ProEdge Life Coaching

The Follow Through: Beating the Monday Blues with Intention

When Sunday Night Becomes a Dress Rehearsal

There's a moment that happens around 6 PM on Sunday. You're mid-scroll, mid-show, mid-something—and suddenly you feel it: that familiar tightness in your chest. The Monday dread isn't waiting until morning anymore. It's already here, uninvited, rehearsing its lines.

There's a particular look I've started recognizing in Sunday evening calls: glazed eyes, half-present, already somewhere else. Last week someone described it perfectly—not as a confession, but as plain fact: "I meal prep, I layout clothes, I write tomorrow's to-do list. But none of that actually helps. What I'm really doing is trying to build a shield against a version of Monday that only exists in my head."

A shield against a version that doesn't exist yet.

That's the part we keep missing. Neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett's research on emotional construction shows that our brains don't passively experience emotions—they actively predict and prepare for them. Your Sunday anxiety isn't irrational. Your brain is doing exactly what it's been trained to do: scanning for threats, trying to protect you by rehearsing. The problem? It's rehearsing for a Monday that lives only in prediction, not reality.

But here's where it gets interesting: when you dig beneath the Sunday night spiral, it's rarely about the actual tasks. It's about who you believe you need to become the second Monday begins—the version who has it together, who doesn't drop balls, who can handle it all without showing strain.

Most of us aren't dreading the meetings or emails. We're dreading the performance. Author Brené Brown writes in Atlas of the Heart that anxiety often masquerades as preparation. But underneath? It's usually a quieter question: Will I be enough when it counts?

The reframe isn't about preparing better or worrying less. It's about questioning whether you ever needed to become that other person in the first place. You're not broken for feeling the weight of Sunday evening. You're human for noticing the distance between who you are and who you think you're supposed to be. And maybe the real work isn't closing that gap—it's asking why it exists at all.

The Rehearsal That Never Ends

You know what's exhausting? Trying to perform a show before anyone's in the audience.

That's what Sunday night feels like for most of us. We're backstage, running through every possible scenario. What if this goes wrong? What if I forget that? What if I'm not ready? We rehearse the hard conversation, the packed schedule, the moment when everything might fall apart.

But here's what theatre people know that the rest of us forget: a dress rehearsal and opening night are fundamentally different experiences. The rehearsal is about control—trying to anticipate and eliminate every mistake. Opening night is about presence—showing up and meeting whatever actually happens.

The exhaustion you feel on Sunday evening isn't coming from Monday's workload. It's coming from running a preview of a show that will unfold differently no matter how much you rehearse it.

What if the goal wasn't to be perfectly prepared—but to trust that you'll handle what actually shows up?

Reflection:

Take a quiet breath before you answer this:

(You don’t have to have a full answer — sometimes awareness begins with simply naming it. If you’d like, reply and share what you notice. I read each one personally.)

If You're Tired of Rehearsing

There's something that happens in late November. The year starts to feel finite. You can see January from here, and suddenly the patterns you've been tolerating—the Sunday night spirals, the performing, the exhaustion—feel less like "just how it is" and more like a choice you're making.

I've noticed people reaching out lately, not because they've suddenly decided coaching is the answer, but because they're tired of rehearsing the same version of themselves. They're curious what it might feel like to stop preparing so hard and start trusting more.

If that sounds familiar—if you've been sitting with something you can't quite name but know you don't want to carry into a new year—I'm holding space for a few people who are ready to explore that. Not to fix what's broken (you're not), but to question what you've been requiring of yourself that maybe you never needed to in the first place.

Sometimes that exploration starts with a simple reply—just hit "I'm Interested" and I'll reach out. Other times it helps to talk it through first, and if that feels better, you can grab a free clarity call here. Either way, it's 30 minutes to explore what's actually underneath. No pressure, no pitch, no timeline—just space to see if there's something here worth looking at together.

Curiosity Corner

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. — Viktor Frankl, psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor

Micro-experiment: This Sunday at 6 PM, set a timer for 5 minutes. Don't prep, don't plan—just notice where your mind goes when you're not managing it. Write down the first story it tells you about Monday. You don't need to fix it. Just see it.

Worth exploring: In The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt notes that anticipatory anxiety has become our default state—not because we're weak, but because we've trained our brains to see every future moment as something to control. The antidote isn't better planning. It's learning to tolerate not knowing.

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​Warmly,​
​Advit Tiple​
​Productivity & Accountability Life Coach​
​ProEdge Life Coaching​

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