For many people, January isn’t the best month of the year. In fact, the 16th of January 2023 is known as Blue Monday - supposedly the bleakest day of the year.
Blue Monday falls on the third Monday in January every year. With the Christmas and New Year’s festivities passing us by, usually accompanied by poor weather, financial worries and concerns about attaining our new year’s resolutions, it’s clear to see why January’s third Monday received a bad reputation.
At Kaplan, we want to help you cope and flourish in January and throughout the rest of 2023. That’s why we recently held a webinar to support you in developing a positive mindset.
Event panellists
In our first Mind Fitness talk of the year, we were joined by mental health expert speaker and coach, Ross McWilliam, from Mindset Pro. Ross draws on his personal experiences and career in coaching to support others. He has 30 years of expertise coaching young people and business leaders on mental health and resilience.
Alongside Ross was Kaplan’s very own Jenny Pelling. Jenny is the Director of Apprenticeship Development and Diversity, a Wellbeing Lead at Kaplan and a qualified Mental Health First Aider. She is also the lead at Kaplan for “Brighter Futures,” which focuses on the social mobility of apprenticeships.
Key topics we explored
What is Blue Monday?
We discussed how Blue Monday gets its name, with contributing factors including post-Christmas emotions, employment hopes and fears, and that 75% of new year’s resolutions have typically failed by the 16th of January. However, it doesn’t need to be a negative day or month, and ‘failing’ your new year’s resolution just means that next time you will have more knowledge and experience when trying again.
Turning Blue Monday to Gold Monday: Gold Month and even Gold Year
Ross provided five key points to help transform ‘Blue Monday’ to ‘Gold Monday,’ and eventually a Gold Year, discussing ways how to:
- Visualise. Change your mindset by having an exciting vision of what you want to achieve and how you want to achieve it.
- Understand how good habits and behaviours are formed by assessing your routine, cues and cravings, and how to develop self-control.
- Take on challenges with action. Instead of just thinking about it, act on it. We learn more from our actions than our inactions, and we learn more from our failures than our successes.
- Positively reflect on any disappointments as an opportunity. With coaching techniques to help you become aware of triggers and behaviours, you can reframe the past, you can leave your failures behind, learn from them and move on.
- We must give ourselves self-love and not self-sabotage. We are often our own biggest threat when it comes to success, Ross discussed how you can fight back against feeling low and measure your quick and sustained wins.
Well-being resources at Kaplan
If you need any support while studying or with your general well-being, we have support available to you.
At Kaplan, many of our staff are mental health first aiders, and you can find well-being and mental fitness resources on our learner well-being page where you can find the relevant people to speak to if you need some advice and support.
If you are an apprentice, you can also get in touch with your Talent Coach for the link to the Learning My Way microsites where you can resources.
You can also find advice by:
If you do have any safeguarding concerns, please raise this by contacting our Safeguarding Team at safeguarding@kaplan.co.uk.