How do you measure your days? - Reframing Seasons and Success
How do you measure your days?
Monetarily? Is each day a debit (not making money) or a credit (working, making money)?
By experience? Are good days measured when you exclaim: “I saw the world today!” Or it was it “just” an “ordinary” day…
Social media has made a highlight reel the standard, something to aspire to, but it omits the reality. Even entrepreneurs who may have passive income streams - online courses or resources that are available to buy 24/7 without the need for a manual procedure to get it to their clients. Even they may trade months of sleepless nights for months of time off.
But what if it’s not either/or? What if we have been taught to measure our days by the wrong yardstick? Creating impossible standards that keep us stuck in toiling for more.
What if it’s about enough?
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What if we started (or ended) our day by listing just one thing we are grateful for?
What if we measured our day by what we found in nature - a feather, a sunset, a lightning storm.
A smile, an “I love you” (to a human, animal, or plant), a laugh.
And, then, looked back at seasons for validation of accomplishments. All of those moments adding up to a larger collective measurement. What would you see then?
Would the smaller ups and downs showcase movement? Growth towards something?
What would emerge as the things that you enjoyed?
Is that where the manifesting could come in? Not in the daily, but in the monthly, the yearly? What emerged in your list of gratitudes? Where did you find your daily laugh? And what if you measured your moments by those benchmarks? Would it change your success?
Instead of feeling you are lacking and need more, perhaps focusing on being grateful and counting the yeses. I think you’ll find the yeses multiply, and you naturally gravitate towards having more. Slowly, definitely not as fast as accumulating outside validation or things, but more.
We all have to do things to make sure we have shelter and food first. Those things may or may not bring you joy, especially not all the time, but as humans, trying to find meaning in your days, how could reframing how you look at your world hurt?
The best part is that this works in all places in life. We have been led to believe that growth is linear and the top of the mountain has more rewards than the bottom. But, as anyone over 35 can tell you (and quite a few younger as well), nothing is linear. The top of the mountain you see just unlocks another summit that is shrouded in clouds right now. There is no apex. You’ll find, if you focus on the top, even when you have it all, you are still looking for more.
So what if we found more right where we are? Surrounded by imperfect things and people?
What if we found community? Villages made up of people that made us laugh? And that is where our moments were measured.
What if the central focus of the overlayed Venn diagrams of life was how each overlap made us feel? Instead of what they did for us.
What if utopia is already here? Yes, even in a pandemic. What if we just need to slow down to hear the heartbeats in the trees?
I can only hope for more good days like that.
“525,600 minutes. How do you measure, measure a year?”
Header image by Thought Catalog on Unsplash; Image on blog page by Pablo López on Unsplash
