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Start Your Week Great By Ending Your Week Great
I love Sundays in summer, with beautiful evening weather and the promise of a bike ride with my daughter.
The problem is that I also stress about Sundays, since it is typically my day for catching up with incomplete action items and countless unread emails, which back up after a long and busy week.
For years, my weekend included what I called the dreaded Sunday Blues — a non-scientific diagnosis of the anxiety and stress many feel on Sunday when the grind of the following week is upon them.
A while ago, however, I decided to recapture my Sundays and make it a day I enjoy again. Doing so did not require changing my weekly schedule or adding action items. Instead, it was a simple mental shift.
If these Sunday Blues symptoms sound familiar, here are a few tips I have found useful for taking back your Sundays.
Sit In Silence
I am an advocate for spending at least 10 minutes daily in complete silence. I understand this can be difficult for a busy professional — and adding a kid pleading for a bike ride makes it much more challenging.
Silence, however, has been proven to relieve stress, replenish overworked mental resources, regenerate brain cells, and activate our brain’s “default mode network.”