Romanticizing the every day

You know that I love a good aesthetic Instagram feed, but the reality is, life doesn’t have to be a highlight reel to be beautiful. It’s not always going to be perfect and some days are going to be hard.

That’s when it’s important to find the magic. To pull out one strikingly beautiful, less than extraordinary moment from the day to help your heart smile.

Sometimes the magic is in the way the light hits your kitchen counter on a very rare quiet morning.

Or the extra 10 minutes of sleep you were able to steal.

It could be the fact that the dishes were done before you went to bed for the night, you had 5 minutes to do your hair or the chapter of a book you finally got to read.

Romanticizing the everyday is about slowing down and being intentional. It’s turning “just another day” into something you actually look forward to.

Here are 7 ways to start:

• Dress for yourself — even if you have nowhere to go. It doesn’t have to be every day, Start with one day a week. Get up and put on something that makes you feel good.

• Light a candle while you work to make your space feel warm.

• Plate your lunch like it’s from a café. Who doesn’t love a pretty plate setup?!

• Swap scrolling down the social media rabbit hole for a chapter of a book with your morning coffee.

• Play a soundtrack to your day — As an avid music buff, there is nothing that changes the mood instantly than a good soundtrack. Go ahead! Spend 10 minutes putting one together and play it while you’re cleaning or cooking dinner.

• Buy fresh flowers just because. This is one of my favorite things to do on a Sunday. It instantly puts me in a better mood to have a vase full of pretty flowers for the week.

• Open the windows and let fresh air in.

When you start finding beauty in the ordinary, you realize that joy was never hiding — you just weren’t looking closely enough.

Will you implement any of the above ideas? If so, let me know which one!

And if you need a little extra nudge to slow down and savor the moments, you’ll find plenty of characters in my books doing just that — rediscovering joy in simple things, even in the middle of life’s chaos. Their stories might just inspire you to look at your own days a little differently.