Today is January 19th, the third Monday in January, and some people say it´s the most depressing day of the year. In English, it´s called Blue Monday, which could be translated into Spanish as "el lunes triste" (the sad Monday), or if we want to continue with the colour analogies, "el lunes gris" (the grey Monday, as in Spanish we don´t associate the colour blue with sadness).

It´s true that January can sometimes feel like it goes on forever, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, where it´s still wintertime, the temperatures are low, and the days are short... The holiday season, with its lights, joy and celebrations, is now over, and now it´s time to tighten our belts and exercise self-control after the excesses of December. Fun, huh? In Spain, we´ve always called this time of the year la cuesta de enero, with "cuesta" conveying the idea that it´s a struggle, it´s going uphill; Google just translated it for me as January blues, so basically yes, the same idea.

And then on top of that, most probably our New Year´s Resolutions are already out the window, after our enthusiastic start at the beginning of the year... Willpower didn´t last that long.

In view of all of this, if you´re feeling a little low on energy right now, please know that it´s normal and that you´re not the only one; on the contrary. Here´s an image that I hope will lift you up a little bit, even though it´s technically blue:

(Photo of a decorated flat stone I saw one day during a garden walk, with a drawing of our dear Dori, Nemo´s friend, and her favourite phrase: "just keep swimming".)

This week I got a reminder (thanks, Neil!) of the best thing you can do when you´re low on energy: to go back to basics. So this is my proposal to you for this month of January: to take care of yourself again, and regain your strength, so that you can then focus on whatever you want to achieve.

By the way, if you´re wondering why your New Year´s Resolutions didn´t work this year either, perhaps it´s because you stayed on the superficial portion of your iceberg, and you need to dive closer to the bottom to find out how to make that change you want so badly... If you don´t know what I´m talking about, have a look at this article.