Today I’ve been catching up with housework, clearing out a whole load of junk that has been sitting gathering dust for a while and generally being a domestic goddess. Not an exciting day, but a quiet one where I could see some results and felt a little uplifted as a result. I managed to throw in a little sewing as a present to myself.

I was thinking about my day as I trundled off to the local farm shop to stock up on fruit, veg and free-range eggs for the weekend. It wasn’t an exciting day, in fact it was very ordinary, but it was a happy and contented type of day. Sometimes I think we underestimate those days.

Yesterday I read Zen Habits (link on the right!) and as is often the case, Leo Babauta was talking a lot of sense and about things that I can really relate to.

His list for the day went like this:

• simplify
• do and consume less
• slow down
• be mindful and present
• savor things fully

I truly believe that for most of us this is the route to being happy. It really is the little things that make life enjoyable.

As soon as there is stress and an overload of any sort of experience it all stops being fun. You know how it is when you’ve over-scheduled your day and you end up running from one supposedly nice thing to the next and at the end of it all you realize that you didn’t enjoy any of them.

Since I started having Slow Down Sundays as often as I can, I really see that I enjoy the day so much more and that it feels incredibly long – it’s like giving myself the gift of time. And if I’m feeling better, believe me, it has a pretty major knock-on effect on the rest of the family. I can deal with the issues that arise in any normal family with calmness (mostly) and equanimity – which generally means that they don’t escalate. I start the following week feeling rested and looking forward to what is going to happen.

Admittedly I don’t have a well-paid successful career (been there, done that and didn’t like it much) and I’m lucky to have been able to set up a business where I work from home and I’m my own boss. (Was that luck or just setting priorities?). I’m happy to admit that I can accept that I can’t have everything – and actually that I don’t want everything anyway. But doing less and slowing it all down gives me the chance to really enjoy what I do have and what I’m doing.

So keep it simple out there – you’ll enjoy it more.

Wishing you a slow weekend,

Helen

This entry was posted on Friday, September 10th, 2010 at 2:18 pm and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.