work against you? You try to stay positive, force a smile, and close your eyes as you lose grip of your coffee cup and the next thing gets ruined. 

We’ve all been there. We’ve all struggled through the pain of a Monday morning. We’ve also framed Monday as forever bad.

But what if I told you that society engrained this stereotype into our minds? What if we didn’t let the Monday stereotype affect us so much? What would happen if we changed our perspective about Mondays and forgot that it could ever be bad again? 

I truly believe that when we change the narrative, we won’t feel so discouraged about things society wants to depress us with; like the conventionally labeled “bad Monday.” Yes, we will have bad days. But they won’t always be a Monday. 

From a young age, our minds were trained to think a certain way. We picked up habits from our parents, teachers, other adults, friends, and peers. To this day, we imitate the habits of others we watch up close and from afar, and those we spend the most time with. 

As we grow older, and no matter our age, it’s our responsibility to change the way we think, especially when it becomes unhealthy. It’s essential to keep learning despite how much and what we know. We need to allow ourselves room to get challenged and to get uncomfortable. This includes changing our perspective of Mondays. 

Mondays have gotten stereotyped to the “worst day of the week.” Almost everyone and their great aunt’s cat hate Mondays. But it’s crazy how we can hinge on the day’s name to determine our attitude and the way we live our life. The days of the week help us keep track of the calendar, not our moods.

When Monday rolls around, a brand-new day starts (thankfully!); when Tuesday starts, a brand-new day starts, and so on. So, I want to challenge us to fight against the stereotype that has ruined so many previous weeks in our lives. I want to encourage us to enjoy every day as if it’s the last, and to do what we love and be around those we love as if it’s “always Sunday” (another stereotype for another post). We need to learn how to live FULL of every day, because tomorrow is its own.

There are three things we can do to help us shake off the Monday stereotype. It’ll take some practice, but I guarantee it works when we commit to it. (It worked for me!). Ready? 

Change your thoughts 

The overarching thing we can do to not let the Monday stereotype ruin our week is change our thoughts. The Monday stereotype stuck because it didn’t leave our minds. We heard someone complain, and we latched onto that complaint as if it was our own. But when we change the way we think and fill our minds with healthy, positive, and encouraging thoughts, we change the way our days and weeks flow. There’s a great analogy for this. 

Imagine a cup of clean water and a spoonful of dirt getting dumped into it. There’s still a lot of water in the cup, but now there are dirt pieces floating around. If we try to take the dirt out with that same spoon, we won’t avail much. We will take some dirt pieces out, but more of the water than the little dirt chunks. But if we take a pitcher of water and pour into the cup, the dirt pieces will come out by themselves, because it’s being replaced with new water. 

Likewise, our minds collect spoonfuls (or buckets) of dirt, and we often try to pick out each negative thought. We fixate on one chunk at a time and beat ourselves up for “going around the same mountain again.” When we “overcome” a certain thought, we realize there’s more. And that’s defeating. We feel like failures. But if we filled ourselves with pitchers of fresh, clean water AKA encouraging, life-giving thoughts, we will eradicate the dirt out and ultimately, live a more positive lifestyle.  

God is so gracious to have preserved His word, the Bible, for us. It is alive and active, fresh, clean, and life-giving. When we fill our thoughts with His word and affirmations, it’s as if we (and the Spirit of God) pour a fresh pitcher of water into our minds. 

We can do the following three things to help us change our thoughts:

1. Practice gratitude: throughout the entire Bible, we see an attitude of thanksgiving. Jesus Himself practiced gratitude and thanked the Father for His provision, and Apostle Paul encouraged the churches to continue in thanksgiving. Psalms are filled with verses of thanksgiving which we can learn from. But even apart from the Bible, the secular world has taken this principle and helped many people transform their lives through this practice. Counselors, psychologists, and the self-help industry recommend practicing gratitude to help change thoughts. 
2. Reflect on God’s daily new mercy: did you know God’s mercy is new EVERY morning? (Lamentations 3:22-23). This is an astounding truth. Mercy is also defined as compassion, and when we are shown compassion (daily!), we get inspired to pass it on! God’s mercy has the power to change our thinking patterns, but we must acknowledge it and remind ourselves it’s there. When we reflect on His daily new mercy, not only do our minds change, but so do our hearts. And this makes it easier to practice gratitude and become more grateful.
3. Challenge the stereotype: when you think negatively about Mondays (or any day) practice gratitude, reflect on God’s mercy, AND challenge the stereotype. Consider questioning why you have such a negative approach to this day, and any other day, too. Where did you hear that “Mondays” are bad? Who said “Mondays” are the worst? It came from somewhere else before it came from you. So, challenge the stereotype in your mind, and then go back to step one and two.