Another Monday, another attempt to find new and unusual ways to get unstuck after the weekend, start the week on a productive note, and just make sure we’re not dreading Mondays all together.
Today, something that works not only during Mondays, but in general: try greeting someone you barely know. Ideally, it should be someone you recently met, or someone you don’t know very well, but well enough to not look weird. If you do this to strangers on the street you may come up a little bit too strong.
I do this with baristas, neighbors or location independent peeps I recently met. It’s just a question of saying “Hi, have a nice day, and a really good week!”. It goes especially well if they don’t expect this and it comes just out of the blue.
The way this works is subtle, because you’re not doing something that has a direct impact on yourself, but rather something that has an indirect impact on yourself. It’s not an improvement on your situation, but rather on their situation. But man, the smile on their face, that pleasant surprise, that sudden relaxation you can clearly perceive in their body language, all this have such a big impact on you too. The light that you sparkle shines back on you.
Not directly related to this post, but this, like I said, works not only during Mondays. Saying nice things to people, especially if they don’t expect that, especially if they’re caught in their own whirlwind of worries and stressful thoughts, have a long lasting effect on… you. Yes, it sounds counterintuitive, but that’s only until you understand how the world really works.
Since we’re at it, here’s the short version: there is no such “outside” world, separated from yourself, out there, on its own. The world you perceive is a co-creation, it’s something that you generate with every action, together with all the people that you interact with.
And that’s just another thought to ponder on a Monday morning, one that has the potential to alchemize your week into something way better than you hope you’d have.
Photo by Cristina Gottardi on Unsplash