The Little Things

It’s always surprising to find that real satisfaction tends to come in the smaller, more spontaneous moments rather than from the big things you spend time planning to get. So much of our focus is on goals and getting what we want, yet the real pleasures in life often fall in the spaces in between – shining moments of unalloyed pleasure, effortless and peaceful.

The novelist, Maeve Haran, has entered the ranks of the happiness gurus with a tome on that very subject, entitled Froth On The Cappucino. She argues that “an appreciation of the ordinary things in life is one of the best gifts because they’re always there for us … when you look around, you find that every day is filled with objects of beauty. All we have to do is notice them.”

She names warm towels, buying flowers for yourself, being met from a journey, sitting in a park and getting a really good haircut as some of the best little things in life, along with looking up an old friend. While the success of Facebook would attest to reconnecting with long-lost friends being a universal pleasure, I would suggest that some friendships are lost for a reason.

In Maeve Haran’s world, “friendship is an amazing tapestry that grows through life”. She recalls being “disgusted when a life coach suggested discarding friends who were no longer positive influences in your life.” Hmm. I’m all for the Pollyanna approach, but having a rigid expectation that all friendships – or relationships – will stay the course is a fast-track to disillusionment.

Good, deep friendships can sustain us for the whole of our lives, but even then they’re not without their ups and downs and our sense ofcloseness isn’t always a constant. It’s the same with intimate relationships – you may always love your partner, but you don’t always like them. Quite frankly, we don’t even always like ourselves, so expecting to adore our friends and partners 24/7 is a pretty big ask.

Again, just like an intimate relationship, you also know when a friendship has run its course. Some people come into your life because you’ve bonded over work or a shared interest and when that comes to an end, you often find that there’s not really enough in common outside of that to sustain the connection. Or you can simply grow apart, as your interests take you in different directions. Even more importantly, you can outgrow a friend who is self-centred, judgemental or jealous. There is absolutely no justification for hanging on to a friendship that’s destructive, however long-standing it may be.

None of us let go of friendship lightly and very often we will persevere long beyond the sell-by date of a toxic friendship. It is not a failure and certainly not ‘disgusting’ to let these relationships fall away. We know the difference between a friendship that’s having a bad patch and one that’s just bad. Hanging on for the sake of a belief that friendships should last a lifetime is self-destructive.

When we have rigid rules about how things should be, these are the true enemies of happiness. We enter the world of sacrifice, doing what we ‘should’ do and not what we feel is right. Authenticity, joy and spontaneity cannot exist where sacrifice rules.

This week, take a look at the immutable laws you live by and see if any of those rules have you hanging on to a way of life, a relationship, a friendship or a habit that no longer serves you. What could you let go of, if you let yourself off the hook? Where are you sacrificing what you want to do, for what you think you should do? Where are you settling for what you can get, rather than what you want?

And where are you failing to see the small pleasures, the little things that make life worthwhile? What are your top three small joys that lift your mood and bring you pure joy? We may not agree on everything, but Maeve Haran and I are as one on the joy of cappuccino – there’s nothing more fabulous than savouring that chocolatey froth!

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column by using the link in the Favourite Sites section on the right or by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. To contact me, email coachfabulous@iamfabulous.co.uk. All material © 2007 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 3 Sep 07)