Small Joys, Big Shift

What if the fastest way to feel calmer is to change your lens—literally? We dive into a simple, creative practice that uses photography prompts to slow time, train your attention, and help you uncover the small joys hiding in plain sight: crunchy leaves on a morning walk, the comfort of a favorite sweater, a hot shower after a long day. By guiding your focus toward what is true, lovely, and admirable, you build a daily rhythm of gratitude that steadies you when life feels noisy.

We revisit a beloved pocket guide of prompts—like capturing something unexpectedly beautiful or recreating an old photograph of your town from the exact same spot—to connect past and present and imagine the future with curiosity. You’ll hear how a basic before-and-after tidying photo becomes proof of agency and a mental reset, and why training your eye to notice beauty changes your baseline mood. Along the way, we reflect on the idea that your focus determines your reality, and we pair that mindset with gentle, practical steps you can try today.

Come for the prompts, stay for the shift: a sustainable way to find gratitude, build presence, and make room for joy in the ordinary. If this moved you, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs a lift, and leave a quick review to help others find their own quiet moments.

To learn more, go to mycreateharmony.com

Chapters

• 0:04 Welcome & Everyday Joys
• 1:11 The Great Fall Series Returns
• 2:26 Using Photo Prompts for Gratitude
• 3:38 Then-and-Now Town Photo Exercise
• 5:05 Before/After Tidying as Mindset Shift
• 6:34 Training Your Eye to Notice Beauty
• 7:35 Closing Reflections & Inspiration
• 9:27 Announcement: Peaceful Pathways Boxes

