Making Every Moment Extraordinary

In this episode of Pearls of Wisdom, I explore how an extraordinary life isn't created through extraordinary events, it is created through the way we meet each ordinary moment.

Often we wait for the next achievement, the next holiday, the next relationship, or the next achievement before allowing ourselves to feel fully celebratory.

But this moment is the one that matters the most!

Every interaction, every thought, every conversation, and every challenge offers us an opportunity to practise awareness, kindness, and responsibility.

In this episode, I explore:

• Why every moment is an opportunity to deepen awareness
• Taking responsibility for the energy we bring into the world
• Recognising reactivity as an invitation to return to presence
• Asking for change with kindness rather than blame
• The importance of consistent daily practice—not perfection
• Becoming aware of our thoughts, words, and actions
• Creating relationships that are grounded in compassion, respect, and presence

An extraordinary life isn't built one big decision at a time.

It's created through thousands of ordinary moments lived consciously.

Because every moment is another opportunity to choose love over fear, awareness over reaction, and presence over habit.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

And to make every moment an extraordinary moment, and that's all of our moments, because some of the moments aren't necessarily easy, and they can be as valuable in our expansion and our understanding and our leading us back to the recognition of who we truly are. Pearls of Wisdom to change all life. Welcome to Pearls of Wisdom. Today I'm going to talk about every moment being an extraordinary moment. Years and years and years ago, I was reading a book by Dan Milman, and it was called No Ordinary Moments, and he investigated this way of being, and this was back in the 90s, and I loved his books. He wrote many books. He wrote The Way of the Peaceful Warrior and The Life You Were Born to Lead. And I was really fortunate that I had the opportunity to go to California and do one of his courses, and he actually encouraged me to write my book Running to Learn. So he's very, very important as part of my own investigation and exploration. And so I was sitting on the King's Road yesterday. I had gone to the gym and went to the gym half past seven, half past eight, went to Joe and the Juice, and it was this lovely sunny morning, and I was sitting there with my muscle up. They all have wonderful names, the juices in all the smoothies. This was a post-workout wonderful thing full of amazing ingredients. And I was sitting in the sunshine and watching all the people and watching everybody go by, and lots of people smiled and said, What a wonderful morning! And there was a lot of engagement because I was I was sitting there in a in a place where I could be seen, obviously, and I was watching or more than watching, just enjoying the morning, and I was reflecting how extraordinary every moment is, and everybody was going somewhere, and everyone was doing something, and everyone's dressed in their clothes they'd got dressed in when they got up, luckily. And I was just thinking, it is incredible. This life, we have this opportunity to live this life, and and to make every moment an extraordinary moment, and that's all of our moments, because some of the moments aren't necessarily easy, and they can be as valuable in our expansion and our understanding and are leading us back to the recognition of who we truly are, because when we really get into the essence of our self, the truth of who we are, and we feel that life force and we can feel it through it at all times, then we'll start to really, really experience every moment as extraordinary because we are all vibrating, we are all giving out an energy signal, and that's evident when we meet people, we'll talk about whether they bring the energy down or their high vibe or they're people you want around you, or um you can just sense, you can sense what's going on with people, and so we're all broadcasting all the time, every moment we are broadcasting, so therefore, it's recognizing that we all are uh tuning forks, we're all vibrating at different levels, and we'll all resonate with different people because of that. But it's our responsibility to bring our vibration up, to really recognize in every single moment that we need a consistency, we need to be consistent in our awareness, consistently recognizing that it's our responsibility to be present in every moment and make every moment an extraordinary moment. Because even if we're having a difficult time, even if there's something going on that is challenging to us, painful for our body, for our emotions, a very difficult situation. If we have an awareness, if we can come back to presence and we can witness it, we can again experience it and see if there's something that we will be gaining from it, something we might be learning from it. And if we always have that orientation, life continues to grow and grow and grow and be more and more expansive. I can remember many, many years ago, again in the 90s, and I was in an incredibly difficult situation. I was finding the the yeah, the whole situation was very, very, very hard. I won't go into any details, but I can remember, despite all the difficulty, and I can remember all my supervision sessions. Normally, in supervision, when you're working with clients, your supervision would be about work talking about your clients, but I use the supervision sessions to talk about my own situation. And I remember my supervisor saying, You sure