Fortunately, there is indeed a way to stop feeling gloomy at the start of the school year… (Photo: Joshua Rawson-Harris for Unsplash)
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Q. – “I’m anxious, because I know that after each holiday season, I have the back-to-school blues: no energy, no desire to work, not even the desire to smile at colleagues… How to live better the inevitable return to work? – Rose
A. – Dear Rose, you like me, we sometimes feel the blow because we are experiencing the end of something, but we would feel this moment quite differently if ever, instead of seeing it as an end, we rather, we perceived it as the beginning of something else. We think that the holiday season is over, and if we thought instead that the new year, and its incredible share of surprises as unexpected as they were unhoped for, had only just begun…
Good. It’s easy to say that instead of being negative it’s better to be positive, you might say. This is why I was seduced by the words of Maria Angélica Barrero-Guinand, clinical psychologist at Ifeel, a company specializing in employee mental health, regarding the back-to-school blues. Because his comments, made in various media and blog posts, indicate how we can approach this often critical moment with more serenity than usual.
Maria Angélica Barrero-Guinand’s idea is to proceed in three stages.
1. Identify red flags
When we suffer from the back-to-school blues, we sometimes don’t realize that it’s this illness. We lack energy, motivation, joy of living, and we don’t really know why. We tell ourselves that it will pass, and often it takes time to pass, and we sink into dark thoughts.
Hence the interest in being sensitive to the red flags that suddenly start to flutter before our eyes, to fully realize that something is not right within us. “If you want to start the new year on a good footing, you have to listen to your discomfort, and above all not deny it,” explains the psychologist.
2. Transform dissatisfaction into motivation
In order to stop feeling gloomy, the best thing is often to rely on empathy and human contact. Concretely, this can mean taking the time to celebrate reunions with colleagues: chatting for long minutes with each other, laughing in a group around the coffee vending machine, organizing a virtual 5@7, etc. In doing so, it will be appropriate to focus on the “little positive touches” that will appear throughout the discussions, because they will represent the little white pebbles that will lead you straight to good humor and joy.
3. Get moving
Once you are in a better mood, you should take the opportunity to put them into practice. This can be done by applying the SMART method to one or more work objectives that you will set for yourself at the start of the school year:
S for specific and simple;
M for measurable;
A for attainable;
R for realistic;
T for temporal (a duration including a deadline).
In other words, make a small list of tasks to accomplish at the start of the school year and apply the SMART method to it. This will undoubtedly allow you to start the year off on the right foot.
In passing, the Count of Saint-Simon said in “On the Industrial System”: “Society does not live on negative ideas, but on positive ideas.”
2024-01-02 12:42:29
#combat #backtoschool #blues
