At HorseBack, we like to start the week with a bang, not a whimper. The stories you tell yourself about things make a huge difference to how you feel about them. The old trope of benighted workers trudging into Monday with a sink of the heart is so embedded in popular culture that most people don’t challenge it. Monday is rotten and Friday is glorious, and that’s all she wrote.
But Monday can glitter and gleam with possibility. It’s the beginning of a whole new week, in your one and only life on this miraculous earth. You can forget last week, with its muddles and mistakes, and start again. If you see Monday as a clean slate, a place where anything can happen, then you are kicking off on a hopeful note instead of a doomy one.
You will know by now that we at HorseBack are huge believers in the team. We believe in the community and, when we look at our horses, in the herd. In other words, you can’t do this living business on your own. Life can be complicated and baffling and sometimes painful, and we don’t shy away from that fact. But difficulties can be less frightening if you have someone in your corner. Everyone needs a crew.
So, it’s not just that you can tell yourself a better, brighter story, it’s that you need someone in there with you. A galvanising way to start the week is to rope in one of your best and most lovely friends. All it takes is a five minute conversation with that person, and the Monday gremlins don’t have a chance. It’s a delightful idea to schedule that in, every single Monday morning, so that you have something to look forward to and something to boost you. It’s one of those small things that makes a huge difference, and we love those small things.
You could also be that person. It is by giving that you receive, so nominating yourself as the cheerful Monday morning voice for someone who is struggling has a potent double action. You get to make another human being feel better about themselves, and you have the wonderful feeling of having put some good into the world. And that’s before you have even left for work.
In our many years of experience at HorseBack, helping people with all kinds of mental health challenges, we have discovered that racking up the small things is what makes the change. You don’t need one, epic transformation. That is hardly ever possible. You just need to find many tiny, incremental shifts – of perception, of action, of attitude – and they all add up, and suddenly there is light where there was once darkness.
