I noticed that when I have a Dark Day, I get tunnel vision: I see only the depression and not the beauty of the world or the happy moments or the laughter. Even when I’m not depressed, I tend to ignore the awesome little things; I’m too busy getting this done or getting that done that I often forget to just look…

For this reason, I often run without music or distractions. Just me and the outdoors. Today I decided to really notice the wildflowers that I too often take for granted:

Tips on How to Appreciate Beauty:

On the other hand, finding the time to actually appreciate beauty might be the problem. If you’re like me, you like to multitask. This might be listening to audiobooks when you run, writing while you watch TV (as I’m doing at this very moment), or texting while you’re driving (do not do this. Bad. Very bad).

If this is the case, then here are a few tips on taking a few moments out of your day to appreciate the beauty around you:

• Don’t multitask. At least not all the time. Appreciate the view while you drive (even if you don’t think you have much of a view—there’s always something).
• Take a walk. Even a short walk can expose you to all sorts of small beauties outside. Sometimes you might have to really search for the beauty, but they’re there.
• Listen to the music. There’s music all around, you just have to listen to it. Sometimes that music happens to be a baby’s laughter or the singing of birds.
• Pay attention. I was running the other day, and I saw this interesting interplay between birds. Two little songbirds were dive-bombing this huge crow. I don’t know if the crow was by a nest, but it was so interesting. Beautiful, even.

You’ll find that seeing the beauty around you will give you a quite sort of happiness; it’ll give you a bit of peace. Find that beauty, and hold on to it.

Choose Joy.

—A