Doubling down on the smaller things in life

Someone commented the other day: “I guess there's no right or wrong way to be grateful, but I often find on hard days that my gratitude is that something worse didn't happen, or being grateful that I made it through the day. Do you do this? Or do you manage to be more positive?”

I think this question goes back to why I like focusing on the small stuff in life. Of course, I’m grateful for the big things too - the world-changing ones - but our media tends to focus on the terrible. Nearly three years ago, I came off Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and deleted all the news apps from my phone. I’d found myself doomscrolling, buying things I didn’t need, and getting wound up about issues I probably wouldn’t have cared about if I hadn’t read them online. Quitting was liberating, and I highly recommend it. 

I kept LinkedIn because I need it for work (though I confess, I sometimes doomscroll there too, which is dull rather than distressing). The difference now is that when big stories break, I have to actively seek them out. I get to choose my sources and decide how much time I give them. In short, I pull information when I want it, instead of having it constantly pushed at me. Sometimes that means I miss things, and that’s ok. Sometimes I still end up down a rabbit hole, and that’s fine too.

What this shift did for my gratitude practice was encourage me to double down on noticing, and being grateful for, the little things. I once read someone else’s gratitude journal and their entries were like mini essays - full of deep meaning for that author. At first, I thought, I’m doing this all wrong! But then I realised that my way works for me. By noticing the everyday details, I uncover a miriad things to be grateful for.

Someone asked me whether I end up repeating myself in my gratitude notes. Absolutely I do, and that’s part of my point here. The small things tend to be the constants: the weather, a good cup of tea, my family, etc. The more I notice them, the more grateful I feel for them. There’s a compounding effect.

And then there are the surprises - the small things you might notice that have never happened before. Like this morning, when I watched a squirrel in my garden haul an entire sunflower head it had stolen from someone else’s garden. Very cute. I doubt it’s a sight I’ll see again anytime soon.