Fifty quick ways to add beauty to your life immediately
By Nancy B. Loughlin
Published in News Press February 8, 2016
- Read one poem per day, and start with “In a Station of the Metro” by Ezra Pound. The experience of beauty, indeed, comes in flashes.
- Get henna tattoos on your hands.
- Swap out the black clothes for bright colors and florals.
- Don’t be afraid of bold color. Paint your beige walls.
- Energize your front entrance with a wreath, a welcome mat and potted plants on either side of the door.
- Grow herbs on your porch.
- Replace the tissues with a cloth handkerchief.
- Opt out of matching dishes. Choose handmade ceramic plates, each one individual, special and collected over time.
- Learn to Zentangle.
- Turn off the television and let jazz music echo through your home.
- Send real thank-you cards through the US Postal Service.
- When driving, switch off the radio and enjoy the silence.
- Say yes more often.
- Say no more often.
- Move on more often.
- Hang wind chimes outside your bedroom window.
- Decorate your space for every holiday.
- Buy long tapers and eat dinner by candlelight.
- Find the perfect vase and keep it filled with fresh flowers.
- Remove the following from your speech: profanity, hurtful gossip, negativity, complaints, lies and self-deprecation.
- Declutter your living and work space.
- Listen to “Liebestod.”
- You have fabulous hats, scarves and ties. Start wearing them.
- Decorate your sidewalks and driveway with chalk drawings.
- Dress up for no reason.
- Spend one year becoming an expert on a new topic.
- For anything.
- Use a slow cooker. When you come home, you’ll smell dinner.
- If there is live theater in town, go. Don’t forget your local high school’s productions.
- Rescue an animal.
- Forgive somebody, particularly yourself.
- Spend more time in nature.
- Get a plot in a community garden.
- If you can bike there, get rolling.
- Go to the finish line of a marathon or 5K and soak up the positive energy.
- Wish strangers a good morning.
- Start each day with five minutes of meditation.
- Recyle.
- When it comes to spending money, choose experience over things.
- Leave work on time, find a body of water, sit next to it and be grateful.
- Light a fire pit in your backyard.
- When it is movie night, tap into Film Comment Magazine’s Best Films of the Year list.
- Keep a bowl of fresh fruit on the kitchen counter. Don’t forget the grapes.
- Bake a loaf of bread from scratch.
- Buy local at the farmer’s markets.
- Get off your phone and make a new friend.
- Embrace privacy. You don’t have to post every little thing you do.
- Drink your morning coffee or tea outside and watch the sunrise.
- Set aside daily reading time, and tackle the classics you’ve always wanted to read.
- Do nothing. Sit, be silent and listen to the wind.
