BING CROSBY HAD IT RIGHT!

How do you sleep Sunday nights? For some people, worry over facing a new work week begins Sunday evening leading to a sense of apprehension if not downright dread. As the sun goes down, melancholia rises. Years ago a psychologist I was dating told me his mother was a "Sunday depressive." I had never heard this term before. He assured me that the perky woman I was watching pass around homemade pound cake after Sunday dinner would by nightfall slip into a morose mood as the clock ticked closer and closer to Monday and her job. While I was getting my hair washed at the salon recently, the conversation with the shampoo girl turned to this topic -- namely,weekends whizzing by delivering you so quickly to Monday and the work week ahead. Still, she said, Sunday night is her best night of sleep. "How's that?" I asked, being a person who's been known to count flocks of sheep in an attempt to escape into dreamland. "Oh, I take a sleeping pill," she answered. The Sunday night blues probably began when were were children and had to face the school bell come Monday. As working adults, difficulties with our job or just the jog from leisure to work can have us singing a la Fats Domino: "Blue Monday, how I hate blue Monday. Gotta work like a slave all day." OK, so that's a bit of an exaggeration for most of us. But sans sleeping pills and sans retirement -- which neatly eliminates Sunday depression -- what can we do to ease the Sunday blues in the night and get some shut-eye? The Monday strategy for this week then starts Sunday night and comes from the great American songwriter Irving Berlin. To paraphrase Mr. Berlin: "When you're worried and you can't sleep, count your blessings [like having a job at all!] instead of sheep; and you'll fall asleep counting your blessings." Try it. It's safer and more meaningful than taking a pill. Here, this should get you started: I have a bed... P.S. Irving Berlin wrote "Count Your Blessings" for the 1954 movie "White Christmas," in which it was crooned by Bing Crosby to a sleepless Rosemary Clooney. SOURCE: http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/monday-strategy/2010/08/bing-crosy-had-it-right.html