Life is found (or lost) in the details

Musings on the “secrets” to living a rich and happy life.

The small stuff of life is underrated; the big stuff is sensationalized.  What actually makes up the fabric of our lives?  The “normal”, the everyday, the routine.  Do you want to have an amazing life?  Transform your ordinary into extraordinary!  

We put emphasis on big goals and commitments.  But which is truly more difficult, signing up for that marathon, or getting up early every morning to train?  Or maybe we make a huge savings goal because we want to be able to buy a house or a car, but we keep up our habits of picking up a daily coffee or breakfast sandwich.  In both cases, the former is a one-time commitment, and the latter seems smaller and less significant, but is a commitment that has to be renewed every day (so it appears easy, but is much, much harder because it mandates consistency).  

It feels natural to overlook the small details.  They’re small, so they can’t be that important, right?  They’re too simple; they seem too easy to bother about.  Tiny choices can’t possibly bring about big change.  Right? So we keep dreaming about and planning our next big vacation (or retirement), because we think that’s when we’ll really get to live life.  But is that truly living or just escaping?  Are we destined to spend the majority of our lives merely existing, surviving, and waiting for that next exciting thing?  

Pause and observe (“You see, but you do not observe.” -Sherlock):

(We are gradually attempting to befriend our wildlife, but this particular bunny pictured was rescued after tumbling from our concrete [top] steps into our recycling bin.)

Right now, I’m sitting on the front concrete steps of my house (in lieu of a porch).  I’m dressed for summer, feeling the breeze, watching a baby rabbit play in the grass, saying “hello” to the neighbor walking his dog, listening to the birds and their morning songs, observing traffic, and the seeming hurry of the rest of the world.  I got out of bed early for this.  These moments are sacred: a reset from life, yet completely free and so simple that they’re often overlooked or skipped entirely.  But when built into a routine, these moments help keep me grounded as I take time to “just be” and to notice and appreciate the extraordinary beauty in my “ordinary life”.  

And now the bunny is joined by another: they’re eating merrily, their ears standing straight up as they sit tall on their back legs, or laid flat back as they hop across the lawn.  I pause to observe their activity.  One stretches long from the concrete walks into the grass to find that specific blade; the other’s translucent ears and beady eyes are only just visible above the tall grass.  They’re still quite small and would easily fit in the palm of a hand.  I take in the wonder of nature.

Make small tweaks/adjustments:

What are the tiny things that could be added or changed in your life to make it more enjoyable?  Maybe for you it’s a routine walk with the family after dinner, or frequent root beer floats in the summer, or a membership at the local pool, or learning how to make some amazing food or drinks at home so you can splurge more frequently?

The following are a few examples:

1. Breakfast for me normally consists of yogurt and granola because it’s both quick and healthy.  But it’s really not that exciting, so some days I’d rather just skip it.  But if I add a huge pile of fresh berries, that’s a game-changer.  It becomes enjoyable, refreshing, something I look forward to.  My plain and routine breakfast is transformed into a pleasurable experience.

2. As a couple, we wanted to get regular exercise.  We tried the gym (keeping our membership far too long, since canceling it felt like giving up on our goal), but we just couldn’t get into a routine.  When we stopped and evaluated, we realized we were trying to do something we didn’t enjoy to reach a specific end goal.  Knowing that we, as humans, avoid what we dislike and gravitate towards activities that we like, we changed our approach and asked ourselves, “What would be both easy and enjoyable that would get us more active?”  Since we like walking and it’s easy (it felt almost too easy), we incorporated a 1-hour (3+ mile) walk into our schedule after getting home from work each day.  (This quickly took the place of our nightly “pillow-talks”: an hour or more of discussing the day, problem-solving, dreaming, and creating solutions to whatever we were facing at the time), giving us a chance to work towards our fitness goals while continuing our routine talks, thereby meeting two objectives at once.  Meanwhile, our daily walks over time have gotten us well on our way towards becoming more active without any hardship or even discipline, because they are both easy and enjoyable.

3. Every season has its pros and cons as far as weather and activity selection.  For me, dressing for the weather helps get me in a positive frame of mind.  I tell myself, “Oh good, it’s going to be hot, so I get to wear shorts and tank-tops.”  Or “Oh good, it’s going to be chilly, so I get to wear a sweater and cozy boots.”  I’m probably the odd one out on this, but it’s a quirky little technique that helps me to fully embrace the season.  The same goes for activities; I try to maximize the fun opportunities that are unique to the season (going to the pool in the summer, fireside gatherings when the nights turn cold, etc.) as a way of embracing the season and staying present.  This approach immensely impacts the extent to which I love my “ordinary” life and quite frequently turns it into extraordinary: realizing that I’m creating and living a life that I love.

What does your dream life look like?  What are the elements that are most important to you?  If you narrowed down to the things that would create an extraordinary life for you and work to slash everything that does not contribute, I truly believe you would be astonished by the results.  Think about it: what could you eliminate, that isn’t currently adding quality to your life, that would free up the time, energy, and resources to make it possible to get a step closer to your dream reality?  

Can you have both ordinary and extraordinary?  In some cases, it seems that they’re mutually exclusive.  For example, if we frequently bought coffee and lunches out of convenience (not because we actually enjoy them), that would absorb significant money over time that I would personally rather spend purchasing ingredients to create more frequent, fine-dining-quality dinners and drinks at home.  For me, a well-crafted meal contributes significantly to living my dream life and creating that vacation feeling in “normal” life.  (So much so, that I’m perfectly happy to still not have a real bed frame or bedroom suite after almost 15 years of marriage, and I’d much prefer to keep hanging up my laundry to save the expense of energy used by a dryer.) In other words, I would rather do without things that others consider “essential” to free up space and resources to live my unique version of extraordinary, replacing what doesn’t contribute with those things that really add quality of life: creating memories and experiences that make life meaningful for me.

To put it another way, I posit that a financial picture can be built or destroyed by 4-dollar coffees.  Which is to say, in a broader sense, that the tiny, cumulative decisions are what make or break our lives.  How we spend our pennies, our minutes, or our other resources is the way that we spend our lives.  It’s not the big stuff that makes us who we are; it’s the tiny stuff.  The minuscule, routine choices that we make every day are the threads that make up the fabric of our lives.  

Yet we love the grand and exciting!  We dream of having the opportunities of someone great and fool ourselves into thinking that those would make us great as well.  But any true success is built on a lifestyle of small, intentional choices that grow a person to a point in which their abilities and experiences allow them to recognize, seize, and leverage the opportunity.  You wouldn’t tell an athlete, “You’re so lucky that you are so in shape and can do [amazing physical feats].  I wish I had your genetics.”  No, that would be an insult to the hard work and effort they put in every day.  If you wanted to spend 8 hours a day in the gym, and picked a sport that matched your gifts, you could be a whole lot closer to physical success than you might imagine.  But it won’t come about by wishing, it only comes by the small, cumulative effect of your daily choices.  

What does your dream life look like?  How close are you to living your own extraordinary version?  What are your goals?  What is one small detail of your routine that you could change to get a step closer: to make your life a little easier, more enjoyable, and on track for your desired outcomes?  Build your dream.  It’s within your reach more than you realize.

For a parallel video message from Jason, check out his video of a Monday morning team meeting at Integrous on Everyday Choices. If you'd like more of this content, you may wish to subscribe to the Integrous Leadership YouTube channel.