The importance of building a joyful everyday

For the last 3 years, I’ve been using an app called 1 Second Everyday to record memories. If you’ve never heard of the app, the premise is really simple - you upload 1 second of video (or a live photo) every single day for the year, and then once the 31st of December rolls around, it mashes them all together for you and creates a little 6 minute video summary of your year.

I love making these videos. They’re such a lovely way of capturing memories and they’re a great way of looking back on years gone by, but I also take a lot of value from the process of putting them together. There’s something special about the act of choosing which photo or video to upload at the end of each day - it provides an opportunity to reflect on how I’ve spent the day, to relive the happiest moments and to practice a little bit of gratitude for the joy I’ve found. 

But there’s another lesson I’ve taken away from this daily practice, and that is a reminder of just how important it is to build a joyful everyday. I’m particularly aware of this at the end of every year, when I download my video with all 365 clips and watch it back. What’s clear to see is how those moments that we give so much of our time and energy to - the holidays, Christmas, weekends away, for example - are fleeting. In the course of a 6 minute video, those milestone moments or highlights make up about 30 seconds of content. What makes up the bulk of those videos is the stuff we don’t focus on that much - our average everyday. 

There’s something incredibly striking about seeing this represented visually. We all logically know that these moments we spend all year counting down to come and go so quickly, but when you see them flitting past so quickly, you realise just how little of our time and life they represent. You realise that, as the saying goes, it’s the small things that make a life. It’s the average everydays that make up the majority of our time here on planet earth, and yet, so often, we let them pass by without much focus or attention.

striving to build a more joyful everyday is something I’ve been trying to do in my own life ever since I learned about the concept of arrival fallacy. If you’ve never come across that term before, let me explain - arrival fallacy refers to the idea that we overestimate how much happier we will be as the result of a key milestone or achievement. So for example, we might assume that we’ll be happier once we run a marathon, or get married, or go on that dream trip, or get a job promotion. And the science shows that while that assumption is partly right - we do experience an increase in happiness as a result of those experiences - that increase is short lived, lasting for around 3 weeks at most. Once those few weeks are up, we return to that same baseline level of happiness that we had before we finished the marathon or got married or travelled somewhere fancy or bagged a new job.

I’m not trying to say that these moments aren’t important. Having goals to strive towards is key for our wellbeing, and things like holidays, family get-togethers and special occasions are incredibly nourishing parts of life. But what I want to remind you is that they’re not the main part. What we need to give more attention to is raising that baseline level of happiness, so that when that spike is over, we don’t have as far to fall. And the way that we do that? By building a joyful everyday.

This might feel like a new concept to you. You might not have given that much thought or attention to how you can inject a little bit of joy into the average Tuesday. Maybe you’re more of a live for the weekend or count down the days until the next holiday kinda person. I get it - I used to be just like you. But trust me when I say that investing more time and energy into enjoying your average days more is one of the best investments you’ll ever make. It will make you happier, more compassionate, more inspired and more resilient. And best of all, you’ll feel like you’re truly making the most of your time here on earth - time that, let’s face it, we’re never getting back.

So how do you start? Start by noticing. What parts of your day do you love, and what parts of your day feel more challenging? What activities energise you, and what activities drain you? What tasks help you to get into a flow state, and what tasks seem to slow down time? The more knowledge you have about what does and doesn’t bring you joy right now, the easier it will be to know what needs to change to make your everyday more joyful. And then, once you have that knowledge - start small. Maybe it’s an extra ten minutes every morning savouring a hot cup of tea. Maybe it’s leaving your phone in another room so you can be fully present while your kids play. Maybe it’s reclaiming your lunch hour and using that time to do something you really enjoy. 

Over time, you might feel the pull to make bigger changes. Maybe you’d love to find a job that you truly enjoy, given how much time we all spend at work. Maybe you’d like to live somewhere different, or be part of a certain community that inspires you. Or perhaps you want to work on becoming more mindful, so that you have more capacity to enjoy the days that are unfurling in front of you. If you need any help with building your own joyful everyday, I’d love to hold that space for you - I currently have a couple of openings for 1:1 coaching clients, and helping people to figure out what the most joyful version of their lives are and then taking the steps to get there is kinda my area of expertise! You can find out more here.

But for now, I wanted to remind you of this: when we look back on our lives when we’re old and grey, the big shiny moments will appear exactly the same way as they do on my 1 Second Everyday videos. They’ll be lovely, happy memories, but ones that are fleeting. The bigger, wider, more important part of our lives will be the things we spent everyday doing. With that in mind: what do you want to fill your everyday with? You get to choose - and I hope you choose joy.