How we spend our days, that is what we do everyday, the little things, the trips to the store, going to the office, scrolling through our phones is not just how we spend our days, but how we spend our lives. It can be a little troubling to think of this perhaps. Often we have thoughts of grandeur over how we will spend our lives, what we will accomplish and what we will be known for. These thoughts will rarely, if ever, coincide with our daily habits, yet these daily habits are much more what we do with our lives than our lofty goals. Our lives are nothing more than an accumulation of our days and our days are simply the accumulation of our tasks so our lives are indeed what our daily tasks and rituals are. So what are we to do with this information? It is humbling for sure to realize that we are all quite similar in the end, but how does this thought benefit us?
For me, the thought brings up two seemingly contradictory responses. One, it brings an air of importance to our routines. Wasting hours or days here and there is of course fine, but making your habits, bad habits, allowing your time to be routinely wasted is something to be concerned with. A wasteful habit is more than a waste of your day but a waste of your life. Likewise, if you are not seeing yourself get to goals you have, perhaps where you first need to look is in the layout of your day. I do not think we need to be so outwardly productive as perhaps society would make us think. I don't think a secret to a successful daily schedule means we are working ourselves to the bone or accounting for every minute of each day, but if the schedule feeds your mind and soul? At the end of the day do you find yourself in a positive place, feeling fulfilled with what you accomplished, or do you feel drained, lonely or even feel nothing at all? Strive to find daily objectives that both accomplish the very basic needs we must cover and feed your soul. Be it from walking, writing, talking with loved ones, reading, find the activities that feed you and find a way to do them more.
The other way I go with this thought, is that our lives are not so grand and we shouldn't take things too seriously. This feels perhaps completely contradictory to my first thought, but allow me to explain. No matter what the legends surrounding figures like Tesla or Jack London or any other number of “great people of history”, we all need to sleep and sleep a solid 6-8 hours. This is just a fact for our bodies to perform properly. We also all need to eat, schedules and amounts can vary, but we all must eat. We also must all keep up with basic hygiene of ourselves and living spaces as well modern dailies, paying bills, earning money, paying taxes and so on and so forth. We all must do this, there is no way around it. Perhaps you can pay a maid or a cook to help lighten the load of tasks, but you still must do this. These things take time, sometimes all the time in one day. So here we are, we are all humans and we all have basic needs, this is a given. To me this takes a load off my back of expectations. There are only a few hours a day we have not accounted for after all of this in which we can truly indulge in ourselves, we will get to this in another article, but now the point is how to find pleasure in these daily tasks, for these daily tasks are our whole lives.
So this is our task for the future, finding the meaning and pleasure in the simple dailies that we can not avoid and to include daily activity that replenishes us. Find pleasure in your commute, be it from listening to a podcast or audio book or shifting the means in which you get to work. Are there more pleasant roads or public transport that would allow you to relax rather than stress in traffic? Perhaps it is enough to simply make time for your favorite coffee to drink on the way. The routines of health and hygiene we can give ourselves upgrades, getting the higher end soaps or upgrading our shower heads. Maybe it is dedicating some time to find truly comfortable sleep or relaxation clothing. I know this may sound a little silly, but the simple pleasures in life can come from our daily routine if we simply find ways to make it be that way. After all, we are not just talking about our daily tasks, we are talking about the content of our lives. How do you want your life to be? The answer lies not so much in a big goal but in how you approach the rudimentary tasks at hand everyday. Reach out to us at info@bullionite.com with your comments and questions.