The last several days have been cold, gray, and dreary here in Minnesota. Even though it is mid-April and Easter is right around the corner, it seems winter continues to rear its ugly head. Indeed, the snow insists on coating the ground in a frigid blanket of white, and the wind continues to howl with a persistent ferocity that makes you want to curl up under the covers and tune everything else out. Yes, it is technically spring, but with each passing day that reality feels further and further from the truth.
Given this unseasonal state of darkness and wintery dread, it can be easy to lose sight of the beauty that exists so readily around us. For even though the calendar tells us the sun should be shining, the weather should be warming, and the flowers should be blooming, mother nature insists on doing otherwise, and sometimes that can feel like… well, a sticking point. It’s easy to get hung up on what we want to happen or what we think things should be like. And yet, so often when we do this, we ultimately dull our perspective and lose sight of what actually is.
That’s why an idea I recently stumbled across in a podcast – to seek out and celebrate a “daily shot of beauty” – so poignantly resonates with me: It’s all about intentionally recognizing the inherent beauty and goodness of that which surrounds us and using it to bring joy and perspective to our lives.
So, what is a daily dose of beauty you ask? Well, the idea comes from Susan Cain, author of her new book Bittersweet. On Glennon Doyle’s podcast We Can Do Hard Things she talks about her personal experience living through the early part of the pandemic where she felt so entrenched in the harsh, brutal realities of life that she became almost blind to everything else. She would find herself fixated for long periods of time, “doom scrolling” on her phone to the point of numbness, until suddenly she realized she needed to get out of this endless loop and pull herself up from the depths of despair. So, in an effort to intentionally combat this debilitating mindset, she began following art accounts on social media so that her daily feed was suddenly transformed from something dripping with sadness and dread to a curated selection of beauty brimming with art, possibility, and life.
This shift resonated well with Cain, and from there she developed a practice where every morning she intentionally began her day by picking a favorite piece of art to share on social media, along with a thoughtful quote or an inspiring idea. After cultivating this habit for a couple of weeks it became a sort of sacred daily ritual she loved doing. Over time, Cain found that this attracted a lot of like-minded people who formed a community filled with regular shared inspiration, beauty, and rich dialogue.
And that made her recognize: This simple act of thinking, “What is my daily shot of beauty going to be?” is incredibly transformative. When we prime ourselves to think, “How can I bring more beauty into my life? How can I cultivate it?” then we ultimately rewire our minds and invite the potential for goodness to reenter our lives. And do we need to be dedicated makers or skilled artists in order to do this? Absolutely not: All we really need to do is engage with beauty as we see it, that’s it. We don’t have to create art or even fully understand something that is beautiful in order to draw benefit from it. Rather, we simply must look at something and love it for the beautiful thing that it is. This simple act of consuming art is transformative, and it can take us to a truer, more beautiful world than we might otherwise be able to recognize.
I absolutely love this idea, and I appreciate the thought of making it a daily habit or ritual. We don’t necessarily have to take Cain’s lead and follow art accounts on social media, but what if we made an intentional practice out of taking a daily picture or even making a daily mental note of something beautiful that brought us true joy? What positive effects might we cultivate – what mindsets might we begin to rework or shift – if we committed to doing this simple act each and every day? What might we see? And what might that make possible?
So, consume the art around you. And make it a regular practice. Make a point of finding your daily shot of beauty, and celebrate it for the joy and life it will inevitably bring.
Run as fast as you can to whatever it is that brings you happiness and never look back.
Comments are closed.