Here is how you can prep your brain to look forward to Mondays

“Oh, no. It’s Monday again!!” Waking up on the first day of the week after a thrilling weekend is full of blues and a sense of difficulty in settling back into the grind. Some people often start feeling anxious on Sunday evening and they dread Monday morning.

Although you cannot always have ways to make your Mondays interesting, you can definitely ‘reprogramme’ your brain to think differently about the week ahead.

As the brain loves predictability and routine, you can introduce routines that last the whole week like hitting the gym and making lives more meaningful. Studies suggest it would be helpful to do these things simultaneously every day.

Another research shows that keeping consistent sleep time may be as important for enjoying Mondays as how long your sleep lasts or it’s quality. If you have a disturbed sleeping pattern over the weekend, it may trigger discrepancies in your body clock. Consequently, you will have higher stress levels on Monday morning.

Moreover, keeping a constant time for going to bed, waking up, and avoiding small naps will help in feeling fresh on Monday. Reportedly, hormones also play a crucial role in how we feel on Mondays. Cortisol, an important multi-function hormone, is usually released about an hour before we wake up, and then its levels lower until the next morning, unless we’re under stress.

Studies point out that cortisol levels, measured in saliva samples of full-time working individuals, tend to be higher on Mondays and Tuesdays, with the lowest levels reported on Sundays.

Experts suggest that it would be better to wait for cortisol peak to decrease naturally, which happens approximately one hour after waking up before you expose yourself to external stressors. One should avoid checking phone, social media, and the news right after waking up. Following these tips can trick your brain into believing that your weekdays can be as fun as weekends.