My wife gave me some valuable advice the other day.

Actually, she always has valuable advice for me. Do I always heed her advice? That’s another thing…

As I write this, we’re in the midst of social distancing due to the coronavirus. The blessing of being at home is that I get to spend extra time with my family. And that includes my wife making me a delicious cup of afternoon coffee. Now for the advice…

She made a perfect cup as always, and I don’t know if you’ve ever had that perfect coffee at the perfect time, but I was guzzling it back, and I didn’t want it to end. So I tried to add hot water to make the cup last longer. Of course you know that was a mistake…as did my wife.

“What are you doing?”, she asks. I told her I loved the coffee so much that I wanted to extend it to last longer.
To which she said, “Sometimes you have to just enjoy things as they are.”

I immediately stopped, wrote down that wonderfully serendipitous line, then enjoyed the rest of my coffee. Well, partially….

She was right. Extending the coffee almost ruined it. I should have just enjoyed what I had.

How often have you done that in life? Ever tried to change something to make it better instead of just “enjoying things as they are.”? Far too many people do that: they fail to enjoy the richness of their experiences. Right now it’s even more important to remember to enjoy what is, instead of worrying about what will or will not be.

So I’ll leave you with this…

Can you put away your “badge of busy” for a minute?

Can you put away your need to be “productive”? (Whatever that means!)

Can you enjoy things as they are?

Or are you too concerned with changing the flavor of your coffee?

Kwesi Sekou Millington

Resiliency Speaker, Author, Coach

www.KwesiMillington.com