New Year's Resolutions and Blue Monday - the cure

Happy New Year! As many reckon, we are entering a new decade - the teens. Resolutions will be made, and psychologically, we all have another chance to start over again with a clean slate.

There are many great New Year Quotations about putting behind the Old Year and looking ahead to the New Year: www.quotegarden.com/new-year.html

From this high comes the low when reality bites, again. Resolutions are broken. The memories of Christmas and New Years parties fade. Gatherings with family and friends end. Debts hit. Winter sets in. We settle back into the same old same old. To make it worse, there are no established holidays to look forward to in the near future.

Then depression can hit, most likely on Blue Monday.

The date of this emotional crash has been calculated in the "Blue Monday" formula . (Yes, there is an app for that.) This year it's January 25, 2010.

How to cope with Blue Monday? A ton of advice is out there in cyberspace, but the best advice I found is from the Good Book:

13 Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,
14 I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
Phillipians 3 (KJV)

So beat back Blue Monday with these New Year's Resolutions: FRP - Forget, Reach, Press
1. Forget the things which are behind
2. Reach forward to things which are before
3. Press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling in God in Christ Jesus

I must have been over my blue Monday when I penned this poem in the winter of 1976. (Yes, I know this dates me.)

Success

Don't be afraid to fail

Or your dreams you'll cease to strive

Heed not the mockings of those

Who really are not alive

Look not to the side for direction

To the lamb-skinned wolves nearby

Who say that they do speak the truth

But devour with a lie

Look above for your direction

To the star in the sky

And don't be afraid to fail

And be not afraid to try!

from: smithsk.com/philosophies_success.htm

To my writer friends, keep on writing! To my readers, thank you for your encouragement and support. May God bless you all in your calling for 2010.


photo from:
everystockphoto: happy new year