lower standards = happier days
feel better with less + a delicious granola recipe
It was lovely to be interviewed by Erin Taylor from Balance Practice about what balance looks like in my daily life. Read the Q+A here.
It’s still dark at 7am and this morning the rain is heavy, pouring. I know because I walked without a raincoat, thinking the light drizzle wouldn’t come to much. I squelched home and peeled my clothes off, had a nice warm shower and now I’m sitting here with tea (of course!).
I’ve just opened the loveliest message from a subscriber and it’s made my week, to be honest. I’m well aware that you can’t write a book that every reader will appreciate but it’s bolstering to know that it’s helping people in their daily life, especially when life is particularly challenging.
After all, that’s what we need, isn’t it – the gentle encouragement to find ease, to take a full breath in the space between. Yet everywhere I look people are trying so hard to do all of the things, to tick all the health and wellness boxes, and yet there’s such an urgency to this goal-orientated living that there’s very little time or awareness to sit back and watch the world go by. We feel well when we are at ease, watching and listening and just…being.
I wonder: are Sundays defined by how much time you get to spend in bed in daylight hours, reading and sipping your hot drink of choice? It’s something I do each week, if only for thirty minutes, before the baking and washing and list-writing, the weed pulling that lets the ideas germinate and then I come inside with them swirling, and empty them onto notepaper, some of which make it to this letter, eventually.
Someone recently asked me if I think children need to have big adventures to have a memorable childhood. I didn’t have to think before I answered: no! We are trying to optimise our children’s lives and we easily forget what actually matters (and completely exhaust ourselves) in the process. As parents of young children we are now considering how much protein is on their plate and whether we are depriving them if they’ve never been on a plane! But ease is cemented in children when there is stability and reliability - in presence, in words, in the comfort of a daily rhythm that offers little minds what we all crave: knowing what comes next. My youngest spent her early years living and travelling in a caravan and this is what she remembers: the egg she dropped on the floor, drawing on notepaper in bed, bouncing on the jumping pillows at caravan parks.
I also think it’s helpful to lower our standards, in every facet of our lives. I’m the firstborn daughter which basically means I am a high-achiever and a perfectionist prone to anxiety. I tick all those boxes although striving for perfection is not something I have the energy for or interest in anymore. Perhaps it’s the confidence that comes with age and knowing who you are, that you can let the striving go a little, shrug your shoulders and get on with your day; dedicate your time and energy to the things that matter to you.