Now that life has opened up again, there’s an increasing pressure and obligation being felt by many, to pursue the lofty heights of ‘extraordinary’, in all its forms!
Holidays. Experiences. Career Paths… the list goes on!
All of a sudden, that ‘ordinary’ benchmark which became so widely accepted - and normalised - during lockdown, now seems a little, well… vanilla, beige, and a million miles from what we feel we should or ought to be settling for.
With this new precedent shining out from almost every social orifice (or so it seems), it’s no wonder that those once sacred platitudes of enough-ness, are seeming to quietly flounder beneath the gilded froth of good times, glad rags and jet-setting.
Tempting as it is, to jump back on this more-is-more bandwagon with all the abandon you'd expect after the last few years, it's not necessarily in our best interests, to surrender ALL that we've learned about the 'simple things'... just yet.
With the pursuit of ‘extraordinary’ scarcely leading to the place of joy and fulfilment we often presume it will, the bubbling pot of post-lockdown possibility, should be taken with a good pinch of perspective salt... at the very least.
Without it, 'hedonic adaptation' can see to it that we'll need ever increasing levels of awe, surprise, splendour and delight, to get the same buzz as we used to get from a nice cup of tea and a hot water bottle.
The best way of avoiding this slippery slope of compare and despair, is to remind ourselves on the regular, to find joy in the ‘ordinary’ as much as the exceptional.
This is an exercise in self-preservation if ever there was one, with the sum of all those ‘oh that’s nice!’ moments (from the softness of a jumper, to the delight of your morning coffee!) often worth more than that of misdirected extravagances!
Some might like to call this gratitude-ing, but appreciating that this concept has been wrung dry in the wellness sphere, we're preferring to label it as proactively pursuing the EXTRA in the ORDINARY... always!
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