you want to use your time for this rather than talking about your clients? And I said, Yes, because I know I'm responsible for what I'm bringing, I'm responsible for my vibration and I'm responsible for working out my stuff because if if I can't work my own stuff out, that's got to be the essence of my work and what I'm bringing into all the space with my clients. And I can remember driving in the country, country lanes one day and thinking, I've I've never been as unhappy as this in my whole life, and I'd had other difficult stuff I'd worked through, but I can remember thinking I've never ever felt so unhappy in my life, but I can feel my spirit growing, so I could I could witness it. So even though this was a difficult situation that I was navigating, it was still an extraordinary moment, it wasn't ordinary, and it was my responsibility to work it out, my responsibility to keep my vibration high, whatever was going on, and what and be very aware of what vibration I was bringing when I worked with my clients, when I was out in the streets, when I was anywhere. We are we are bringing our energy wherever we are, and it's so important to recognize that and be responsible for it and and yeah, be responsible for ourselves and how we do that. I always always come back again and again and again to clearing, to recognizing any single time that we are reacting to anything, to our partner, to our children, to our parents, to any people around us, to recognise if we're irritated, upset, cross, angry, disappointed, all of those emotions, and recognize that the moment we feel that emotion, and it doesn't need to just be immediate um family or friends, it can be people on the bus or people we see in the street or bump into or any situation. It's really, really important to recognise that the moment we've reacted, we have brought our vibe down and we have an arrow to something within us to clear. So it it's therefore important at that point that we don't add the narrative into the feeling, that we don't start to get cross on, you know, if it's something random, if there's someone talking loudly to someone on a bus on their phone and they haven't got earphones in. That's quite a common one I hear from people that triggers them. So um that's important that I'm I you know we can have a an opinion, we can have a view that it's more um it's more um what's the word, it's more considerate to put earphones in and talk quietly if we're in public places. Yeah, we can have that as a view. However, if we're triggered by the the situation, then there's something in us where we're feeling, you know, not important or not seen or who knows. All it's it's for us to investigate what it triggers in us because the reactivity is still ours to clear. That doesn't mean we wouldn't go over and say you think put some headphones in or move and move to the downstairs, or doesn't mean we wouldn't take action, but the first place is to clear the reactivity. So those are the three things that tend to tend to be the choices in those situations that we can rail against it and be angry and reactive, or we can leave the situation, or we can accept it and stay with it. Um, and in that space, when we clear, sometimes you might go and say something, but it's always our responsibility. So 24-7, if you react, clear it, and you clear it by recognizing you've reacted. You can usually well, it happens in the body, sometimes people can't always feel it, but feel it to heal it. So when it rises up in the body, the irritation, press pause, don't get to get into a narrative and breathe deeply. Conscious breath, you jar your breath deep into the tummy, breathe out the reactivity. It is transformative, it is absolutely transformative. It is the core work, anything else, all the other um things that might make us feel better because there are lots of things that can raise our vibe, like chanting, meditating, having um you know, cold water swimming. Well, that's not so great for me, but lots of people love it, and um being in nature, all the things, meditation that help raise our vibe. The core, core, core work is to clear when you react because you clear away all those layers because the reactivity is coming from all the conditioning, um, all the adaptations, all the childhood um patterns, programmes, and therefore it's a very easy route for us to get lighter and lighter and lighter. I say easy, easy in that if you practice it, consistency is the key, consistency, consistency. Actually, consistency is key for keeping our vibration high, consistently showing up, consistently showing up at everything we do fully, and therefore, and and following through with things. So if we've got practices that um you know we've we've committed to, whether that's exercise in the mornings or three times a week, or or we've committed to breath work, or we've committed to learning a language, or anything we've committed to, we can always change, we can always get to the point where we could go, actually, this isn't right for me, I'd like to stop it. But all the time we've committed, show up, keep showing up, keep showing up. It's incredible what showing up does. Just keep on practicing, keep on practicing, keep on breathing. That's such a such a simple and so helpful with making every moment wonderful. Because if you feel reactive, you've immediately your vibe's gone down. So you breathe, you take a conscious breath, you clear that reactivity, you maintain a higher vibration. You have a higher vibration, you will have a different react, different experience with people out in the streets because people recognize vibration, and we will recognise high vibe, and