Winning at Life
Today I won at life. Not massively. Nothing miraculous happened. I wouldn’t describe that afterwards I felt any form of unrequited joy. It wasn’t that exciting. I just felt a little bit better and slightly more content.
First thing in the morning, after the chaos and pandemonium that is the school run, I like to try to go for a short walk before I begin work. It’s a tiny thing but it makes me feel better. The best place to walk around is the local park. I get exercise and daylight. For a whole twenty minutes (provided I can force myself not to look at my phone) I get to be away from a screen. I see the leaves on the trees changing as
they go through all the seasons. If I am really lucky, I walk myself to a coffee shop where I open my laptop and start my first hour of work for the day from there.
Despite how minor doing this one thing might sound, you should hear the arguments that I have with myself as to why I shouldn’t be doing it. They range from ‘I don’t have enough time’ to ‘the weather is awful’, to ‘the car park is soooo expensive’. If there is an obstacle I can put in my own way, then I will do it.
Well today, I won. Because I did it. But most importantly, it didn’t rain whilst I was doing it. I didn’t get cold and end up with drizzle running down my nose. And it felt good. Not great, amazing or marvellous. Just good.
These days, life feels as if it is more about the little things that we do to make ourselves happy. It’s the things that get us through the day, so that we aren’t just surviving through the time that is passing by, but actively living in it. More and more of us, perhaps in part because we have just been through a major pandemic that has caused so much upheaval, are learning that we need to appreciate the little things in life just a bit more than we used to.
Dr Michael Mosley has written a book called “Just One Small Thing: How Simple Changes Can Transform Your Life”. In it he advocates doing just little things that bring you happiness and making this routine in your life so that those things become habits. In this one small way, each day you can create tiny wins for yourself. There is a list of things to try and none of them cost either any or only a little money and only a little bit of time.
Not all the ideas are for me. For example, I will not be taking a cold shower. I find the idea of plunging myself into icy water akin to torture. I also don’t think that I will be leaping out of bed to try and do press-ups every day first thing. My knees wouldn’t allow it, never mind the protest that my hips would put up. But both might appeal to others, far more adventurous and hardy than me. There are other things though; taking a short walk in the morning; reading a chapter of a book every day; letting your mind wander for five minutes.
People have also been sharing the things that they do for fun for free on social media. The cost of living has meant that we are all cutting back and trying to find things that are inexpensive to do. The suggestions were: re-joining the library; spending time in the garden and tracking planes that were going overhead with an app; researching places to visit in the future; joining tester panels to get free samples to test; putting on music; doing a big jigsaw.
Admittedly, again, some of these things are not for everyone. I don’t mind a jigsaw myself but I can just see the eye rolling that my husband would do if I asked him to join me. However, he sits and scrolls through YouTube researching camping holidays a lot more these days. If he gets more than five minutes to do that in the evening, that is his little win. It isn’t my idea of fun but if it makes him happy, so be it.
Of course, little wins aren’t just about the habits that you make. They are also about the things that happen that make you think that life is going your way. It’s getting through traffic lights that are all on green when you are running a tad late. Or, it’s finding a good way to use up your leftovers for dinner. Sometimes, it’s finding the last tea bag in the caddy when you were sure that you had run out. It’s getting the last parking space, when you thought it was impossible. It’s realising that you have one more episode of that drama to watch when you thought there weren’t any more.
I have many days when I need to find a reason to smile. The answer seems to be in the simple things that I could do every day and in appreciating the things that go my way as not just being trivial but as having eased my path. It’s time to stop arguing that these things aren’t important and to do more of them every day. So, if you want to and you can, go and look at the planes flying overhead, take a quick walk in the sunshine and sit and have five minutes with that coffee.
Leave a Reply