WHAT IS THE 'GRIND' ESCAPE?
We all face a daily grind. You know, the monotonous, routine, boring tasks that are somehow essential to making life work but which you'd much rather do without!
Well, this is where the idea for this blog came from. Because we have a theory - that, although you may not be able to avoid these sort of activities, there's no reason that you need to grind through them! Yes that may sound a touch 'positive mindset' - and you'd be right.
It all started one day when, after MONTHS of having a broken cupboard in the kitchen, my father in law came to visit and fixed it while we popped out. You would not believe the huge relief we felt every time we opened the (fixed) cupboard door after that. And it made us realise something. To be happy in life it's not about big events or huge gestures, it's making sure that every little thing you have to do each day has some element of joy in it. Like micro-experiences of happiness every day.
And once we started thinking like that, everything changed. We knew that, to be happy, we had to tackle all the small annoyances in life. Fix them, remove them, or accept them. It might be fair to say that this is when we also completely 'Marie Kondo'd' the whole house too. That was a fad that hit us at exactly the right time!
Once we'd done that (though, to be fair, it's an ongoing task in life, a bit like having to cut your toenails if you don't want to end up like the toe-horned beast of nightmares) we started looking at the things that we have control over. Not the niggles that happen to you but the choices you make on an everyday basis, the way you live your life, the people you spend time with, the work you do, etc etc.
And from there the idea of the 'Grind Escape' was born. It's not just about escaping the stuff you don't want to do, it's about freeing yourself from it being a grind in the first place!
Right now, this approach has led us to something I could never have contemplated before - an 'escape' that is still blowing my mind that we've managed to bring about. We are spending two whole months in Costa Rica. Work is on sabbatical, our daughter is out of school, and we're here, learning how to see life differently. It won't all be plain sailing (by a loooong shot) but we'll keep track of it all on this blog.
We hope you enjoy the journey with us and maybe give you 5 mins a day to escape your own grind to see things differently and come up with your own Grind Escape! :-)