I have a strange habit I’ve never told anyone about 🤫

Dear Joy Seeker,

I have a habit I’ve never really explained to anyone.

When I have a really good day, I get almost forensic about it. I go back through the hours and ask what actually happened. What did I do? What did I not do? Why did I feel like that?

Then I write it down as a recipe, with ingredients, in order, so that the next time I want a day like that, I’m not sitting around hoping one turns up. I know what goes in it.

I’ve been collecting these for a while now. I call them my Awesome Day Recipes.

Saturday was one of them.

I woke up early, which I love doing at weekends because the day feels entirely mine. I made coffee, took it back to bed and started reading my magazines. I LOVE magazines. The beautiful photography, the interviews, the ideas, the feeling of flicking through something physical instead of scrolling through another screen.

Then the thing that always happens when I do that happened: I got ideas.

So I opened my laptop. Not because I had to work but because I wanted to. I ended up spending about four hours working on my business and thinking about the kind of work I want to create for women who want to achieve big things and actually enjoy the life they’re building at the same time.

Mid-afternoon: a fresh mango treat. An absurdly juicy one.

By then my brain was on fire and my body wanted a turn. I have a treadmill at home, so I went for a run while watching my latest guilty-pleasure on Netflix. Two pleasures, one hour.

In the evening I met my friend and we went to see Jay-Z. My inner hip-hop girl was THRILLED. His songs have followed me through different versions of myself - school, university, adulthood - and suddenly there I was, in an arena, hearing them live.

Apparently I also know significantly more Jay-Z lyrics than I realised. I had no voice left by the end.

That was the day. Here is the recipe I wrote down afterwards:

• I did something that fed my spirit first - magazines, coffee, no rush

• I eased into the day instead of launching at it

• I didn’t force the work; the work came and found me

• I moved my body

• I let myself have a guilty pleasure while I did it

• I ended the day with live music

And perhaps the most important ingredient: I had different parts of myself alive in the same day.

The curious me.

The ambitious me.

The lazy-coffee-in-bed me.

The sporty me.

The hip-hop-loving me.

Maybe an Awesome Day isn't a day where everything goes perfectly.

Maybe it's a day where enough of YOU gets to show up.

And that's why I think there's something powerful in studying our happiness.

We spend a lot of time analysing what went wrong: Why was I stressed? Why am I tired? Why didn't that work?

But what if we became equally curious about what goes right?

Instead of letting a beautiful day disappear into the calendar, pause and ask:

Huh, what made today so good?

Then write down the ingredients because eventually, patterns appear.

You discover that your happiest days contain sunlight, or movement, or deep conversations, or creativity, or novelty, or music, or an hour completely to yourself. And suddenly joy becomes a little less accidental. You now have a recipe.

Not one you need to follow perfectly.

Just one you can return to when life starts feeling a little too grey.

🌟 3 Ideas for Creating More Joy This Week

1. Create an Awesome Day note on your phone - every time you catch yourself having a good day, investigate it:

• What did you do?

• Who were you with?

• How did you spend your morning?

• What did you eat?

• How did you move?

• What made you laugh?

• What part of you came alive?

Write it down.

2. Protect one slow morning - no immediately reaching for email. Coffee first. World later.

3. Buy the ridiculously good fruit - the peaches, mangoes, strawberries - whatever feels like a tiny luxury.

📚 2 Inspiring Resources

1. Event: Open House Festival - from 12th till 20th September, buildings across London that you'd normally walk straight past suddenly open their doors. My favourite ones are the boat houses!

2. Website: Service95 Book Club - Dua Lipa's book club is a lovely source of books, conversations, playlists and perspectives from around the world - perfect for feeding the curious part of your brain. Its September selection is now live too.

🤔 This Week's Reflection Question

1. Which version of you comes alive on your best days?

Ready for an awesome day,

Irina