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Mix Your Priorities with Simple Pleasures

We need both


Pale creamy brown highland cattle with sweeping horns eating hay from the ground while a woman in blue jeans and white top brushes her sides with a special comb.
Enjoying the Simple Pleasure of grooming friendly highland cattle while staying at Maleeya's Studio Accommodation in the Porongurups. Photo by Rob.

I write notes to myself all the time.

 

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and feel for the pad and pen on the bedside table to jot down a deeply meaningful phrase to use in the memoir I’m writing. By morning my scrawl won’t make any sense to me at all.

 

Last week I wrote a note titled: PRIORITIES. Then I underlined it for emphasis. PRIORITIES. 


Underneath it I listed five major projects I need to work on over the next few months. Doing this gave me great satisfaction. I felt in charge of my life. On-track. I knew what I had to do every waking moment for the foreseeable future.

 

But I was forgetting something.

 

Life isn’t made up of just major things.

 

It’s packed with minor things too, like mundane tasks and simple pleasures.

 

I’ve never made a list of simple pleasures but suddenly decided to make a list of those too, so I don’t forget to do them.

 

SIMPLE PLEASURES

 

  • Pat an animal.

 

  • Listen to the wind whistling between paperbark trees.

 

  • Lie on the sofa and peer through a kaleidoscope.

     

  • Rewatch the 1995 TV series version of Pride and Prejudice.

 

  • Put on boots and splash through puddles on Manoni Road.

 

  • Handwrite a message to a friend on a card, address the envelope, stick on a stamp and poke it through the slot in the top of the red postbox on York Street.

 

If you ever feel overwhelmed with your Priorities, it’s a sign that you need to include some Simple Pleasures into your schedule.

 

Simple Pleasures are just as important as Priorities.

 

In fact, doing Simple Pleasures help you achieve your Priorities.


For example, stopping to pat a friendly dog on the way to an important meeting may calm your nerves and make it easier for you to say what needs to be said when you get there.

 

So, start your own list of Simple Pleasures and tick them off as you weave them through the day.

 

You’ll be so glad you did.

 

With love, Marlane

 

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