It all started with hate
It wasn’t that long ago that I dreaded Mondays. Every week, I couldn’t wait for Friday night. I was never a party person, I just enjoyed the freedom that I had on the weekend. To be able to do anything I wanted to do.
This, of course, translated into a dreading of Sunday night. I hated it. The most fun day of my week was always Sunday but I felt like I always had something hanging over my head since Monday was right around the corner. The later it got in the evening, the more I wanted to keep the events going but the less I enjoyed it.
I knew that as soon as it ended, I had to face reality; the week started all back over again the next day.
A weird analogy
There are different kinds of TV shows. There’s the “new story and plot every week” kind and the “continuous story through the season” type (maybe there are actual names for these, but that’s the best I’ve got).
My life felt like the first one of these. I felt like every week I lived for this one day on Sunday and then I repeated a new story every week but with all the same characters. There was no continuation of the plot of life. I had big events every once in a while that got me excited but it was pretty repetitive in general.
What changed?
In the last year, I have started developing a love for Mondays. In many ways, my life hasn’t changed a lot. I moved to Missouri, but a lot of the things that I do aren’t that different from my life before.
What changed wasn’t my circumstances but my mindset.
I started to have a better perspective on the idea that what I do during the week has an impact on the future of what I’m doing with my life. That every job and opportunity has something that you learn from, and you can apply it both in your personal and professional life.
In general, my life started feeling less like the week-to-week cycle shows, and more like the one big continuous story TV show.
Also, personal purpose helped a lot
I’ve had a “plan” set for probably 4 years now. I wanted to get involved with missions, so I wanted to gain skills to serve that purpose. So in a way, I already had a purpose in each of the things that I was doing and learning, however, it hasn’t been until the last 6 months that I’ve understood that I need to be doing my part in this in my personal time as well.
I’ve been focusing on having jobs that have meaning in the bigger scheme of things. I’ve done things like going to a mission training program, working construction, working mechanics, etc. but I haven’t taken the purpose I talked about and looked for ways to increase my ability in my free time.
It’s almost been this idea that my “9-5” is when I pursue the future and then when I’m done I can do whatever I want.
If your life is stagnant, you might never love Mondays
Mondays felt dull because I got my mind off my goals every weekend and took what I thought was “rest and recuperation” time. Even in the evenings after work, I treated life like I deserved to do nothing else because I worked so hard.
This is what most of America does. You work your job so that you can come home and award yourself with sitting on the couch watching Netflix.
Blech.
I hated even the thought of living a life that consisted of this, but I realized that’s the path that I was on.
Enter: Praxis
When I joined the business apprenticeship program called Praxis, I was exposed very quickly to a no-nonsense approach to achieving your goals. If you want to do something, it’s up to you to make the effort to do it. That meant that every night you were taking the steps in your own personal time to start working toward your goals.
If I’m constantly working on making progress on my goals, I never have a Monday feeling because I never have a Sunday feeling. That might sound like “I never have fun anymore because if I have fun then I’ll be sad when I’m not, so I just stay perpetually sad.” That’s not what I mean at all.
Do you ever have that problem of having something that you really enjoy, but you really hate starting it? That’s a lot more how I see this. I love working on a project. I love working towards a goal. But I usually hate starting it. I’m the same way with practicing cello and piano and have a similar love/hate relationship with books.
I made Monday just another day of achieving instead of the first day of achieving.
If every day I’m working towards something, Monday doesn’t feel any different from the rest of my days. Of course I might have a job that I’m currently working, but that job isn’t what defines how I’m growing. I’m growing whether I have it or not. I’m working whether I have it or not. It’s just work I happen to also get paid for.
In some ways, it makes me love it because I get to do something that I know is working to achieve my long-term goals, and I get to do it while getting paid. How cool is that?
The sum?
Do: Turn your life into a continuous suspenseful series with the main character being you.
Don’t: let your job and Monday play the main character in your easily predictable week-to-week crime show life. (Spoiler: the killer isn’t Monday, it’s your mindset)