80% of people experience this. And it’s ruining their career.

When I was very early in my career, I took a job working in a big London creative agency. I’d only been living in London for just over a year and I thought working in a big creative agency was ‘the right thing to do’ for my Creative Industry career. 

Day 1 was a bit uncomfortable. But that’s to be expected, right? It was my first day. But by the end of the first week, I was struggling. The culture was off for me. We were expected to work a minimum 12 hours a day. There was a lot of post work drinking (and other more legal stuff!). And my boss was sleeping with one of the girls in our team.

I hated it. It was definitely not my vibe.

The following Sunday I experienced something I’d never experienced before in my career - The Sunday Scaries.

And on Monday morning I experienced what 80% of all workers experience - Monday Morning Dread.

While it is an estimate, 80% is a VERY high number in my humble opinion. That means - statistically - on any given Monday morning, if you walk past 10 people on the way to work, 8 of them are dreading it. It is wrong that so many people experience the Monday Morning Dread.

2 months later, I quit that job.

The month after that, I started working for Nike. 

And for 8 long years, I never experienced Sunday Scaries or Monday Morning Dread again. In fact, I became what I like to call a ‘Monday Morninger’ - a person who jumps out of bed on a Monday, excited for the week ahead because they love their job and find purpose in what they do.

Because if there are 80% of people who dread Mondays, the flip side is there are 20% who don’t feel that dread.

The problem is, most people have never known what it feels like to be a Monday Morninger. It’s a total foreign concept to them.

And so they continue on where they are, having the Sunday Scaries, followed by the Monday Morning Dread, and they never question if there is another way.

But there is another way...

And it all starts with acknowledging that it’s not normal to hate Monday mornings. Most people are surrounded by the rest of the 80% who hate Mondays too and don’t understand that there is a much better way.

Acknowledging this is Step 1. Once you acknowledge that there are Monday Morningers in the world, you’ll start to see them everywhere. And when you start to see the evidence that a lot of people love their jobs, you’ll start to believe it can be that way for you.

The next step is to understand what you need

It is important to understand yourself and what environments you perform at your best in.

This means you need to go deep on understanding what your values are, what your motivations are, your personality type, the stage of life you are at and the impact this has on your career.

You need to take all of this information about yourself and use it to create a picture of the type of environments that you do well in.

Below are some starting points. But if you would like a full process to follow, I have a mini-course called Total Clarity that takes you on the journey to work out what you need from your career right now. You can check it out here

Questions to Ask

If you aren’t ready for a full course, here are 5 question sets you can ask yourself that will help you to understand what you need in a role and the company you work for:

1. What season of life are you in (marriage, children, single, early/mid/late career)? What do you need from a job in this season of life?
2. What are your top 6 values? Are these being met in your current role? If so, how? If no, why not?
3. Have you ever worked for a boss or senior leader that you have really respected and admired? If yes, what did you admire about them? If no, who in your wider life do you admire and why?
4. If you had to describe your personality in 5 sentences, what would you say? What kind of work place might better suit your personality?
5. Have you ever been a Monday Morninger? If so, what was it about that job that made you love Monday Mornings? If no, why has this been the case?

Spend a good 5-10 minutes pondering each of these question sets. Brain dump your responses. Then leave them for a week. And revisit them. Often time can be good to help reflection.

Using the information in your brain dump, write a story as to what your ideal workplace might look like.

Then get on the job hunt! Take action to make this ‘story’ a reality.

We are all responsible for our own careers. Once you know what the ideal workplace looks like, stop at nothing to find it. Because trust me, every Monday Morning there are people waking up who are so excited to go to work.

And life is so much better when you are one of them.