CREATE A NICE MOMENT FOR YOURSELF

Illustration by Deborah Van Der Schaaf

This desk poster came in FLOW, the creative magazine from the Netherlands (www.flowmagazine.com).  FLOW always includes little keepsakes, paper goods like postcards, for example.  Here's one from this month, a woman happily cooking a healthy soup. 

Illustration by Anne Bentley

She's making a nice moment for herself and likely for someone else as well, standing there still in her work clothes.  I like the thought on the poster but have one important quarrel with it: once a day is not enough.  I bet we all agree on that.  If we are only creating nice moments for ourselves once a day we're not really trying.  Even when I worked full time and more, I found nice moments--walking around our downtown or a neighborhood over lunch, putting flowers on my desk, sharing  a meal with a favorite client, sitting on a bench outside to prepare.  And then of course once home for the day maybe a glass of wine, a good family meal, a tub bath for me, a delicious cool pillow.  And always morning or evening the nice moment of a cup of tea.  I think our best strategy is not to set the bar too high for what pleases us.  Keep our nice moments simple.    

Some people, if they can, do with less to have more.  Think home-schooling or the stay-at-home parent or grandparent, balancing the sense of identity and purpose we get from our jobs with the need for leisure or contributing more to the family.  As the after-school pick-up for a granddaughter we most often find our best moments between 3:30 and 5.  

Some people learn to say "No" more often to free up time for nice moments.  This is harder for women since the social expectation for us to be accommodating is stronger than for men.  But sometimes we must say "no" to a colleague or neighbor or the PTA.  It's not rude to have boundaries, it's self-confident.  Everyone can respect that.  

Australian writer Bronnie Ware (www.bronnieware.com) spent years caring for the dying.  She wrote Regrets of the Dying (2009)  to share what she learned from them.  One thing she learned is that we don't realize until too late what freedom good health brings.  The dying would tell us to honor our dreams while we can.  I resonate to that.  So as many nice moments for ourselves as we can.  String them together.  Pile them up.  Enjoy and Repeat.