Being average isn’t normally on my wish list. But why not?

I’m not talking about aiming low or not wanting whatever I want; I’m talking about enjoying every day, no matter how average it appears. And, let’s face it, most days are fairly average, aren’t they?

Or is that just my life?

So what is so special about average?

When you embrace the beauty of being average, you’re free to soar as high as you like, whereas when you keep thinking about how far you’ve got to go before you’re wherever you want to be, you’re weighed down by your expectations.

That’s the beauty of being average.

Is repetition average?

If you keep repeating what you did yesterday and do the same again tomorrow, every day will feel the same.

I’m not suggesting that’s a bad thing; some people go on holiday and spend every day sitting around a pool or on the beach. They do the same thing every day and come home raving about their wonderful time.

What makes some days special? Is it because you’re taken out of your normal routine even if you’ve plunged into a different routine?

Or is it because you change how you think about repetition when you’re on holiday? Because you’re choosing to repeat your experiences and you have holiday days framed as special, you have a special feeling about them. They don’t feel average.

Even if they are.

What is an average day?

Do days where nothing much happens lose their colour? Are they less important days? Are they boring days?

But I’ll bet that if something happened in your life that you didn’t want to happen, a death or illness, and your routine was thrown up in the air, you would wish that you could go back to the dull, average type of day that you think you’ve been having.

Then you would see the beauty in the simplicity of a typical day, the effortlessness of that routine and the beauty of being average.

Is your job average?

You might wish you had a more exciting job? But I’ll bet lots of people with the type of exciting job you want, wishes they were doing something else.

I once went to an author event; this author is what you might call a ‘proper’ author, she is published by Penguin and reviewed by all the broadsheets, and the first thing she said was, ‘I hate writing’.

She went on to say that she loved it when the book was written, but the writing process was tortuous, and she did everything she could to distract herself when she sat down to write, fed the cat, put the washing on, and she trawled social media. But you could look outside and imagine that creating stories entertaining people is a wonderful life.

A friend of mine took up amateur dramatics a few years ago. She had lofty ideas about being the next leading light and an immediate, fast trajectory to a London stage.

But, the reality was that whilst she loved acting, she hated rehearsing the same lines repeatedly, and the thought of saying the same lines at every performance made her skin itch. The idea she had about the glamorous job of an actress was nothing like the boredom she experienced.

Yes, it could have been something to do with the production being in a draughty local hall with dustballs the size of Texan tumbleweed, but it served to break the spell of Hollywood for her and allowed her to appreciate the average job she had.

Is the film of your life average?

The reality is that you’re all starring in your very own film every day. You create the script, design the sets, and choose the actors. And you forget this daily.

And if the film you’re starring in is not as glamorous or exciting as the one you’d like to be in, so what?If you think that your normal routine is boring, change it. And if it doesn’t look like you can change all of it, change some of it.

You know that your experience isn’t coming from your routine, circumstances, your job or your relationship, so you don’t have to change anything on the outside. If you notice the rut your thinking is in, you can stop yourself before you follow the same old thought patterns about your life and enjoy some fresh thinking.

Do you have an average body?

Maybe you compare yourself to those you consider above average, and if this is the case, you start to fall into a pit of self-judgement.

You begin to judge your appearance and compare your body to the photoshopped bodies on Instagram. They look amazing, and you look, well, average.

How can your body be average? It’s a miracle; it moves you about, breathes air into your lungs, pumps blood around your body, and allows you the power of thought even to consider that you look average.

Waking up in the morning is a miracle! Even for an average body on an average day.

Is average neutral?

Maybe you think of average as being neutral. Both neutrality and being average sound boring, don’t they? If you think of being neutral, you might think of dull people, ghosts of themselves, blending into magnolia walls. Neutral sounds as if it is without personality, colour, or any of the oomph that makes life special.

Or you could think of neutral as a place of wisdom. A place that isn’t without opinion but is without judgement or need.

A kind of average place?

A place where you can enjoy being, being in this particular moment. A place where you don’t wish things were different. A place of peace and happiness.

And the way to get to this place, this wonderful neutral, average place is to see when you’re wishing life was different, when you’re comparing yourself life to the lives you imagine people are living, when you are experiencing lack, remember that, to the people who have the lives you imagine are exceptional, exceptional becomes average.

And, depending on the way you think about your day, it can be an exceptionally wonderfully average day.