Why the Simple Things Matter Most

In this episode, I talk about the perspective shift I experienced after coming back from our honeymoon. Stepping away from the routines of everyday life created space for me to reflect on something simple but powerful: the moments that bring the most meaning to our lives are often the simplest ones.

I share a quick recap of the trip and how coming back has made me look differently at the pace and clutter of daily life—mentally, physically, and digitally. We dive deep into letting go of the excess, clearing mental space, and learning to appreciate the small, simple moments that we so often take for granted.

Podcast IG: @letstakeabeatpod

Host IG: @nicoleathill

*The content of this podcast is for informational and inspirational purposes only and does not constitute professional advice. I am not a licensed therapist or medical professional. If you are experiencing mental health challenges or need personalized guidance, please seek support from a qualified professional*

Thank you for listening!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, and welcome back to Let's Take a Beat. I am your host, Nicole. Thank you for taking the time to press play on this episode today. I am so excited to record an episode for you all today, just because it's been a little while since I've recorded an episode, and a lot has happened since the last episode I produced, and I'm just so excited to catch up with you guys and get into the topic that we have for today. So I recently just came back from my honeymoon in Turks and Caicos with my husband, and we actually took our honeymoon six months later after our wedding. So initially, when we got married in August, we were planning on taking our honeymoon in October, but then I ended up going back to Aladdin around that time. So we decided to then reschedule our honeymoon and push it back to February of this year. And we also decided to do it around my birthday so that it would be a cool way to celebrate both our marriage and my birthday, and just getting a week off from work. And so we took that vacation, we got back about a week ago, and it was just the most incredible time. It felt as if we had just gotten married. I feel like the second we got to Turks and Keikos, it felt like, oh, we just got married yesterday, and now we are on this incredible trip of a lifetime. And it was just so wonderful escaping the New York winter and both of us getting a break from work and just pouring all of our time and attention into each other and into creating experiences and memories with each other. And we stayed at the most beautiful resort. We stayed at Grace Bay Club on Grace Beach, which is known as one of the most beautiful beaches in the entire world. The service was impeccable, everybody was so kind, the food was amazing, the beach was stunning. We did not have to wait for a beach chair or fight anybody to get amazing seats on the beach, and we got to spend time at the pool, the spa, we did some incredible water activities. We went jet skiing, parasailing, sailing, snorkeling, and it was just the most incredible time, and it was just such a breath of fresh air to be able to take that pause. I felt like while I was there, I had so much more space to think. I had so much more mental clarity, and I think a lot of us experience this whenever we get some sort of break or vacation from our day-to-day lives. And while we were there, I was just so incredibly at peace. And my husband and I were just enjoying the time that we had together. We are so in love, and we just wanted to create incredible memories together. And also, I pretty much went to bed at 11 p.m. every single night and woke up at 7 a.m. And at 7 a.m. I woke up, I did not touch my phone, I would open the doors, go out to the balcony, and sit on the balcony and do my morning pages and my devotional, and I would just sit there and take in all of the elements. I would just look at the ocean, I would hear the sounds around me, I would just listen and breathe. And I found that I was doing the same thing when we were sitting on the beach. I found that I could truly sit in the beach chair and look and take in everything, and I wasn't distracted by my phone or feeling like I needed to do something else. I really allowed myself to completely relax and completely take in everything. I also got a lot of reading done, and it was just so wonderful. And coming back to New York has been a little bit jarring, especially for my nervous system. I remember coming back here, I was like, whoa, okay, I was just in a beautiful place with the most perfect weather. It was 80 degrees and sunny and warm, and it was just perfection. And I come back to New York, and New York was just hit with a huge blizzard. So the temperatures are low, there's snow everywhere, there's a lot of stimulation with traffic, noise, people, sounds so many things going on. Basically, the complete opposite from where we just were. And so it took definitely a couple of days to just be like, okay, we are back at home. And as much as I love New York, it is winter, and things are just made a little bit more difficult in the winter, and especially coming back from such a heavenly, wonderful trip and wonderful time, and just getting away. It can always be a little bit of a shock coming back home as much as I love home. But anyways, coming back, we felt very refreshed coming back, which I think is a very positive thing, and returning back to work felt very positive. But also, I think the biggest thing that I brought back with me from this trip was a renewed sense of perspective for the simple things in life. I just thought about how in our day-to-day, we are so inundated with distractions and obligations, and it feels almost impossible for our brains to just turn off, or it feels impossible to just sit and do nothing because it always feels