Sometimes, waking up on Monday gives me a stomach ache. I think about all the things before me and am overwhelmed before I put my feet on the floor.  I don’t want to have this relationship to life on any day.  So I have come up with a few antidotes to the Monday internal crunch.  First, I meditate, usually on the powerful Shakti goddesses that fill me up with protective energy and the feeling of abundance. Actually, I start everyday with meditation because it so dramatically changes the quality of how I think and feel.

After I meditate and I begin to contemplate the week ahead, I take myself out of it a few paces by reminding myself of the truth of time and mortality. Having just had my father pass away and realizing the regrets that often don’t surface until after we are gone,  I remind myself how small this work really is, in the scheme of things. The truth about our daily lives is that we get to do what we do, for a relatively short time in the scheme of things. So why not love it or, at least, move towards it with a sense of wonder and curiosity, instead of dread.

The next thought that usually comes to me to replace my anxiety about starting the week is that for most of us, life is a problem solving activity.   Its just what we get to do every day. There isn’t really a there to get to; there is just the process ever renewing and changing about how to do it a little bit better.  Some weeks the problems feel really huge, like too big to even get your arms around them.  This is when you can get a stomach ache waking up any day of the week.  The best idea for these moments is to break up the problem into smaller pieces that give you a chance to accomplish something.

That is what is important, the feeling that you can interact and shift your perspective or the situation, even just by 5%.  Sometimes the best thing that happens on a Monday is just coming clear on the fact that there is always something to do, always a way to make it slightly better.  This Monday is beginning with a profoundly sad ending:  The memorial ceremony of a young woman.

The key is to feel, to keep feeling, to not be afraid to feel. This is how life moves through us and allows us to come back to problem solving.