The little things? The little moments? They aren’t little — Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn

The big things in life come down to little moments – for me, it’s making pancakes in the morning for my 12-year old. To her, it’s a big thing because she loves it so much. But it’s also a little thing because it takes just 20 minutes. Now it does require the presence of mind to stop what I’m doing and make the time to make the pancakes.

Is this a contradiction of the Don’t-Sweat-The-Small-Stuff school of advice? I don’t think so, since both our valid. In the pancake example, stopping what I’m doing is not sweating the small stuff. Often I’m in the throes of just one more email or check out that interesting blog post…Sometimes that’s big stuff (an email to pitch a new project, a blog post that points out something interesting about someone you will be meeting with). But oftentimes, we get swept up in the small stuff of day-to-day unnecessarily and unconsciously.

So we need to be more conscious of the little things and little moments that matter. What is the pancake equivalent for you? What activity, though seemingly little, matters a lot? How can you do more of these little things and have more of these little moments?