Campaign to not complain for 30 days launches in Netherlands on Blue Monday
A campaign to not complain for 30 days is launching in the Netherlands today. The timing is no accident. Today is Blue Monday, the most depressing day of the year, according to UK travel company Sky Travel.
Isabelle Gonnissen launched her positivity campaign in Belgium seven years ago, tired of all the whining, moaning, and complaining. The Netherlands and Belgium are world champions at finding something wrong, she told Spijkers met Koppen on NPO Radio 2. She calls on everyone starting to grumble to stop and think: Why am I grumbling right now? And is it necessary?
According to Gonnissen, it is striking that Westerners are a lot better at complaining than other countries. “And while we have it so good here. In other countries they have many more reasons to complain,” she said. According to her, we like to complain most about traffic, work, and not getting refunds.
People who want to join the challenges can sign up for the “complaint barometer” here. “It is not meant to reprimand you,” Gonnissen said. “But if you see how often you complain, that is already an eye-opener.”
Blue Monday typically falls on the third Monday of January but has also happened on the second or fourth Monday of the month. Sky Travel first published about it in a 2005 press release, saying that it calculated that this day was the most depressing day of the year. Blue Monday only affects the northern hemisphere, because it takes the weather conditions into account. January is summer time in the southern hemisphere.
