Welcome to Season 6 of the Excel Stillmore podcast. I am your host, Chris Emerson, and I am here to encourage you in your walk with the Lord, and I'm glad you've joined.

Our program continues to be sponsored by Cunningham Financial Group. John is a good friend and he's helped me and my family in everything

from stock and mutual fund investing to annuities, life insurance, and retirement planning.

I certainly commend him to you if you have needs in any of those areas. You can reach him at

205-326736-3-64. Thank you again for your ongoing encouragement and support. Let's get started.

Hey, welcome back. I hope you're doing all right today. I feel like I may need to begin with a wellness

check. So just kind of in general, how are you doing? Did you enjoy your holidays? Are you still optimistic about the new year? As we will discuss in depth today, January can be a very difficult month for people. And some of that that starts as the new year begins really culminates in its high point or low point today. Literally launched a January 22nd. Did you know that it's Blue Monday?

If you're not familiar with that, just chat GPT it or Google it, and today's date will come up.

Or I guess more specifically, for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, the third Monday of every January.

It was a term officially coined back in 2005 as the result of a researcher's work,

putting together different variables about life and seasons and time of the year.

And his jovial conclusion was that today, the third Monday in January,

is officially the most depressing day of the year.

So here's some good news for you right off the bat. If your year has started wonderfully and you're

having an excellent morning, then you are so far ahead of the curve. If you are rocking the most

depressing day of the year, just imagine what you can do with all of the other days of the year.

On the other hand, if you've been struggling and you're not sure why you just don't feel that excitement at this

point that you hope that you would, there are some real reasons for that we need to face today,

and you also need to know that you're certainly not alone. I have to say, I had heard of this

before, and I think I included it in an

episode a few years ago, but this year round I had forgotten about it by name, but I was sort of

experiencing it in reality. At our house, we just call that being in a funk, and I've kind of

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