Chasing Away Blue Monday Symptoms
If it exists, and there is doubt that it does, Blue Monday has been dubbed the absolute no-holds-barred most depressing day of the entire calendar year. Coming around every third Monday in January (or the second or the fourth), it sneaks up on us every year.
How Blue Monday Came to Be
In 2005 a travel company called Sky Travel distributed press releases proclaiming Blue Monday in January. January 24, 2005 was the first Blue Monday. The whole designation began as an attempt to assist a travel company in determining how factors such as weather, socioeconomic status, New Year’s resolutions, and the winter blahs could be used to determine people’s preference for travel.
A couple of different equations have been used to clarify the calculations supposedly involved in determining Blue Monday, but both have been debunked as pseudoscience.
Seasonal Affective Disorder and Other Potential Causes of a Depressing January Day (or Month)
Debunking and myth-busting apart, there are possible reasons why we tend to feel a bit depressed in January. By the time January rolls around every year, those of us experiencing winter climes are well and truly into winter hibernation mode. Bears have figured out how to avoid things like Seasonal Affective Disorder, but we humans still have not.
Seasonal Affective Disorder is most apparent in people who experience it in the winter when there is less light available. It is a type of ‘blues’ or depression that varies with the seasons. It can be mitigated by putting full spectrum bulbs in overhead lighting in your office and full spectrum bulbs in all your light fixtures at home.
Other potential causes for Blue Mondays include:
- The cold temperatures and inclement weather so common in January keep us from doing as many extracurricular activities as we usually do, so we can feel a bit blue at missing our social lives.
- We have just received our charge card bills from our holiday splurges and find them depressing.
- We receive our year-end statements that are needed to file taxes, and that reminds us of another possible bill – what a depressing thought.
Blue Days Symptoms and Cures
There are certain Blue Monday symptoms that can be found in many offices when Blue Mondays predominate:
- Tempers are a bit shorter and irritability is common.
- People are somewhat lethargic, most likely due to a lack of exercise during the winter time.
- Getting to work on time is more difficult, because most of us want to sleep a bit longer on cold January mornings.
There are some things employers can do to chase away symptoms:
- Introducing a meditation break into the day can help chase away the irritability. Oftentimes, we get irritable when we are feeling out of balance, and meditation can give us a chance to recharge ourselves and rebalance our outlooks.
- Providing an exercise break or an exercise room can also help revitalize employees.
- You can lure employees to work on time with an occasional random offer of breakfast before work.
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