“And everyday is the right day.”
I’ve been having a bit of enjoyment time lately. Today is Jubilee Thursday and I’m writing this on the train up to Glasgow to see Queen & Adam Lambert. Last weekend I spent with many, many friends seeing my favourite band Marillion (see last week’s blog for more on that dynamic!) On Tuesday I fly out to Lisbon for a week.
If you’ll have noseyed much around my website or followed me much on the socials, you’ll have seen me use the phrase, “Live a life you don’t need to escape from.” In fact, it’s often how I introduce myself; I’m a satisfaction coach who helps people live a life they don’t need to escape from. So how do I square that with going away on all these jollies?
It’s actually not very complex. It’s all about the direction of travel. I love my day-to-day life. I have work which fulfils me. I have great routines which nourish my body and my soul. I have a cat who I love and adore and who makes my heart sing. I live in a nice house in a nice town. I have both countryside and cities near by. I have great family and friends just a text message or phone call away. I even enjoy my day job. I wake every morning feeling rested, embrace every day and rarely go to bed feeling like I’ve had a bad day.
I never want to get away from my life. The idea that life should be a constant build up to “getting away from it all” seems like a really sad way to live. I don’t think the majority of life should be disappointing with just a few scant highlights here and there. Surely we can do better than that?
Change, however, is good. It’s good for all of us. Whether it’s temporary or permanent, we all need to freshen things up. Even in the science of gratitude, it seems that switching around a gratitude practice (for example, changing from 3 things a day to 5 things a week) gives us a new boost of happiness. New things re-fire our curiosity. They broaden our perspective. Sometimes they allow us to let go of things that weren’t serving us in the past. And a temporary change can also invigorate our opinion of what we have and renew our gratitude.
So when I’m breaking from my everyday life. I never consider that I’m getting away from it. I’m always going TO something. It’s a place I want to be. People I want to see. Experiences I want to experience. And all those experiences aren’t separate from my life. They are part of it.
I suppose that when your work is about the nature of people and their lives, that work and your leisure naturally do bleed into each other. The conversations I have with friends and strangers alike inform my work and make me curious to research something else. This seamlessness makes for a much smoother ride through life. Instead of the emotional rollercoaster of leisure highs and work lows, everything blends together into one, beautiful coast.
Shit happens. Of course it does. There are lows but they not my everyday. This has been my way of building resilience. I love every day of the life I have created, whether it’s the things I do daily, weekly, annually or the things that will never happen again.