Monday, 2/22/21: Talking about your tips for a happier Monday and a new-to-me book podcast

Happy Monday!

It’s a new week and time for your next Monday motivation newsletter. Read on below for some steps to a happier Monday, a short story and a roundup of positive thoughts to get your week started.

Three Steps to a Happier Monday

Each newsletter starts with three prompts to inspire gratitude and simple intention setting. Take a moment and jot down answers to these three questions. To give an example, I share my answers below.  

Step 1: What are three things I appreciated from the weekend? 

Step 2: What is one thing I can be excited about today?

Step 3: What is my intention for this week? 

GRATITUDE: From my weekend, I am thankful for time to sleep and rest after a crazy work week, being able to run errands with the convenience of a car and the Tiger Woods documentary, which I enjoyed watching with my dad. 

TODAY: Today I’m most excited about having some more control over my workday schedule. 

INTENTION: It’s my last week in Florida before moving back to Chicago! So, my intention is to spend time outside at least once a day and really appreciate it before I return to the cold next week. 

Okay, your turn! And if you want to share your three steps, I am all ears. 🙂

Meaningful Musings: Tips for a Lighter & Brighter Monday

It’s the last Monday of the month, which means it’s time to share reactions and feedback gathered from the first installment of the Lighter & Brighter series. 
 
The Lighter & Brighter Series is like a monthly book club… but sans books and focused on making everyday parts of life more enjoyable. Every other month, a new topic will be introduced on the last Monday of the month with some ideas on how to make said topic more enjoyable and lighter. If any of it resonates with you, we’ll experiment together for the next month and share feedback on how it’s going. Then, in the month that follows, the reactions and any new ideas will be featured in a newsletter (like today!), so we can all learn from one other.
 
The result? We’ll end 2021 with a tangible takeaway: our very own joy toolbox, filled with a variety of strategies, hacks, tips and tricks for bringing lightness into six different areas of our life.
 
At the end of last month, the question of how do you cultivate a more enjoyable Monday? was posed and I received SO many good suggestions and tips! Thank you to all who shared!! I’m so excited to pass along these ideas today and I can’t wait to start implementing a few into my own Monday routine. 
 
So, without further ado, here are some crowdsourced tips and tricks for pursuing a more enjoyable Monday – enjoy!:
 

Lighter & Brighter Series 01: Tips for a More Enjoyable Monday 

• “One thing I try to do during the work week, but especially on Mondays, is to get up a little earlier than usual to make sure I have time to sit with my coffee while I read the news and catch up on personal emails, before I dive into work.” 
• “In quarantine, I’ve gotten in the habit of baking some kind of healthy-ish breakfast on Sundays, and then I look forward to enjoying it on Monday morning!”
• “I make myself a really nice dinner on Monday nights. My roommate preps meals on Sundays, so it started that I just wouldn’t have access to the kitchen, and now it’s something I really look forward to after work. By the way, one of my favorite tips for making dishes easier is that I sort my silverware in my dishwasher. It’s so much easier to put away when all the spoons, knives and forks are already sorted. This may be a silly or small thing, but I used to hate putting silverware away and now I don’t!” 
• “Mondays are my cleaning day and I actually look forward to it because it just sets my week off right. I know if I can get everything cleaned up and in order on Monday, it will be so much easier to maintain throughout the week.” 
• “On Sunday, I go to the grocery store and pick up some FUN food and snacks for the start of my week. I also like to pick out my mediation for Monday and look at my workout the night before, so I’m excited about it.” 
• “My biggest tip for a more enjoyable Monday starts on Sunday with my Sunday morning prep. I reflect and plan on the big three things I want to do this week and how I want people to feel during interactions with me that week.”
• “I like to plan a mid-week ‘event,’ such as a happy hours or something. to have on my calendar to look forward to past Monday.” 
• “I have a pump-up playlist I listen to going into night shifts. I originally made it for the drive to a board exam, and now it’s my go-to for getting energized.”
• “For a more enjoyable Monday, I keep Sunday evenings open for myself to have time to relax and do whatever I want.” 
• “I always pack my bag for work the night before, plan my breakfast and pack my lunch. For me, if I do it Monday, even if Tuesday is not as organized, I feel like I did one thing right and started the week off right!” 
• “I have ‘weekend-only’ coffee and sometimes I’ll make it on a Monday just to make me feel like it’s still the weekend, and it makes me so happy!”
• “I watch the Bachelor/Bachelorette with a group of people, and I love having an event to look forward to during the day on Monday.”
• “I try not to drink during the work week, but I always treat myself to wine on Monday night.” 
• “Monday and Tuesday mornings are really quiet at the supermarket and other stores compared to Friday-Sunday, so it’s a great time for us to get out and shop with almost no crowds, less traffic and better service. The golf club is also less crowded on Mondays, so I also look forward to that. And on Monday, my wife looks forward to playing bridge and having lunch with friends, such fun that will be resumed as soon as COVID allows. You may be picking up a pattern here… some hate to go back to work on Mondays, and the retirees can’t wait for y’all to go back so that we have better access to shopping and recreation when you are working. 🙂 What can I say, everything makes somebody happy.” (I so agree with that statement!) 

