This is how you beat the Sunday Scaries

Imagine this: you’ve just had a wonderful weekend. You’ve seen your friends, done fun things, and had time to recover from the busy workweek. Yet, on Sunday afternoons, you typically feel a sense of nervousness and unrest creeping in. Your to-do list for the upcoming week haunts your mind, and you feel a tremendous resistance when thinking about the week ahead. Sound familiar? Then you might be suffering from the Sunday Scaries, a phenomenon where you are overtaken by a feeling of reluctance for the new workweek on Sundays. Annoying, because you can’t escape it, and wishing Monday away doesn’t help either. Fortunately, there are a few things you can do right away to make your Sunday a lot calmer.

Live in the now
I hear you thinking: sure, easier said than done. That’s true, but in the case of anxiety about the future, it’s very important to shift focus away from what’s going to happen the next day. A powerful tool you can use for this is meditation. Regular meditation helps you acknowledge your feelings and thoughts without letting them take over. Instead of spiraling down about that one meeting you dread, you learn to let go of those thoughts through meditation so you can get out of your head, enjoy your weekend again, and realize that your worries can really wait until tomorrow.

Explore your options
Research shows that the Sunday Scaries often stem from a feeling of powerlessness in the workplace. You might feel like you always have to be on or that there’s no time to catch your breath in between. It’s understandable that you dread your workweek then. Exploring your options can help. Perhaps there’s a possibility to remove all work-related apps from your phone, you can block certain times in your calendar when no meetings are scheduled, or you take a moment amidst all the busyness to (maybe even through a short meditation) come back to the present. This way, your day can suddenly feel a lot less overwhelming.

Forget multitasking
You might think you’re being productive when you’re busy with work on the weekend and busy with your weekend at work, but nothing could be further from the truth. When you’re trying to do everything at once, your productivity decreases and your ability to enjoy what you’re doing diminishes. By fully focusing on what needs to be done at that moment (in this case: enjoying your Sunday), you get the most out of the moment, which ultimately leads to a feeling of fulfillment that allows you to tackle the workweek fit and refreshed.

Source: Headspace