Small Pleasures

Welcome back to my blog! It's taken me rather a lot longer than anticipated to actually get this first full post written and ready! But - at last - here goes...

The first book I want to recommend is Small Pleasures from The School of Life. This is a hard book to describe or categorise. The School of Life say their purpose is to develop emotional intelligence by tackling issues like a lack of self-understanding, the need for compassion for others, and poor communication. They produce films, run classes and publish books.

The blurb for this handy little guidebook, which is perfect for dipping into from time to time, tells us it is “a guide to the best of life’s small pleasures: everything from the distinctive delight of holding a child’s hand…to the joy of the evening sky.”

But why small pleasures? Well, in life we really all need something to aim for. Something we’d like to achieve so we can look back and say ‘look what I did!’ For some, it might be to win an Oscar or to become a top athlete. For others, it might be to have a big family with lots of kids and grandchildren. It’s great to have something to reach for in life – especially if you actually manage to realise the dream. When you’re doom-scrolling through Instagram, TikTok or Facebook, you might very well be forgiven for assuming that everyone else has done exactly that – look at them on their jet set holiday, sipping bubbly in a hot tub. Or picking up an award for their charitable work. Or being taken out for a wonderful meal by their successful and beautiful children. They’ve literally got it all – and goodness me it makes you SICK! Where’s my sports car? Why can’t I spend my weekend chugging Negronis in an infinity pool? Why can’t I spare a few thousand pounds for some very light, non-surgical cosmetic procedures? Why can’t I have a season ticket for my favourite team? Why can’t I have Gold Circle tickets? Where the heck is my social life? It goes on and on. We can tell ourselves not to be so materialistic, to find joy in life that isn’t tied to money but we still dream about what we’d do if our lottery numbers ever came up.

From a counselling perspective, we might stop and think here about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. This is often represented as a pyramid showing what people need in life to feel happy and fulfilled. At the base are our basic needs: things like food, sleep and warm shelter. As we move up the pyramid, we begin to achieve things like safety, security, love. And then comes self-esteem and perhaps a sense of feeling valued. At the very top, we reach ‘self-actualisation’. This means achieving our potential and becoming the person we truly want to be. Where do you feel you are on that pyramid today? What do you need to do to get to the next stage?

The state of the world as it is at the moment means that many people are struggling financially and may well be feeling much less safe and secure given the political climate here and around the globe. And it’s here that Small Pleasures can really help. Forget all those superficial things and concentrate on the little things in life that give us so much to be thankful and happy for but often get ignored or obscured in the bigger picture. One of my favourite entries is Staring Out of the Window. There is something fundamentally British about this one. Quite often when we do this because of the weather – cradling a warm mug of tea and tutting at the latest downpour. Small Pleasures makes the point that staring out of the window actually tends to be less about what’s going on outside. It’s more about discovering the contents of our minds and allowing ourselves a quiet moment of calm to make sense of ourselves and the world we live in. Small Pleasures is all about drawing our attention to these kinds of moments that get missed or overlooked in the hectic day-to-day melee of life. Others include going to the Fishmongers, taking a long hot bath, wearing a favourite old jumper and taking a walk at midnight. If we pay more attention to these moments, they become not so small and not so irrelevant. The book tells us that life has endless pain and sorrow, but so often there is something charming and sweet to be appreciated. We could all do with becoming a little more alive to the small pleasures in life.

You can get a copy here: Small Pleasures   

Happy reading until next time……and I promise it won't be a six month wait!