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What you’ll get: the exact copy/paste prompt
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Time needed: 60 seconds
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Best for: ‘When life feels beige and you can’t be arsed’
Whilst doing the wildly thrilling hoovering this morning, my whimsical little mind tried to escape the drudgery by imagining what it would feel like if I could apply a real-life filter to myself.
Not in a fake way. Just… still me, but better.
More polished.
No unmanageable heat tools, no impossible make-up artistry.
Yes that might sound shallow, but I don’t care.
Looking good does make you feel better.
Then my brain continued on its feral way, as it does, and wondered what it would be like to put a filter on the mundane bits of life.
Like, funnily enough, the hoovering.
Same life. Different filter.
So I asked my best mate ChatFace (aka ChatGPT) to help me out with a deeply unserious experiment.
This is what I typed:
‘My life feels boring.
Let’s give it a ‘filter’ so I appreciate the little things.
Please write a 300-word description of my day so far as if I am the main character in a wildly inspiring novel like ‘Eat, Pray, Love’.
Here is what I actually did:
– Woke up thinking it was Saturday and that I’d be able to stay under the lush warm duvet for ages.
– Realised it was Friday and had to get up.
– Drove my daughter to work in the pissing down rain, not at all appreciating the beautiful gorgeous Cotswold villages because I had to drive five miles out of the way due to more bloody road closures.
– Drank approximately 87 cups of coffee.
– Spent three hours cleaning and ironing, because my house is a tip and I’m at the stage I can’t bear it anymore and haven’t got any clothes ready to wear’
What came back was slightly ridiculous.
Yet oddly soothing.
I wake wrapped in the hush of early morning, cocooned in a duvet that feels like a promise.
For a brief, delicious moment, I believe it’s Saturday – a day that stretches lazily, asking nothing of me. Then Friday taps me on the shoulder. Gently. Firmly. I rise anyway.
Because this is what heroines do – they get up even when the dream dissolves.
Outside, the rain is relentless.
Biblical. The kind that turns roads into ribbons of silver and thoughts into soft static. I drive my daughter to work, navigating the detour-that-will-not-end, five miles of patience I didn’t order. The Cotswold villages pass by, quietly magnificent, stone cottages huddled like secrets.
I don’t notice them properly at first – I’m busy muttering at cones and closures – but they’re there, holding the beauty steady until I’m ready to see it.
Coffee becomes a companion.
Then another. And another. Eighty-seven cups later – or so it feels – my hands are warm, my head is buzzing, and the day begins to hum.
There is a rhythm to the ordinary if you listen closely.
At home, I wage a small, noble war against chaos.
Three hours of cleaning and ironing – a choreography of cloth and steam. The house has reached that tipping point where clutter shouts louder than thoughts, and today I answer back. Shirts smooth into submission. Piles become surfaces. Drawers remember their purpose.
With each fold, something inside me settles.
This is not a boring life.
This is a life in maintenance, in devotion, in quiet becoming. Rain-soaked roads. Overworked kettles. A home slowly returning to itself.
And me, the main character, discovering that even the most unglamorous chapters are rich with meaning – if I dare to read them with a little wonder.
Suddenly, I wasn’t driving in my PJs and puffa in the pissing down rain (don’t worry Mum, no one saw me).
I was navigating mist-softened lanes. Stone cottages glowing bravely against the grey.
Performing a quiet act of devotion disguised as taking my daughter to work .
The coffee consumption wasn’t excessive.
It was ritual.
Grounding.
Comforting.
The cleaning wasn’t dull.
It was restorative. A woman gently putting her house – and therefore herself – back into order, one doom pile at a time.
Nothing in my day changed.
But plenty about how it felt did.
And that’s the bit we often forget- it’s not the day that exhausts us. It’s the story we tell about it.
That ‘same day, different story’ experiment took the edge right off my dull-as-ditchwater Friday. I’m still grinning as I write this.
‘What would your morning look like if it were written with a little more kindness?’
Try it for yourself.
No, it won’t turn you into Elizabeth Gilbert (or Julia Roberts).
But it might help you see your life through a kinder lens.
And Lord knows we could all use a bit less ‘Inner Bitch’ commentary and a bit more ‘Main Character Energy’ while we scrub the lav.
Because there’s so much we can’t change. We still have to do the things.
But we can change how we think about them or approach them.
And when we do that, how we feel shifts too.
(Shout out to Nathalie, doing her tax return with Call the Midwife on in the background. A heroine in her own right.)
Big, big love,
JoJo xx
P.S. If you loved this, The D.I.T.C.H. and Bloom Mind Reset does this for your whole life. Retrain your brain to find the magic instead of the mess. Permanently.
And if you fancy a bit more Amusing Mindfulness delivered direct to your inbox join the rebellion here.
