Can we talk tomorrow? I have something urgent to discuss… [aka my experience of Blue Monday 2022]
Ever heard of Blue Monday?
Some people use this term to refer to the 3rd Monday of January which they claim is the most depressing day of the year. Apparently by this point in the year, most of us have given up on our New Year’s resolutions, our finances are stretched after Christmas but pay day is still another couple of weeks away, and its dark and cold outside (if you live in the Northern Hemisphere) so no wonder we feel down 😔.
It turns out that Blue Monday was actually made up by a travel company as a way to sell more holidays. Fair enough; if making up a “thing” to sell more of your product is good enough for De Beers and their diamonds then who is to begrudge the travel company.
What’s really interesting though is that Blue Monday seems to resonate with many people and maybe it’s a case of the placebo effect or just an example of the amazing power of suggestion 🤔.
Why am I talking about Blue Monday?
I’ve never been one to feel that down at a particular time of the year (my negative episodes are much more related to more material things going on in my life) and have usually breezed straight through this made up day with no worries but this year was a little different…
On the evening of Blue Monday, I was sent a message from a close acquaintance saying “Can we talk tomorrow? I have something urgent to discuss”
And that was it…
No further context, no more information, not even some indication of when exactly we would talk about it.
It’s amazing how 10 words can spark a rapidly uncontrollable chain of thoughts in your head 🤕.
At first, my mind was awash with intrigue as I ran through all the ‘hero’ reasons they might want to talk to me:
- Maybe they wanted to discuss something exciting like a surprise party for a friend or booking a holiday together
- Maybe they wanted to draw on my advice on a particularly tricky subject
- Maybe they wanted to borrow something from me
- Maybe they were in trouble and needed my help
- …
The list goes on.
It wasn’t long though before my mind went to much darker places:
- Maybe some bad news had befallen them (I was thinking something to do with their health or the law)
- Maybe they were angry and wanted to tell me off about something
- Maybe they wanted to end our friendship
- Maybe they had been hiding something from me and wanted to reveal it
- …
Worryingly, my creativity was far more active when coming up with negative reasons why they may want to talk urgently rather than positive things and this is where my mind couldn’t help but gravitate.
I’d be lying if I said that it didn’t weigh on my mind for the rest of the evening. For several reasons I knew that I couldn’t speak with them there and then; suddenly Blue Monday was looking like it might just come true for me.
So, did Blue Monday strike?
As luck would have it, I used to run a training course that had a module with this exact same scenario:
We would tell participants to imagine that they had pulled an all nighter at work preparing for a big pitch to a client and then come into the office late the next morning only to find a post-it on their desk saying that the boss wanted to speak to them urgently.
We would then get them to write down all the emotions they were feeling at that exact moment as well as all the reasons they thought the boss might want to speak to them.
It was fascinating when running the course to see 95% of participants talk about negative emotions and list terrible reasons their boss might want to speak with them.
In the end we would reveal that the boss was ringing with good news about a promotion and go on to discuss why their minds had gone instantly to negative thoughts and how these assumptions can impact our health and effectiveness.
With this in mind I knew not to start making assumptions and if I was going to, then to focus on positive assumptions.
My brain began looking for all the positive pieces of evidence that it could (such as what we had talked about last, how happy they had seemed, etc). I also began to remind myself of other times I had been in a similar situation and what had happened on each of those occasions (generally it’d been absolutely fine). Lastly I simply told myself that even if it was bad news then in the grand scale of things was it bad enough for me to use my one wish* to find out immediately.
[*for context I often use the idea that I have my own personal genie in a bottle but the genie can only offer me one wish. I use that to assess how bad things are in the sense “would I use my one wish on this event”]
What happened next? Don’t leave us hanging…
With my mind mostly put at ease, I then called it a night wrapping up Blue Monday. I must admit that I had a slightly restless night as my mind dwelt on the message a little but I still got my 7 hours. I awoke refreshed and went about my day with my usual enthusiasm.
It was later that evening that I was able to speak with my friend and… well, all I can say was that the news they shared was big but definitely not scary in any of the ways that I had imagined. In fact, it was lovely that they felt they could share it with me and I’m certain will go a long way to strengthening our relationship.
And that’s it.
Is there a moral to be taken from my Blue Monday 2022 experience?
Probably but what do I know?
If anything, my key takeaways are:
- Blue Monday is all bullsh1t
- Your own mind/assumptions can be far more depressing than the reality
- In the long run, very few things are ever that bad
Right, that’s all for this blog folks. Enjoy Green Thursday, Mauve Friday or whatever colour day you are experiencing right now and I’ll see you on the next blog 🙂
Faris is the CEO and Founder of Shiageto Consulting, an innovative consultancy that helps firms and individuals sharpen their effectiveness.
Success = IQ x EQ x FQ
