3 Comically Small Things That Dramatically Improved My Life (And One Not-Small Thing)

Has someone ever described something to you as “life changing” and then - when you dig deeper - you realize that the “life changing” thing in question costs five figures and takes 10 hours a week?

Like, yes Makinzie, I’m sure that going to reformer pilates four times a week changed your life. Just like having a personal chef or housekeeping staff would change mine. But we don’t all have unlimited time or money, right?

To that end, I thought I’d share three comically small (and free!) things I’ve started doing in the last six months that have had an outsized positive impact on my day-to-day life. (And one less-small thing that’s also been great!)

I find the concept of gratitude practices sort of … overwhelming? It seems like the sort of thing I need to take Very Seriously and even the word gratitude can feel a bit heavy to me. And if I’m being honest, I’d probably just keep cycling through the same 10 things I’m grateful for every few days.

But when I switched to saying to myself “Isn’t it nice …..” and then naming five things that have happened in the past 24 hours? It gets a lot easier to appreciate that my sister-in-law brought really good lemon bars to the birthday dinner and that the hardware store restocked my favorite, hard-to-find sour gummy bears.

And counting these blessings on my fingers like a kindergartener while I walk the dog? It creates muscle memory and keeps me on track. I walk out the front door with the dog, my body remembers that this is what we do now.

When I’m counting on my fingers, I’m less likely to get distracted thinking about sour gummy bears -> why do Sour Patch Kids tear up your mouth? -> Cap’n Crunch also tears up your mouth -> cereal is so expensive these days -> we’re out of Greek yogurt.

Most days I walk four miles round trip to my co-working space. It ends up being about 60 - 90 minutes of walking every day and when I started, I thought “This will be boring and kind of hard! Surely, I need to distract myself with music and podcasts!!”

I burned through every episode of Normal Gossip ever published, but when my health coach nudged me toward incorporating more mindfulness into my day, my thoughts were:

Y’all, I’m never going back. I am so much more centered and calm and ready for the other part of my day by the end of the walk.

I’m not doing anything particularly zen on these headphone-free walks. I route myself past the house with the good magnolia tree and the house with all the blooming Siberian squill in the front yard. I check on the progress of that big remodeling job. I hope the two Scottish Fold kittens are sitting in their window.

I write these posts in my head, I wonder about the plot of whatever book I’m reading, I let my mind wander. Without the never-ending input, my brain quiets down.

When we bought our duplex, we paid more to live in a walkable neighborhood. And I have mostly used this walkable neighborhood to walk our elderly, stubborn dog around the same two blocks.

But now that we have completely forsaken Amazon and Target, we’ve been making more purchases at neighborhood stores and - glory be! - many of them are within walking distance of our house! (Especially now that I’m used to walking four miles a day.)

This doesn’t always look like buying a beautiful, artisan-made whatever at an impeccably curated, locally-owned boutique. Sometimes I’m walking to CVS to buy a humidifier filter or Walgreens to buy my very specific vitamin c gummies. But I’m seeing my neighbors, getting outside, and (slightly) reducing the carbon footprint of the things I buy because they’re not being shipped from an Amazon fulfillment center.

Those things I listed above? They cost zero dollars. My co-working space? It’s $160 a month and it’s - like those old Mastercard commercials - priceless.

I get exercise walking there every day. I have to put on real clothes - like with buttons and zippers and everything! I can’t avoid work I need to do by wiping down the baseboards or touching up the paint on the front door.

And most importantly, I have those “weak ties” friendships again - people I say good morning to in the stairwell or chit chat with at the coffee station. We make small talk about our weekends or did you see they finally did something about the flooring on the second floor landing? Deliciously, I even have “work gossip” to share at dinner, something that hasn’t happened for almost 15 years.

It took me aaaaaages to convince myself to spring for a co-working space. Why pay for a space work when I could do it for free from my (small, dark, hot-in-the-summer, cold-in-the-winter) office? Why pay for a space where I’d have to wear real clothes and be around people when I could be alone all day, rotting in the same half-dirty oversized metal t-shirt and stretched out yoga pants?

Why indeed.

Looking over these, it’s not exactly a mystery why these things would add up to a day-to-day life that feels better - gratitude, mindfulness, movement, community.

When I started doing them, I wasn’t quite clever enough to realize that’s what was missing in my life or that’s what I pursuing by taking out my headphones or buying my kitchen sponges at the little shop down the street instead of ordering them from the Amazon.

But now that I have, in fact, figured it out, I wanted to pass it along in case you, too, would like to add more gratitude, mindfulness, movement, or community to your life!