Hello. Good evening ladies and gentlemen, ladles and jellyspoons. Wow, isn’t that an old joke? So, tonight I wanted to … I haven’t done one of my manifesto ones for ages, so I thought I’d do one of those. You’ve all seen my manifesto. Well, I’m assuming you’ve all seen my manifesto, because I usually stand in front of it. If you want a refresher, we’ll just have a little tour, shall we? I could just flick it. I’ll can flick it around. There you go. Oh my God so clever. The manifesto, the big manifesto, that is, they are my rules for life and for living. And I abide by most of them most of the time. Yeah. Most of them most of the time. So tonight I want us to talk about where I say collect experiences, not baggage. And when we wrote it and how I kind of think about it all the time is doing things like travel, and seeing friends, and fun stuff like that, as experiences.
I don’t want to touch so much on the baggage part of that equation tonight because I talk about letting go of that baggage a lot, and letting go of the past, and forgiveness, and moving on. There’s many, many lives I’ve done about those kinds of topics. So I wanted to talk more about the experiential part of it. And in terms of actually what’s going on now. So as I said, when I wrote [inaudible 00:01:33] it was about the doing of things, the parties, the people, the places, those kinds of experiences, because I love that stuff. I really do love that stuff. But more than anything at the moment, I’m noticing how beautiful the little experiences are. So I’m trying to pay attention to more of those in my life and I’d really love to encourage you guys to do the same.
So what do I mean by the little experiences? Well, funny at the moment, with Elodie at home, is playing games. We bought a new Disney game called Villainous, which is really hard to work out how to play, but it was fun. There’s jigsaw puzzles together, there’s cooking together, there’s walking together, there’s mad, mad ass conversations. There’s just these little, every day experiences that we’re kind of getting the time to pay attention to that we might not have had the time to pay attention to previously. And I’m going to say the should word here, and I don’t like saying the should word, but I’m going to should all over all of us. We should pay more attention to those little experiences more often. We should pay attention to our friends and our families and those tiny little things that happen, like someone writing you a card and saying, “Thank you.” What a freaking awesome experience that is. Going for a walk under the stars. Okay, maybe not at the moment, because it’s really cold, but that’s a beautiful experience.
Taking the time to sit in your garden with a cup of tea and a book. Awesome experience. So paying attention to those little ones I think is a lost art. So when I’m talking about my manifesto now, and I say that line, collect experiences, not baggage, I’m not so much meaning the big stuff.
Sure, the big stuff’s great. Our trip at Christmas was amazing, once in a lifetime experience, but hearing my daughter laugh, or she makes cupcakes, that’s a freaking awesome experience too. Hearing myself have a little cry when I see something sad or I’m reading a book that’s got something a bit melancholy in it, great experience. I’m going to pay more attention to those. So I want to encourage you too. That’s all simple. Anything that’s going on in your life at the moment, pay attention to the really little experiences. You may think they’re completely inconsequential, you may think it’s, whatever, you went to the fruit and veggie shop and maybe that conversation that you had, even at a socially distant conversation, talking about the ripeness of the avocados, that might’ve bought the person you were talking to a lot of joy that day. That might’ve given them a great experience for that day.
So pay attention to those little things and leave all the baggage behind. But you can go back to some of my other lives on baggage because I don’t want to talk about baggage tonight. I want to talk about the good stuff. And there are so many, many good experiences. Even at the moment when a lot of people are down, and stressed, and grieving, and anxious, and finding a lot of things really, really hard, there are still great experiences out there for all of us. Okay?
So find them, and then, what do you do when you find them? Oh my God. I’m going to tell you to write them in your journal. Funny that. It’s my safety go to. What would you do after a great experience? You’d free write it or put it in your gratitude part. That’s what you’d do because those bits are important. Okay? I did actually yesterday, and then this morning wrote about hearing Elodie’s laugh as being one of the things I was grateful for. So pay attention. Night night and I will see you all tomorrow.