How many ordinary moments do you think you go through every day? Is it 30, 50, or 100?
We don't know the number but we are challenging ourselves to pick up on more of those ordinary moments. Which means taking notice of the small moments. Not necessarily watching paint dry, but rather, the things you will likely look back on and wish you could live through again.
An example, you're raking the leaves outside, seemingly to no avail, because it feels like it's raining golden leaves as they are falling so quickly. And then your 15 month old son waddles over using his mini hockey stick to help rake some too. Raking leaves is annoying - not my favourite pastime. But in an effort to be more present, this ordinary moment becomes so much more than nothing.
And that's exactly the type of ordinary moment that we, over here at Slowlii HQ, are going to count just for a day. To see how many we get to. It's nothing spectacular or special. It wouldn't normally stop you in your tracks. But if we're present enough, something as small as this can bring us joy.
It’s crazy how our brains just want to be stimulated with a phone all day long after building that habit. Your brain says, "Damn, what you are doing right now is so boring, please check your phone and look at some random person so that I can be a little excited". Pretty sure we can relate to a moment like this one.
If you do find yourself having trouble enjoying the small, ordinary moments, it is possible you have saturated your dopamine circuits. If you stop engaging in activities, like screen time, you may feel irritable or uneasy, but through this period of uneasiness is more enjoyment around the corner. So don’t worry, it is normal to feel blah or even agitated. Just try your best to control what you are engaging in. Here is an interesting twitter thread about being addicted to a dopamine inducing activity.
So join us in this little experiment, count these so-called ordinary moments, just for one day and see how many you can hit. You may find that in order to shift your focus from doing or thinking about doing, you need to slow down to really take count of the ordinary moments.