There was a time when I would have laughed at the things I do now.
Meditation.
Grounding.
Gratitude.
Mindful breathing.
Being present.
All those words that seemed to be everywhere, attached to beautiful pictures of sunsets and people sitting cross-legged on beaches, telling you to slow down and appreciate the moment.
I used to think it was all a bit ridiculous.
I wanted something real.
Something that would actually change my life.
I didn’t realise that these small, seemingly insignificant practices were changing my life.
Just not in the way I expected.
I was always looking for something more.
A different life.
A different version of myself.
A future where I would finally feel happy, peaceful, fulfilled, healed.
I thought the answer was somewhere ahead of me.
Now I’m beginning to realise that the life I wanted was never waiting for me in some distant future.
It was hiding inside my ordinary days.
It’s in the slow mornings when I don’t immediately rush into the next thing.
It’s in making a ginger tea and actually tasting it instead of drinking it while my mind is already somewhere else.
It’s in sitting quietly for a few minutes and letting my thoughts come and go without needing to solve every single one.
It’s in taking Bug for a walk and noticing where we are instead of being lost in my own head.
It’s in reading a book simply because I want to.
It’s in watching the sky change colour at sunset.
It’s in a conversation that makes me laugh.
It’s in lying on the sofa with my dog and realising that, for that moment, I don’t actually need anything else.
These moments aren’t particularly extraordinary.
And that’s exactly what I’m beginning to love about them.
I’ve started incorporating meditation, gratitude and grounding into my everyday routine.
Not because I am trying to become a perfectly peaceful person.
Not because I think I should be meditating for a certain number of minutes or writing down the perfect things to be grateful for.
But because I’ve started to notice how I feel when I do them.
There is a quietness that comes afterwards.
A little more space between me and my thoughts.
A feeling of being here rather than somewhere else.
And slowly, these practices have stopped feeling like things I have to do.
They are becoming part of my life.
Meditation gives me somewhere to be still.
Grounding reminds me to come back when my mind wanders into the past or races ahead into the future.
Gratitude reminds me to notice what is already here.
And perhaps that is the biggest change.
I’m noticing.
I’m noticing my life.
For so long, I was so focused on what had happened or what might happen that I wasn’t really experiencing what was happening.
I was physically here, but mentally somewhere else.
Now I’m learning to come back.
Again and again.
Back to my breath.
Back to my body.
Back to my surroundings.
Back to this particular day.
And I’ve discovered that there is actually a lot to come back to.
A warm cup of tea.
A quiet morning.
A walk.
A good book.
A familiar little face looking up at me.
The feeling of sunlight coming through the window.
A beautiful sky.
A conversation.
A moment of laughter.
Nothing life-changing.
And yet somehow, everything.
Maybe this is what I misunderstood about happiness.
I thought it would arrive as one big moment.
The right relationship.
The right home.
The right career.
The right place.
The right version of myself.
Something would happen and suddenly I would feel like I had arrived.
But happiness isn’t something we arrive at.
It is something we learn to notice.
Peace isn’t the absence of problems.
It is learning how to find small pockets of peace while life is still happening around us.
And maybe an extraordinary life isn’t necessarily one filled with extraordinary things.
Maybe it is an ordinary life that you have learned to fully experience.
The funny thing is, I spent so much time searching for something extraordinary.
And now I’m falling in love with ordinary days.
The slow ones.
The quiet ones.
The completely uneventful ones.
The days where nothing particularly exciting happens but, somehow, I feel good being alive.
I’m beginning to understand that these aren’t the days between the important moments.
These are the moments.
The extraordinary life I was waiting for had been hidden inside ordinary days all along…I just had to slow down enough to notice it.