like there are so many things that need our attention. And being on our trip, I found that my mind was so unbelievably clear. And at times it almost feels impossible. It almost seems laughable when you're like, peace, mental clarity, nothing, nothing I need to put my attention towards right now. It feels kind of silly. But when I think about it, it was the little things on this trip that brought me so much joy that I realized that it's not that complicated. You don't have to feel like you have to go somewhere. Obviously, getting out of your usual routine is wonderful and it's amazing. And I know that everyone's situations are different. So not everyone can go on an elaborate vacation. But I found that doing anything that sets you a little bit outside of your routine of your day-to-day, whether it is going somewhere, or maybe it's just taking a day off, or maybe you can't take a day off, but maybe it's just taking a couple moments to yourself, minutes, hours, however much time you have. But being really intentional about that time is a way to then bring back this sense of peace and perspective of like, okay, there's a lot in this world and there's a lot in my life that I may not be able to control, but there are little pockets and moments where it's like, okay, what can I do to bring myself a sense of peace, a sense of joy, a sense of presence? And what I've realized is that there are just so many things that could take your attention. What I realize is that outside of the things that we do need to put our attention towards and our obligations and the things that we we do have to get done in our lives, there's also a sector of our lives where we do have control over what we choose to consume, what we choose to give our attention to. And I've just learned that our attention these days are so unbelievably priceless. It's so valuable, our attention, and it's so important. I'm starting to get more of an a sense of awareness of just the things that really do not require my attention, or the things that really aren't worth putting my attention towards. It's funny because for my birthday, my brother got me a brick. And if you don't know what a brick is, it's this kind of it's kind of going viral now, but it's a literal gray brick, um, very small, and it's basically a tool that helps you to block you out of certain apps on your phone so that you are not either scrolling or on your phone longer than you need to be. It basically is a tool to help you take your time back. And I've only had the brick for about a week or so, and honestly, I have already noticed a big difference. And the reason why I was interested in getting the brick is because when I came home from the show, it's so easy for me to just sit on my couch and scroll and just rot for a couple hours before getting ready for bed, and then by that point, I'm going to bed later and later and later. And I find that sitting there and scrolling is doing nothing for me except making me feel addicted to something and then making me feel tired, and it makes it harder for me to go to bed. And so bricking my phone when I get home from the show has made a significant difference. And I notice because I'll keep it bricked throughout the night and throughout the morning, but when I go out for the day or if I'm going out to the show, I will unbrick my phone because it's like, okay, whatever. Like if I want to be on the train and open up Instagram or TikTok or want to be at work and and we have a break and I want to open those things up, like that's fine, right? But I also noticed that naturally I want to open up those apps less, even when they are accessible to me. What I started to notice is that when I open Instagram now, I love and care about all of my friends and my family members. And yes, I'm interested in the lives of people that I don't even know, but I've started to just not give so much of my attention and feel like I need to care about everything that is popping up on my social media feed. I'm just finding that it's almost there's so much clutter and so much distraction and there's so much information that I'm just like, I don't really need to know about this. I don't really need to spend my time looking at the many things that everyone on my feed is posting. Yes, there are certain things where I'm like, oh my gosh, this is so exciting. I'm so happy I know this information about this person. But a lot of the time, I'm like, this is great. And again, I'm not anti-social media, but I'm just like, I don't need to know every single thing that is going on in somebody's life. And if I want to know, I will personally ask somebody about it. And I don't know, it just sounds really silly, but I just realize that there's just so much clutter in my brain constantly, and we can't help that because we have so many responsibilities and obligations in our lives, and it truly like there are certain things that people are dealing with and going through that some of us cannot even fathom. And we all go through different cycles in our lives, right? There will be moments where I will be going through a rough time, and there will be times where I will be feeling great, and times where it's rough, and times where it's unthinkable of how much pain or grief or anger or we cycle through so many different emotions throughout our day-to-day, throughout the year, throughout our lives, and everybody is meeting each other at different points in the journey of life. It's so strange because social media to me is real life. Like if someone is taking a trip to Europe and I see them in Italy at the Coliseum, I'll be like, that's great. They're there, it's real, it's happening. But we can't forget that social media is so curated and so edited, and we don't see the process of everything going on in everybody's lives. We don't see all the good, we don't see all the bad, we don't see all of