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:04

Welcome to the Create Harmony Podcast. Our focus here is joy that is around us all the time. It's there but just nestled in little things, and sometimes it goes without notice. It's crisp morning walks where you hear the leaves crunch underfoot. It's the way you feel when you pull on your favorite cozy sweater on a cool evening. It's those slow mornings when you can stay in bed a little longer and snuggle under the covers. It's trying out a new recipe and savoring all those tasty flavors. Or maybe it's a hot shower after a long day of work. All these things hold a tiny piece of joy. And it only takes a moment to notice them. So in this world that is filled with conflict and chaos, these tiny blessings are ever more powerful, and we are taking the time to take note. This is episode 146, and I am your host, Sally Burlington. So we are especially taking note of small blessings and everyday joys right now because we're continuing through what we call our Great Fall series. We've taken the concepts the concepts of grateful and fall and put that together, and it's great fall. So for today's discussion, we're going to revisit something we talked about during last year's Great Fall series. So last year I shared that I have this book called One Photo A Day Keeps the Doctor Away. It's an interesting little book. And in it, it has all sorts of prompts for ways to slow down and take a different or deeper look at the world. Now this is right up our alley. We talked about it last year in episode 92. If you want to hear last year's version, you can go back and listen to episode 92. But we discussed how we could use this book as a gratitude tool. So the prompts are all over the board. There are a hundred and sixty total prompts in this book, and there are all sorts of different topics or angles or whatever. But on each page, you get a prompt, and then there's a little description that gives a little bit more info. And then there's a related quote. So I'm going to give you an example. Here's the first example. Um there's a prompt that says photograph something unexpectedly beautiful today. And then the little description says, find a little golden nugget in your day-to-day, something that you find singularly beautiful. Take a moment to think about how you can transpose this into an image. Then take a unique picture of it, a picture that only you could take. Show the world the beauty that perhaps only you have noticed, and let it shine. And then the quote that goes with this one says, Make visible what without you might perhaps have never been seen. And this is just perfect for us. I mean, this is exactly what we're talking about. I love how this book helps us shift our perspective and look more deeply at the things around us and how it causes us to think, how we think about how each of us is seeing those tiny little bits of beauty in the world around us, and the more we share that with each other, the more joy we all experience. So, okay, let me give you another example. Find an old picture of your town today and take a photograph of exactly the same place. So then the description says, go online and search for an old photo of your town or city. Print it and visit the place where it was taken today. So you you in other words, you're gonna find a photo of some intersection or a building or some part of your town, and then you're gonna go back to where it was taken in present day and try to understand where the where the photographer was standing and take a picture in the exact same place. And then try to look through the photographer's eyes and their camera. Photography allows us to travel in time, it says in the description, connecting the present with the past. Study your own photo as if you were someone in the future. Every moment you capture will one day also be a relic of a time long gone. And so that's an interesting way to look at just a little area of your town, just s different viewpoints, what it looked like in the past, what it looks like today, and then you're imagining what it's gonna look like in the future. And I just thought that was a good way to embrace, you know, maybe maybe you want to use whatever spot you choose in town might be your favorite park or your church or somewhere that you love, and that really gives you the t chance to look at it more deeply and and appreciate it and have deeper gratitude. All right, here's another one. Take a before and after photo of something you're tidying up today. So the description says decluttering, a drawer in your desk, your wardrobe, a stack of paperwork can help you clear your head and see things in a new light. Whenever you feel like you are stuck in a rut, find something that needs tidying up and take a before photo. Then get to work and take a new after photo and feel proud of yourself afterwards. So see, you can have gratitude for the fact that you cleaned up your own space. The quote that goes with this one is from Marie Condo. From the moment you start tidying, you will be compelled to reset your life. As a result, your life will start to change. That's why the task of pulling your house in order should be done quickly. So now you might be starting to get the idea. Taking a fresh perspective about your environment and stopping to treasure those things for just a moment. And that really seems to align with gratitude to me, noticing something and seeing it anew. And I wonder if you took a few minutes to ponder, if there's anything come that comes to mind that you could photograph, like if you could create your own prompt here, is there anything that you could photograph and learn to see it differently? Maybe sometimes even seeing a photograph in black and white or with a filter, just changes what you see, changes your lens. And this is exactly the kind of mindset we like to adopt here, change your lens and see something more beautiful or positive or joyful or uh something that went unnoticed. So sometimes when I'm curating content for social media, the things, the pictures I take, I'll stop and take a picture of a plant, something that looks beautiful. And there are times that I take a take that picture and I never even end up using it, but it just trains my brain to look out for something beautiful. And sometimes after I look at the image, I see something that I didn't notice when I was just looking at it through my actual eyes. The camera lens sometimes change sometimes changes how I see it. And that's our idea for how you can start to reframe your life and embrace your blessings. So hopefully that's an inspiration for you and you will use that lens you see the pun that I did there to see your world throughout your world today. Now for our closing today, we have two things. So first I will um rediscovered when I was looking back through some of the gratitude content that we had, I rediscovered a quote from George Lucas, and the quote says, Always remember, your focus determines your reality. And I really like that reminder because what we take time to focus on is what our reality is going to look like. And so then we'll segue into the second thing we're going to use for closing, which is Philippians 4, verses 8 through 9. And it goes like this. Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable. If anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received from me or seen in me, put it into practice, and the God of peace will be with you. It's a good reminder that focusing on good makes your reality more good. So I thought that would be a good thing. Did you see what I did there? A good thing for you to do as well. And hopefully that will be inspirational to you. So we're so glad you joined us for this installation of our Great Fall series. Now I'm gonna remind you, just like I've been doing every week, that we have something exciting coming on November 1st. Speaking of good things, we've partnered with Petal and Pink Mental Wellness Boutique, which is local to us here. And a mental wellness boutique is a very unique thing. It's not something you see every day. Everything in the boutique is one of a kind. There are all sorts of beautiful gift items. There are fidgets, there are journals, there is art, there are cozy blankets, there are books, all sorts of things that make you feel calm, make you feel good, and just change your mindset to a more zen place. You just don't want to miss it. But we are partnering with Petal and Pink to create a box, a seasonal series. That's what we've called it. It's a box of peaceful pathways. The first one launches on November 1st and it's filled with our winter content called Cozy Time. In each box, you'll get a card with a link on it to five guided meditations that were designed and created by me. And all of these meditations are very immersive experiences, so you will actually picture yourself drinking a cup of tea, or picture yourself snuggled down in your cozy nook, or envision yourself spending time by the fireside. And it really just allows you to step out of your life and step into a very peaceful, calming experience. And also in the box, in addition to the five guided meditations, you will receive gift items from Petal and Pink that coincide. They are echoing the same idea, so that you use this box for all sorts of different peaceful experiences, and you might want to purchase this as a gift item for someone, or maybe a gift for yourself. And not only will you get the fall and winter box, the cozy time box, there are three more boxes that come. One in the spring, one in the summer, and one in the next fall, that will all have similar content. Five guided meditations around each theme, and then gift items that support the experience. So this is something you don't want to miss. If you want to check it out, please look at your calendar for that's when that launches. Thanks again for joining us. Until next time, peace.