Loving Monday: Too Cheesy?
Loving Monday has been the title of this column for several years now. Today it sounds a little cheesy to me.
Sometimes when work is particularly difficult, diminishing or distressing, words of encouragement can ring hollow. So much rah rah cheerleading for the team suffering a lop-sided and humiliating loss. The sentiment is nice, but it’s not going to affect the outcome of the game.
Go ahead and get it off your chest: “It’s easy for you to say, ‘Choose a can-do attitude!’ (Can you hear the exclamation point in the inspirational speaker’s voice?!), but I am the one having to live with the boss from hell who just cut my budget for the third time this year.”
I hear you. I have long been an advocate for a constitutional amendment banning cheese in consultant speeches and supervisor pep talks. Offering nice sentiments that won’t affect the outcome are worse than useless.
On the other hand… (You didn’t really think I was going to leave it there, did you?)
On the other hand, the by-line at the bottom of this column reads, “Loving Monday is a weekly column designed to encourage us to step into our weeks with an intention to show up authentically, engage fully, and choose to make it a good week for ourselves.”
In this column we are talking about intention and choices. I am encouraging us to intend good for our work efforts and to be specific about that intention. I am encouraging us to match that clear intention with choices that will turn that intention into action.
Far from being cheesy, we are reminding each other that how we show up at work affects our work just as much as (if not more than) the crazy things that are happening around us. We are checking in with how authentically we show up and how fully we engage.
Whether we are going into well-ordered and effective workplaces or crazy-making and soul-crushing ones, we can love Mondays because we becoming people who know how to connect our intention with our choices and bring our full selves to the task at hand.
Now that’s something to cheer about!
On your side,
- Karl Edwards