the in-between. And yes, we are in a place where more people are being more vulnerable about maybe the tougher things that they're going through, more of the obstacles that they're going through in their lives. And I think it's so refreshing because it's so exhausting when you open up social media and see and believe that like everybody's life is perfect, but it's really not. I think it can be hard for our brains to just like decide, okay, what's important, what's necessary. Yes, sometimes we watch things and consume things because it does feel comfort, it does bring us a sense of comfort. But that comfort is very temporary at times. And to be honest, I think sometimes we need that. Sometimes we need a good scroll, right? But going from a time in my life a week ago when I was on vacation, feeling so unbelievably present in my life, and how it brought me so much joy and ease. And I just think to myself, what can we possibly do to infuse this into our daily lives? Because it does feel impossible. And I think where we start is with the things that we can control, even if it feels like nothing is in our control, there are moments that are in our control that we can decide where our attention goes. We can decide what am I going to do with this time right now? Am I going to use this time to do something that's actually actually feels good, brings me some sense of joy, or am I gonna do something where it kind of just numbs me out and I'm just gonna scroll, or do something that's just not good for me? And it's so easy to do those things, especially in a world where sometimes it just feels like we are hopeless, there's so much uncertainty, there's so many questions, there's so much hate, and we think, how can I go about living my own life when all of these other things are happening around me? But the beauty of life are the constant ups and downs. And I also believe that two things can exist at the same time. We can feel the heaviness and the stresses and the questioning of the world around us, but we also can cultivate the gratitude, the growth, the forward movement, the dreams we want to create, the goals we want to achieve, the peace we want to feel, the happiness we want to feel. We also can have a say in that as well. We can also focus on the things in our lives that bring us that sense of joy while also being so wildly aware of the things that are happening around us, or of course, that are even happening within our lives. Nobody's life is perfect, and we're constantly navigating our own inner feelings, we're navigating what's around us, we're navigating what's in our inner circles, what's just outside of our circles, what even reaches beyond our circles. There's so much to navigate, and it feels so overwhelming, and it feels like there are some days where you just want to hit pause and you can't. And when I speak about things like this, it can be very difficult because I can't be in everybody's shoes. And sometimes I feel like when I speak on topics like this, there are some people that are just like, okay, Nicole, all right, like you're speaking all this positivity, or you're trying to say you can do this, you can do this, you can change your circumstances, and maybe you just can't, or maybe you're not in a place to receive that. And that's why I always want to leave space for that because I'm not somebody who is the end all be all. I know everything, I'm going to help change everybody's lives. No. But what I aim to do with this podcast is not only just create a space for me to share thoughts about my life and topics that are interesting to me, but of course, I aim to build awareness of the self, of the things that you can control in your life, of building up your confidence, your self-esteem, finding ways to better take care of yourself, your family, your friends, your partner, your chosen family, your pets. It can be anything that you care about. And wanting to deepen that, really find that meaning and cultivating love and cultivating that gratitude that we only have one life to live, and we get to wake up every day despite everything else that pulls at our attention. There are moments when we can choose ourselves so that not only do we then fill our cup and fill our hearts with joy and the things that matter to us, but then we can then show up as better people outside of that. And we're not perfect, it's not always going to happen. There may be a season where that's just not possible for you. And again, I always want to leave space for both things to be true. And not only just those two things. There's so much more in the middle of how we can feel about these things. So, some of the things that I have been integrating into my life since coming back not only has been the brick and being more intentional about not scrolling and giving my attention so much to social media, I am trying to create a better routine for myself. I have talked about my morning routines and night routines and all that type of stuff, but for me, I'm just trying to keep it simple for this month of March, where I really want to focus on going to bed slightly earlier and waking up slightly earlier. I love mornings more than anything. I love mornings. I love how quiet it is. I love how I can take time truly for myself in the mornings before I am on for the rest of the world. And working on Broadway, it's very difficult to wake up super early consistently just because we work late at night. However, it is possible. You just have to be more disciplined about it. So for me, I really want to work towards having a more consistent routine of going to bed and waking up in the morning. One other thing I really want to do is the act of decluttering. I actually got a head start on this in February. I decluttered a ton of things in my home, which I'm very proud of myself for, and I already feel so much lighter, so much more mental clarity. And