Such great tips, right? Which one do you want to try today?! 

Thanks again to everyone who submitted an idea! If you have a tip or if you try out something from the above, I’d love to hear about it!

Hope you have a great Monday 🙂 

On My Monday Radar

Sometimes we just aren’t ready to jump into our Monday to-do list right away. In case you want some content to procrastinate with, here is a roundup of a few positive things on my radar:  

• Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi blew me away. Over Presidents Day weekend, I started the book Homegoing and couldn’t put it down. I finished it just 48 hours later. It was incredibly heartbreaking and at times hard to read, but it was such a beautiful book and Yaa’s writing is just outstanding. It’s the story of two half-sisters. One is sold into slavery and one marries a white man who works in the slave trade. Every chapter flips back and forth between the two lineages and tells the story of a different descendent, all the way from the 18th century to the 80’s! I usually read e-books on my Kindle, but I was so glad I had the paperback version so that I could easily flip to an illustration of the family tree at the front of the book. Highly recommend and I can’t wait to read Yaa’s next book, Transcendent Kingdom.
• Have you ever heard of the podcast “Moms Don’t Have Time To Read Books?” It features conversations between NYC-based mom and book aficionado Zibby Owens and so many different authors. I stumbled upon this podcast this weekend, and even though I’m not a “mom,” I can’t stop listening! It’s thrilling to hear from the authors of some of my favorite books and all the interviews are just under 30 minutes. And, last week Zibby published a collection of original essays from 60+ authors she’s interviewed on the podcast. The book is titled Moms Don’t Have Time To: A Quarantine Anthology and all proceeds from the book are going toward supporting COVID-19 Vaccine Research. It’s absolutely no secret that moms in particular have experienced quite the upheaval and burden this year and it sounds like the original essays in this book will speak to those ever-increasing demands on time in a unique, literary and timely way.
• I also loved listening to this podcast conversation between Brené Brown and Adam Grant. The two chat about Adam, an organizational psychologist at Wharton, and his new book Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know. The book focuses on the art of rethinking and why it’s important. As the description reads, “in our daily lives, too many of us favor the comfort of conviction over the discomfort of doubt. We listen to opinions that make us feel good, instead of ideas that make us think hard. We see disagreement as a threat to our egos, rather than an opportunity to learn. We surround ourselves with people who agree with our conclusions, when we should be gravitating toward those who challenge our thought process. The result is that our beliefs get brittle long before our bones.” Wow, I can’t wait to read this book. The whole idea of challenging myself to “rethink” makes me nervous and feel vulnerable, but if I’ve learned anything over this past year, it’s the need to be able to think, pivot and think again.
• These colorful weighted workout bangles are making me so happy right now. Ending on a light note! Ever since I started doing Megan Roup’s Sculpt Society workouts a few months ago, I’ve wanted to purchase these svelte-looking ankle weights. But I just couldn’t justify the price! Well, four months later, I’ve finally pulled the trigger after encouragement from friends who had also purchased them and saving up the money. Plus, I knew I had to have them when I saw there was a this joyful rainbow version available (I also love the blush-colored ones). Hey, if it’s something that is going to make me smile when it’s early in the morning and time to workout, then it’s a win in my book. It’s the little things these days!

That’s all for today! I hope you found something in today’s newsletter that sparked motivation, made you smile or inspired a positive Monday thought. Don’t underestimate the power of starting small… a fulfilling week starts with just one fulfilling day. You’ve got this! 

Let’s make it a great Monday!
Megan

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