Are you starting to feel better? Perhaps you’re sitting at your desk with a flavourful espresso, flicking thought the newspapers and thinking that life isn’t so bad after all. You quite enjoy your job, have an amazing family, and your weekend road trips across the island make you feel alive. It’s been a wonderful journey so far, hasn’t it? An amazing learning curve. You didn’t feel that way on Monday though, did you? On Monday, everything felt… wrong. How do we know that, you ask? Because the third Monday of January is, statistically speaking, the year’s most depressing day. It’s when the highest percentage of people report feeling pessimistic and low-spirited.

Psychologists call it Blue Monday. A particularly creative British doctor even attempted to create an equation –  [W + (D-d)] x Tq ÷ [M x Na] – to explain why we’re all down in the dumps on that day. W stands for weather (usually uninspiring in January, at least in Europe, although our cyclone season isn’t much fun either). D stands for debt (high after the end of year shopping feast), and d for salary (gone, since we got our December wages early). T is for the time that has passed since the holidays, and q for the time it took for us to break our New Year resolutions. M stands for motivation to work (zero – we’re still in holiday mood!) and Na for the need to take action to become better versions of ourselves.

Sounds like rocket science? It’s not. All it really means is that on the third Monday of January, most of us are virtually out of cash, struggling to accept that the holidays are over and feeling disappointed in ourselves for having failed (already!) to quit smoking/cut out sugar/whatever we vowed to do in 2018. The good news is that after Blue Monday, the majority start feeling positive about life again. If ever you don’t – if you really can’t forgive yourself for that broken resolution or for not being as perfect as you would like to be – here is a fun fact: Keeping New Year’s promises is not the best way to fight pessimism anyway.

Among the most common resolution is 2018, according to a poll, is to lose weight, save money and join a gym. Those are all great promises, but weight or money are not the main determining factors of psychological wellbeing. The real solution is much simpler. What matters most, according to a large-scale Harvard University study on happiness that went on for nearly 100 years is… the quality of our interpersonal relationships. So, go and make a cup of coffee for a colleague. Ask your grandma how she is doing and don’t look at your smartphone again until she is done with her answer. Play dominoes with your nephews. Talk to strangers. Make bonfires with friends. Statistically and scientifically speaking, it’s your best bet for a positive 2018.

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