So many spend their lives comparing themselves to others, missing out on the ordinary moments in their lives that make an extraordinary tale. For 2014, I started an Instagram challenge, My Ordinary 365, that focuses me on my life, not the lives of others.
On January 1st, I started exploring the beauty of the seemingly ordinary in my life to reveal the extraordinary. I decided to capture these moments with my iPhone and share them on Instagram. Some days I have more than one moment I want to share, other days it's hard to find one.
The exercise of finding what's good in my life is an important one. One that I first learned of when attending Mindfulness-Based Childbirth and Parenting Program. For one week, our instructor had us document one positive experience. I was in the last trimester of my pregnancy and was focused on all of the negatives. The exercise turned my thinking around and helped me to realize whether we have The Good Life or not is in what we choose to see. If we never look past the wrongs or the hurts, we won't see what's been in front of us the entire time.
When cubes was hospitalized and we didn't know when he would be coming home, I needed an exercise that would help me focus on what was positive in our lives. Each night, I'd write down a word or a memory in a memo book. Any time I needed a pick me up, I'd flip through the pages and smile.
How do you celebrate the ordinary?
Because I like focused photography exercises, I blended the journal exercise with last year's 365 Days of Thanksgiving (Flickr Gallery) for this year's 365 Day project: My Ordinary 365 (Statigram Hashtag Search). Feel free to follow along on Instagram or join me. If you start capturing the ordinary moments in your life, please tag me so that I can follow along.
Ciao Bella!
Eden!
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Credits: All layouts designed by and images taken by Eden Hensley Silverstein for The Road to the Good Life.
