5 Simple Tips to Beautify Your Life

“The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes. If you foolishly ignore beauty, you will soon find yourself without it. Your life will be impoverished. But if you invest in beauty, it will remain with you all the days of your life.”      -Frank Lloyd Wright

I don't know about you but when someone speaks to me from the vantage point of a life mostly-lived, well...I tend to listen up.

To me, Wright's experience of an increasingly beautiful life is uncommon and inspiring.  He seems to be saying that "beauty" is available to us always, but it's up to us to wake to it, to cultivate it in our lives. 

photo credit: pablo.sanchez (Flickr)

Take a moment to think about your own life and habits.  Ask yourself:

• Have you been deliberately feeding your senses exquisite images and sounds, textures, colors and tastes? 
• Are you regularly decluttering your self-limiting attitudes and habits?  
• Do you give yourself regular time to reflect, process and savor your life's challenges and experiences?
• Do you experience your life a bit more richly, a bit lovelier than you did ten years, three years, thirty days ago? 

The late Thomas Leonard, pioneer of the coaching profession, believed that an optimized home and workspace enhance our ability to realize goals more than we might realize. 

To fine-tune your physical environment, this week I encourage you to consciously invest in beauty.  Take a few small steps to deliberately create a more elegant, inspiring or downright gorgeous place to live and work.

To get you started, here are 5 simple tips to beautify your life.

1. Grab some fresh flowers from the market, or tend and groom the houseplants you already have.
   
2. Cull the notes from your bulletin board, and use some of the newly freed-up space to post a quote, image or tchotchke that delights you. 
3. Reorganize your music collection, and create a playlist of newly rediscovered tunes or artists to play before or during your next writing session.
4. Warm up the lighting in your living or writing space.
5. Treat yourself to an elegant new writing tool.  Buy yourself a new pen or, if you prefer to write on-screen, experiment with a distraction-free writing environment to see how you like it.

You also may also experiment with making a daily "loved moments" list before bed.  To keep this exercise quick and simple, compress each impression into 1-3 sentences (or just an evocative phrase).  If you note even one loved moment a day, in a month you'll have a collection of notes to remind you of the beauty suffused in your everyday life. 

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I'll end today's post with a personal note--a postcard of sorts.

My two-year-old daughter, Annabelle, has always been a lark (like her mom).

Early in the mornings, my husband has been wrapping our little daughter up head-to-toe in a fluffy down comforter and picking her up to go outside. He opens the front door slowly, and as the damp autumn morning rushes at her face, Annabelle clasps his neck expectantly.  They settle on the topmost step just outside the door, Annabelle cuddled on her dad's lap.

Sometimes I hear Annabelle and her dad through the door as they sit in the starlight, talking about the neighborhood yet-to-wake, listening to the birds and chipmunks, looking at the sky.  Often when I hear the rhythms of their sleepy chatter I stand still.  Enchanted.

(A simple "loved moment" of mine.)  

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Care to share a recent "loved moment" of your own? 

What will you do to beautify your inner or outer environment this week?