now I'm on the journey of decluttering digitally. So, like going through my apps on my phone and decluttering, going through my notes app and decluttering things, going through my email, all the boring stuff that can take a very long time to do. But I've started to do this process and it's not something that can be done in a day. I'm kind of gonna do this throughout the entire month of March and just again, just get rid of extra clutter that does not need to be in my phone, in my laptop, just so close in my orbit, and I don't even need to think about those things anymore. Again, it can be a very tough process to go through. I mean, even like random photos in my camera roll where you have tons of screenshots of random things, it's it's a very ambitious task. So I do not expect all of this to happen, even within the month of March, but it is something that already I've started doing, and I've it's felt so good. It's felt so good to release just things from the past that really don't even matter anymore. So decluttering in that way and eliminating a lot of that subconscious noise that you may not even really think is affecting anything has been really, really, really helpful. And another thing about being on our honeymoon was the pure undivided attention that my husband and I gave each other. And though we do absolutely prioritize those moments in our day-to-day lives, it's very easy for those times to get lost because we get busy, we come home, we're tired, we're on our phones, we're cooking, we're doing all these other things, we're working on other projects, other tasks. And it's so easy to not necessarily prioritize that undivided time. One thing I really want to take with me is making sure that no matter how much time we have, even if it's five minutes, ten minutes, an hour, truly have. Having uninterrupted time, no phones, where even we could sit and watch something, but no phones, no other distractions, and just taking time to connect. And again, it doesn't matter how much time we have, but just doing something like that every day will not only just be helpful in connection for our marriage, but it'll be an act of decompressing and not allowing the things that aren't that important to infiltrate into a very specific amount of time where my husband and I can just connect with one another. And you can use this task with friends, with other family members, with your partner, with even with yourself. Again, creating that uninterrupted time with yourself as well. The last thing I want to do is I am a personal finance nerd, which it might be kind of shocking to some people. I love personal finance. And all of this started in 2023. This was when I just really got into it and really just wanting to learn more about money, learn more about my personal finance journey, and I love it. With this whole idea of simplicity and why the simple things matter the most, is also wanting to spend my money intentionally on the things that actually matter, the things that I actually value. I don't want to spend frivolously on things, and it's gonna happen, right? You know, sometimes you spend money on things that may not have been a good purchase or you didn't really care about as much. It's fine. Like again, I'm not gonna be perfect on that, but we break it down to the most simplest of things that bring me a sense of purpose, of joy, of happiness when I'm spending my money that align with my values, that align with the life that I want to build, the life that I want to live. So it is March. We are quickly headed towards spring. We are coming out of the New York winter, thank goodness. And spring brings on a fresh, wonderful, forward momentum type of energy. And I'm really excited for it. And especially since February was very busy for us. We went on our trip, we had family visiting, a lot of things have been going on. Even though we're heading into spring, which is typically a season again of that revitalization and kind of getting that engine going again before summer, I am going to choose to take March as a time where I'm going to reconnect and slow down and kind of quiet things down just a little bit, especially because heading into the month of April, we have a lot going on. So for me personally, before we jet off into spring, I want to take this time to once again reconnect with the things that are important to me and find some groundedness and sense of presence. I want to nurture the things that are important to me and leave the rest, let the rest of it be. I'm just going to take this time to really continue to reflect on my time away and figure out ways in which I can figure out ways in which I can bring that essence into my daily life, even though it might be difficult, even though it may not be perfect all the time, but I want to be more present in my daily life and I want to be able to create opportunity for space, for joy, for happiness, for more love, for more connection. So, with all of that being said, I want to thank you for listening to this episode today. I hope that you are able to take something of value. Please share this episode or any of the previous episodes with anybody that you love or anyone that you may have thought of while you've been listening to this episode. And I appreciate your time always. And please follow the podcast Instagram. I also have my personal Instagram. Everything is down in the show notes. And I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day, afternoon, evening, whenever you are listening to this. And I will see you back here soon. Bye. The information shared in this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as medical or therapeutic advice. I am not a licensed medical professional or therapist. If you are experiencing any mental health or medical concerns, please consult with a qualified healthcare provider or licensed mental health professional.