Blue Monday

The news today tells me that it is 'Blue Monday'. Apparently this is the one day each year when people are at their lowest ebb according to Dr Cliff Arnall, a psychologist with a taste for self-publicity. His formula, taking in six factors - weather, debt, time since Christmas, time until pay day, low motivation and failure to keep new year resolutions - has been wheeled out for the past few years to calculate the most depressing day of the year.

Well, if this sounds like you, we at Swanage Lifeboat have the answer to your problems:

1. Learn to appreciate bad weather (and buy a raincoat).
2. Neither a lender or a borrower be.
3. Think of something to look forward to this year.
4. Tighten your belt.
5. Get a job you love.
6. Make easily achievable New Year resolutions.

Of course, the real solution is even easier. Stop dwelling on you own problems and get out there and volunteer. Do something positive to help others out and you'll find your own problems will just evaporate.

VOLUNTEER...you heard it here first!

(If you find that my advice is too flippant or that it in any way seems to trivialise your anxieties perhaps you may care to look here)