The 5 steps to living savvy are: Ask, Do, Discover, Commit & Celebrate. The Savvy Web Wrap is definitely part of the Discover step – I love connecting with information that shines a light on how we live and what’s important to us, looking into the experience of others and gaining a deeper insight into my own life.
Lately I’ve been noticing a bunch of savvy women talking about how it’s really the ordinary moments that make their lives extraordinary – it thrilled me so much I just had to share!
The bit that makes your toes curl with delight
Let’s kick off with the always-to-the-point Mia Freedman from Mamamia.
She wrote about being inspired to identify:
the moment in your day you love most. The one that makes you happiest. Makes you exhale. Feel grounded. Curl your toes with delight. Something that’s part of your everyday routine.
For Mia it is the first cup of tea in the morning, while sitting down to check twitter and the online papers.
Forget the fancy-schmancy – gimme hot tea, ugg boots and snuggles
The delightful Sandi Sieger, Director and Editor at Onya Magazine had a moment of clarity while amongst all the glitz and glamour at Melbourne Spring Fashion Week:
I realised… you can’t place a value on things that matter… driving on an open road, music bouncing around your car, spurring you on, falling into a warm bed, wrapped in the arms of your lover, hot tea in a big mug, toast with honey and cinnamon, your feet sliding into ugg boots on a cold night.
I realised that glamour can only be had when you’re truly happy and content, and that nothing’s uglier than pretending to be so.
Go read the whole post, for more.
The one simple action guaranteed to make you happier
Our Aussie ‘making life better’ investigator Sarah Wilson got the hot tip from the New York Times best-selling happiness expert herself, Gretchen Rubin: Make your bed. Every day.
In her post, Sarah goes on to say:
Now, that’s just ridiculous, isn’t it… That’s it. Make your bed. Really, our mums could’ve told us that. Actually, they did.
All that casting aside cast aside, however, I rather like it. I’ve kind of had it with the grand motivational theories and the big excursions to Indian ashrams by indulged self-helpers of the past decade. These approaches work to the highly profitable premise that there’s some big fat answer “out there” accessible only once we’ve diligently reversed everything we’re currently doing to get through the week. How wonderful, then, that the answer could exist closer to home. I’ve always suspected it did.
Indeed.
Return on joy
Finally, divatastic Brisbane gal Natalie Peluso shared some very illuminating thoughts on our investment of passion – of bliss:
It’s all too easy to forget to pay attention to the constants in your life because they don’t belong to the business or the career. Tiny things you just don’t do because they’re not part of the bottom line…
I wondered where was the love and the throb and the thrill being compounded? What was I not doing that I needed to do to feel great, to feel right? Where was I making a living and where was a Life Being Made?
I thought of cuddles in the dark and my daughter’s gentle strokes on the back of my neck.
I thought of freshly ground coffee.
I felt my man’s hand in mine.
And I remembered that my investment of bliss matters – despite the overwhelm and the busy and the stress and the desire to carve out a financial independence in line with who I am, who I serve and what I create. It matters more than anything else.
Sing it sister!
Final thoughts…
Apart from the pure joy that I felt, reading all these beautiful and different voices talking about how we fine tune the ordinary to live extraordinary, these posts also reminded me how important it is to focus on simple answers.
Sometimes, as Sarah touched on, we can get so caught up on in what we ‘should’ be doing to feel ‘fulfilled’, we end up more busy and less satisfied.
In that case, the simplest action may be to take a breath and find some space to think about what really matters – you can check out my three simple ideas for fine tuning the ordinary (and share yours too!) on our weekly Monday Bites post.
Related posts:
