A Fig Newton and a Fist Bump

I wake up this morning to an owl hooting outside my window. This is a new owl, one I definitely haven't met before. To be fair, it isn't the owl's hoots that wake me, but my dogs howling as they try to match its pitch. I might have been able to go back to sleep, but my 18-month-old daughter decides to add her yowls to the chorus.

Our alarms haven't gone off yet, but we're awake. My wife walks back into our room holding Murphy, who is smiling maniacally as if she just won the grand prize at an impossible carnival game. She climbs into bed, and my wife half screams, half gasps as she declares that she's stepped in dog vomit.

I've been awake for 30 seconds, and 29 of them have been more chaotic than an indoor trampoline park on a rainy Saturday.

We follow our usual morning routine, which involves getting Murph dressed and keeping the dogs from stealing her morning Fig Newtons out of her hands. We get to daycare a few minutes late, and I'm just hoping Murph hasn't missed morning snack time. I drop her off and breathe a sigh of relief when I see the other kids are still eating. Murph turns to me, hands me the remainder of her Fig Newton, and holds out her tiny hand, waiting for a fist bump. I laugh, give her one, and she scampers off to join her friends.

I walk back to the car eating my half of the Fig Newton and think, This is a pretty good morning.

Thirty minutes earlier, I probably would've told you the opposite. Nothing dramatic happened in between, I just ate half a Fig Newton and got a fist bump from my daughter.

I've heard people online use the phrase “stack good days.” Usually, it's advice about consistency. Do the right things today, then do them again tomorrow, and eventually those good days add up to something bigger.

I like that idea, but this morning it made me think about a different question: What does a day have to do to qualify as good?

As I walked out of my daughter's daycare this morning, I wondered, “Why do I have to wait until tonight to decide today was a good day?” A Fig Newton and a fist bump may not seem like much, but they're two good things. Are two good things enough to make today a good one?

I think they can be.

We can make a good day awfully difficult to achieve. We want to sleep well, have a productive day at work, exercise, eat well, spend time with people we love, avoid any major frustrations, and still have enough energy left to enjoy the evening. Then, once the day is nearly over, we tally everything up and decide whether it was good. That's a lot to ask of a Tuesday.

I'm not suggesting we ignore the difficult parts of our days or slap a “good” label on something that genuinely wasn't. Today could still get harder. I could receive bad news, have a frustrating afternoon, or come home to discover that the owl has invited several friends over. None of that, though, can undo the Fig Newton or the fist bump.

Maybe stacking good days starts by giving the small things more weight on our scorecard. A good conversation. Ten minutes outside. A song you love coming on in the car. Someone making you laugh. A really good cup of coffee. None of those things are enough to make a day remarkable, but perhaps a day doesn't have to be remarkable to be good.

It's 10:00 a.m., but I'm calling it. Today's a good day.

Fact

Research suggests that sharing a positive experience with someone else can increase the positive emotions associated with the experience, beyond the effect of the experience itself.

Action

Try the “Three Good Things” exercise. Identify three things that have gone well today and take a moment to consider why. They don't have to be big. Count the small stuff.

Question

How much are you currently requiring from a day before you're willing to call it good?

Quote

“…the true secret of happiness lies in the taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life…” - William Morris, The Aims of Art