Fill Your Life With Beauty

Even when you are going through a difficult spell, you know that life can at least be pretty. You owe yourself that.

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When you live a charmed life, your very existence is drenched in beauty. You seek it out in nature and galleries, in fabric colors and china patterns. You see it where someone else could miss it - the antique street lamps on a single block, the spider web bejeweled with raindrops, the lace tablecloth on the bottom of a pile at the thrift store.

You wake up in beauty in the way you have outfitted your bedroom and what you focus on outside when you open your shades. You choose from beautiful clothes in your closet and beautiful fruits for your cereal. You take a beautiful route to work and spent the day in a beautiful office. Even when you are going through a difficult spell, you know that life can at least be pretty. You owe yourself that.

Having fresh flowers around is one way to put a patch of beauty just about everywhere.

However, even things that everyone agrees on can seem old or dull if you have looked at them everyday for years, so set up a rotation system. Keep some artwork, small pieces of furniture, rugs, and so forth in storage so you can alternate them annually or every six months. With a fresh eye, you will remember why you love each piece when you bought them.

Concentrating on one object of beauty at a time trains your eye and soul to look for beauty everywhere and have it register when you come upon it. To that end, play a little game by selecting a "beautiful item of the week". No one else has to know you are doing this. Decide that the small bronze statue of lcarus just before his wings melted when he flew too close to the sun will be the object to which you will pay special attention this week.

You will spend a little time with it, looking at it from every angle, touching it to find the beauty with your fingers as well as your eyes. Next week you might choose for the honor a framed sunset photograph you took on a vacation last summer. And the week after that it might be a particular houseplant whose leaves are the most exquisite combination of dusky pink and earthy green.

"Beauty behind me, beauty before me, beauty beyond me, beauty beneath me. Look for it everywhere.

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Before the day is over, do one small thing that makes your life prettier. Then, before you go to sleep tonight, give yourself the suggestion that doing this daily is going to become a habit.