Sustaining a sense of excitement in your everyday life can be a difficult thing, especially if you feel that your day-to-day life looks very much the same most of the time. It is easy to become unenamoured with your life. While the occasional grand gesture or plan can be an effective way to keep things interesting, the more effective measures are often the more mundane ones. Through a few simple tweaks to your daily habits and routines, but most of all your mindset, you can dial up the feeling of enjoyment and satisfaction in your daily routine.
Start with the Morning: Make Waking Up Feel Like a Treat
The right morning ritual is a great way to care for yourself and those around you. You might have several of them. You might wake up to open the curtains before brewing a pot of coffee and serving it in a particular mug. Meditation, journaling, and exercise can all help you to set the required tone for the rest of the day’s activities. Having the moments when you appreciate these things and the day ahead can be a huge mindset shift.
Curate Playlists for Everyday Moments
The right music can be a great way to push your mood in a healthy direction. If you’re taking care of household chores, like cooking and cleaning, a decent playlist can help to elevate the experience. When you’re performing certain tasks together, music can be important, too – but make sure that you cooperate when devising your playlists.
Use What You Already Own—But Better
It might be that you’ve gotten tired of staring at the same old set of plates, knives, and forks at every mealtime. Or, the three-piece suite in your living room might have seen better days. Often, simply rearranging – or upcycling – old items can obviate the need to buy new ones. Look at these items differently; seeing the beauty in the marks and scratches or doing a quick polish can romanticise those everyday objects.
In other cases, it can be useful to perform a stocktake and see if you own any underused items. If there’s an item of clothing that you really love, then find an excuse to wear it – even if it’s just to the shops.
Write Letters or Notes (Even Just to Yourself)
Handwritten notes are a great way to reflect on your own thoughts. But they’re also a powerful way to communicate those thoughts to the special people in your life. Something as simple as a note in someone’s lunchbox or attached to the fridge door can be a great reminder of the affection you have for them – as well as getting practical messages across.
Make Meals Feel Like an Occasion
The meals you share with your significant other can represent some of the best times you spend together. But because it is something that happens daily, it can be easy to take it for granted, so don’t sit down for a matter of minutes, shovelling any old food into your mouth. Instead, take the time at least once a week to plate things up nicely and to set and decorate the table. Even if you’re doing this alone, the psychological difference a little effort to the meal and presentation can make could be profound.
Take Yourself on ‘Little Dates’
A date doesn’t have to involve going to a big, expensive restaurant, park, or museum. Some of the best experiences in the UK are to be had for free. It might be that there are unearthed gems near you, so be sure to do your research. Whether you are single or have a partner, it is important to spend time alone, making sure you know yourself and enjoy your own company.
Celebrate the Little Wins
Life is full of milestones that we often let pass us by. Taking a moment to recognise the small ones can be worthwhile. You might have completed a difficult project at work or at home. Painting the bathroom ceiling might seem like a small step, but it’s one worth marking, all the same. Looking at these achievements as something worth celebrating can help increase your happiness and sense of purpose in your day-to-day life.
Then, when you get to the big occasions, like anniversaries, you can look to investments like natural diamond rings as a means of anchoring your feelings to an object that can be carried with you through life.
Create a Scent Memory at Home
You might have noticed that certain aromas, more than sounds or sights, can bring you back to a particular part of life. As such, playing with smells at home can be a great way to change the atmosphere of the place, almost like the old estate agent trick of cooking bread or cookies just before a viewing. While you may not always want your home to smell of bread, you might simmer rosemary in a pan full of butter or simply light a scented candle in the lounge.
Dress for the Mood You Want to Create
It’s worth taking a look at your wardrobe every so often and reviewing the contents. Do they inspire you? Do they reflect the person you are or the person you’d like to be? Are they comfortable? Often, a sense of romance can be achieved by simply swapping out something dull and dreary for something flowing and colourful. Most of all, let’s not save items of clothing for a special occasion only to never really wear them. If something makes you feel good, you want to get the most wear out of it. You can’t be too overdressed in your own life!
