Good Afternoon to our readers from the team here at Be, Lou here today bringing you our #workplacewellbeingwednesday blog.
This week started with a trending hot topic of Blue Monday.
Blue Monday is regarded as the most depressing day of the year, the 3rd Monday in cold, bleak January. Generally, before the long awaited first payday after the festive season, and when a lot of us can feel the once exciting enthusiasm for new year’s resolutions, and shiny new gym memberships are fading into greyness.
It’s easy to see on those elements alone how they can have a detrimental impact on our mood and wellbeing, it was a life coach called Cliff Arnall who initially coined the phrase citing these aforementioned reasons. When the term was first described some 14 years ago, it was way before hashtags and indeed the open conversations about Mental Health took such a precedence. As it currently stands 405,635 people on Instagram posted about Blue Monday, almost double that on Twitter just this week. The great news about this, is that those conversations are happening that trending topic, and hashtags bringing those important conversations about emotions and mood to our forefront, moreover due to the fact that they are so publicly displayed this further decreasing that stigma of raising our hand and saying, “I’m not ok”. We received are chatter box packs from Time to Change this week, as we continue our planning for Time to talk day on the 1st of February. In wearing these stickers, using these postcards and sharing this on social media again this creating on open platform for these important conversations which ultimately will allow those with poor mental health to feel less alone, and hopefully understood.
It’s crucial to understand that low mood, and poor mental health generally isn’t restricted to a particular date in January. It can leave us feeling consistently low, with no motivation and can also feel like you are wearing a lead suit of darkness, completely engrained into your being down to every atom, you may start to not recognise yourself and things that you used to be able to do now seem totally unachievable. For those of us who encounter those feelings, the suggestion of Blue Monday can almost feel as if trivialising that suffering we feel, as generally poor mental health isn’t so considerate to just lend itself to one day.
One of the strongest tools we all have inside each of us, even when it feels like its buried it’s still a tool that we can develop and use with all its might, and that tool is Resilience. Resilience is the acceptance of having difficulties, relationship issues, stress, anger, work issues, traumas the list goes on as its life happening to all of us without exception, with resilience we still feel those blows, we feel wounded, stretched and strained but we aren’t broken.
We all are the driving force in our own lives, and undeniably in our own minds, we all have the power to make positive changes to creative the life and experiences we want. Sure sometimes it takes a lot of work, and strategies, WRAP plans, self care, counselling but the darkness CAN and WILL lift. We all need to take time to set back and recognise our worth (then add tax), and then take steps to invest in that to ensure we are our best versions of ourselves.
Here at Be, you can take that step, we offer counselling in a time to suit your life and demands with a team of dedicated counsellors who are passionate at working with you to overcome difficulties, we also run a selection of accredited courses and workshops designed to enrich your wellbeing details can be found here
If you would like more information or to have a chat about how we can support you, please call 0191 691 3500.
As for Blue Monday, keep the conversations coming, reach out to friends and colleagues show kindness and care for those struggling but most of all know that feeling blue is temporary, we are all capable of feeling all colours, and we are all capable of being that change and our best selves. There is always Hope, full stop.
Have a great week everyone from all of us here at Be.