Have you noticed how many podcasts, books and social media posts promise to make us millionaires in five simple steps?
Five steps to financial freedom. Ten habits of successful people. The secret to achieving more in less time. As though life were a race to reach some predetermined destination. And money were the ultimate prize.
Whatever happened to the simple joy of living? Of experimenting? Of discovering things along the way?
Perhaps this is one of the gifts of having a few decades of life behind you. Things become richer, deeper, more meaningful. Or perhaps you simply begin to notice things you once rushed past.
A whiff of incense. A bee covered in pollen. The first frost on a cold morning. The smell of the earth after the rain. A good book. Catching up with an old friend. A moment of peace when the house is quiet.
None of these things is particularly exceptional. And I can guarantee you that I stopped worrying about having the most exciting weekend plans quite some time ago!
Don’t get me wrong. I haven’t lost my ambition or my drive. But I no longer feel the need to turn every moment into an achievement, or every weekend into an adventure worth talking about.
I don’t need to compete. In fact, I’ve come to love the small, ordinary things of everyday life. I call it the extraordinary power of small things.
I think that’s what I’ve come to appreciate more as I’ve grown older.
We tend to celebrate the big moments. The promotion. The qualification. The new house. The business we’ve finally launched. But we rarely celebrate the hundreds of small steps that made them possible.
The ordinary days. The little decisions. The things we did without giving them much thought. And yet, they’re often the things that shape our lives.
A small step every day doesn’t look like much. Until one day, you turn around and realise you’ve climbed a mountain.
Not necessarily the mountain you originally set out to climb. Perhaps something entirely different. But one that is yours, shaped by everything you’ve experienced along the way.
So perhaps we don’t need to be quite so obsessed with getting somewhere faster. Perhaps we can give ourselves permission to take the next small step, enjoy the view, and breathe.
When was the last time something wonderfully ordinary made you stop and smile?
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