The Monday Mood - a built-in mechanism or a trick of your mind?

Image credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/zaneology/34061034736

5:57... 5:58... 5:59...
Beep... Beep... Beep Beep...
"Fuuuuu...."

"It was just Friday, where did the weekend go..?"
"How the heck can my eyelids feel so heavy..."
"Oh yeah, I only slept like 3 hours because it was so hot here.."
"This porridge tastes so bad, why did I put so much salt in it..."
"Oh crap, I need to hurry if I want to catch the bus..."
"An 8-hour day ahead, how am I going to make it feeling like this..."

Welcome to a typical monday inside the head of Rabbe. I'm sure some of my fellow Steemians can relate, since "Monday mood" seems to be a universal feeling. I've learnt to overcome a lot of negative thoughts in my life, but Monday mood seems to be the "Final Boss" when it comes to remaining positive at all times.

But are Mondays really that bad, or is this just a brilliant example of what a human mind can do?

The "nocebo effect"

We all have probably heard of "placebo effect", where our mind produces a wanted result because we think it will happen. However, there is also such thing as "nocebo effect", an evil twin of placebo. As some of you probably guessed, nocebo effect means that our mind produces a negative result because we wait for it to happen. An extreme example of nocebo effect is a person taking an "overdose" of something he/she thinks will be deadly and then coming up with severe physical symptoms, even though the substance isn't dangerous at all. There have been proven cases where a person has been using placebo-medication, has took an overdose and nearly died. The weirdest thing is, the symptoms stopped after the patient found out the drugs were not what they were supposed to be.

Be careful what you (don't) wish for

So, our mind is a powerful thing. If it can create a near death-situation out of nowhere, how big of a deal is creating fatique, headache and a bad mood? Like asking for Picasso to draw a stickman. So as crazy as it sounds, what if all those "oh damn it's Monday"-thoughts are the reason why Mondays are so tough? It's actually quite believable if you think about it. If you keep telling yourself "Mondays suck, Mondays suck" almost like a mantra, you'll eventually start believing in it. This in turn makes the next monday even worse, which in turn feeds the negative thoughts and so on.

Neutralizing your thoughts might help

Now that we know what kind of magic our head can do, we might be able to use it to our advantage. If negative expectations produce negative outcomes, isn't it logical that positive thoughts should produce positive or at least neutral outcomes? What if we could make our Mondays easier by just thinking of them differently? I don't know about you guys, but I might try this one next week. If it helps at all, then it was worth it. And while I understand that there are some things that make Mondays a bit tougher for us no matter what we think, I honestly feel like the right thoughts could help a lot.

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That's it for today folks. This post was an attempt to open up my own thought processes and to analyze why I have a negative mindset towards Mondays, but hopefully this also helped some of you to understand some things about what goes on in your head. Thank you for reading, please leave a comment if you feel like it and let me know what you think. Until next time. Peace. And happy thoughts. -R