so we much more response to a higher vibration. And also, it's obviously important within that to make sure your inner self-talk is very, very kind to yourself because part of the clearing reactivity and keeping every moment extraordinary is a clearing of reactivity, means that we're not going to start a negative self-a negative talk to the whoever's um you know prompted that trigger, so we're not going to start getting blaming the people around us, and we're also not going to therefore be blaming ourselves because sometimes reactivity is self coming back to self-deprecation, disappointment in self. They're one and the same thing, really. The subconscious mind doesn't know the difference between whether we chuck stuff out at people or it's back at us. It's all bad for the vibration, it all brings us down. And really and truly, coming back to the breath, coming back to presence, coming back to clearing as the core, the core practice means that you will end up being kind to yourself because you won't, you'll be disciplined about your showing up, you'll show up to yourself, you'll show up to self-love, to self-care, to um starting the day well, to starting the day with a positive self-talk or a positive talk about the day. Today is a day full of opportunity, and I'm ready. I'm ready to live this day fully with all of me present at all times, and then we can do things immediately, do some breath work, eat lovely food, or go running in my case, and listen to some Spanish in my case too. And it is consistency is incredible because I've decided this year to take my Spanish up to another level because it's been um you know survival Spanish, it's been reasonably okay to survive in Spain Spanish for about eight years now, and because I learned enough to run across Spain in my bare feet, and I decided to go up a level, and not unsurprisingly, it's often you can often well, you can often feel you've got worse because it's harder. Because I've got a brilliant teacher called Sylvia, and she works me quite hard, and therefore, it can feel like you're getting worse. So, therefore, it's really important again to keep showing up, not have any negative self-talk about getting worse. And I've been listening to a podcast in the mornings um by this young woman called Sarah Backe, I think that's anyway, it's Bastiera or something. Anyway, she's wonderful, she is an athlete, and she has a cafe in um Madrid called Always Open. And I'm my goal is to get good enough at Spanish to go and meet her and turn up at her cafe and chat to her about her running, and this is my goal. Anyway, I couldn't understand hardly anything she said at the beginning. I'd been listening to um podcasts, Spanish learning podcasts, which are adapted, of course. But this is a properly Spanish podcast where she just chats away, and anyway I'm starting to understand it. And I've been, I can't remember when I started Spanish with Sylvia three or four months ago, but you just show up, show up, show up, show up, show up, and also treat all the moments you're showing up that don't feel quite as productive or amazing as extraordinary. Just treat them all with presence and let that life force flow through you and appreciate being here on planet Earth with all of this experience that we have, and then and be kind to yourself, compassionate for your processes, compassionate if you're clearing and the same stuff seems to come up again and again and again, and whatever you're clearing, whether it's um you know consistent irritation or anxiety or fear or or depression, there's all these things that they are are actually all for clearing. And I'm not saying it's necessarily easy, but once we've made the commitment to make every moment extraordinary, then if if it that's possible to make that commitment, or it is possible, of course, but when we make that commitment, then we can show up even when the things are hard because we won't go into the narrative of I can't do this, and then things start to change, things start to change, and we can be fully conscious of all the thoughts we're thinking, the words we're saying, and recognising that we are creating our vibration, creating our moments in with every single thought we think, word we utter, action we take, that it's our responsibility, and it's coming back again and again and again to it's all me, it's all me, it's all me. So when things seemingly are getting overwhelming, or people are behaving in ways we don't necessarily want them to behave, or events aren't turning out as we wanted them to turn out, and there's all these things, they're all the navigating the journey of life. Come back to it's all me, it's all me. And that isn't a uh self, you know, flagellating, is that the word anyway, being horrible to ourselves, it's just a responsibility phrase that if it's all us, we're we're empowered because then we go from the perspective that it's not happening to us, but the world is a reflection of us, then again we can be look in wonder at the extraordinary moment playing out in front of us, even if it looks chaotic or it's a pattern that's gone on and on before, we can go, wow, this is extraordinary, and it's a it's an opportunity every moment, an opportunity to be responsible for ourselves, to raise our vibration, to think about what we're putting in the space, and that's the key that everywhere we go, we are vibrating, we are putting something in the space between us and everybody else, and we are making a difference to the world when we do that. So let's make every moment an extraordinary moment, and let's live fully responsible for our vibration and what we are broadcasting to the world.