Swap your ‘Blue Monday’ for blue skies
Time to fight those January blues
We’ve got the solution to make the most depressing day of the year a little bit brighter. Each year, the third Monday of the year is referred to as ‘Blue Monday’, like Mondays weren’t bad enough all already. New Year’s resolutions are fading, those dreary winter days seem to be dragging on forever, and blue skies seem too far away to bear.
Originally devised by psychologist Cliff Arnall in 2004, the phrase has received a lot of bad press and has often been referred to as ‘just a PR stunt’.
“I was originally asked to come up with what I thought was the best day to book a summer holiday but when I started thinking about the motives for booking a holiday, reflecting on what thousands had told me during stress management or happiness workshops, there were these factors that pointed to the third Monday in January as being particularly depressing,” Arnall told The Daily Telegraph back in 2013.
Last year, Arnall told The Independent newspaper that it was “never his intention to make the day sound negative”, but instead “to inspire people to take action and make bold life decisions”.
With an average of 3036 sunshine hours per year in Southern Portugal, compared to England’s 1520,
Booking your next holiday to the Algarve might not be the boldest life decision you’ve ever made, but it will certainly brighten up your ‘Blue Monday’!
