Reality Check: Ordinary is the Backdrop to All Things Extraordinary

It’s OK to Be Ordinary as You Default to Extraordinary is a powerful reflection on the science of happiness and the myth of constant joy. Inspired by Michelle Obama's wisdom and supported by Dr. Laurie Santos’ research, this episode explores how embracing the ordinary can lead to an extraordinary life. Listeners will learn about the 3:1 happiness ratio, the PERMA model of well-being, and how most meaningful lives are built through consistent, ordinary actions—not constant excitement. Ideal for high-achieving women, midlife reinvention seekers, and those craving authenticity, this episode offers a grounded framework and coaching questions to reframe happiness and purpose.

00:00 Introduction and Welcome

00:49 Exploring the Concept of Being Ordinary

03:52 The Myth of Constant Happiness

08:29 Finding Meaning in Ordinary Actions

13:17 Reflecting on Your Own Mindset

16:42 Conclusion: Embracing the Ordinary

Transcript

0:59

Welcome to another extraordinary week. I am so honored to be on this journey with you. I hope that you will share this episode. I'd love it if you'd leave me a review or reach out and let me know what your, what. What you're creating and maybe what you'd like to hear about, what you'd like to talk about, what's coming up for you. This podcast is for you. If you're tuning in here, it's because you care and you are invested in your personal growth and development. You want to summon the best of yourself, and I am on this journey with you. I'd love to support you in that way, and if that means researching a topic that you're curious about or an obstacle that you're facing, I'm right. There with you. So thanks again for tuning in. Alright. I also love to listen to podcasts and this week I was listening to Michelle Obama being talking about being ordinary. Now I dunno about you, but when I hear someone who maybe lives a lifestyle that I can't even comprehend, I think Are we meaning the same thing? Uh, we might be using the word ordinary, but what is the definition of ordinary? Are we on the same page with this? And so my. Tendency is to think, when I hear from somebody like Michelle Obama who I admire and I listen to, I find her very wise and balanced at the same time. I know that she lives in a different world than I do in a lot of different ways, and so I think well, yeah. Okay, so. Being ordinary. If you have somebody to cook for you, if you have somebody to always clean for you, you don't, you're not really doing the ordinary things. Alright, so there's a little issue that I have in my thinking and something that I need to overcome because it really doesn't matter. Um, probably a whole lot. Those things are all maybe relative, so. The point is, is it's really okay to be ordinary as you default to extraordinary. We talk a lot here about defaulting to yes, your extraordinary self. What does that mean to you? And that's where it comes to. What does extraordinary mean to you? Finding that peace in every day while you're building a life of meaning. So, Michelle Obama, she said that it's that, first of all, just reminding people that she is a regular person. She spoke about being ordinary in the midst of her extraordinary life and. It was a reminder that even the people we most admire are not living the highlight reels that we we see and the things that we think. And that comparison is really dangerous for us because we really are, as humans, have a lot of the same things to overcome maybe in different ways, and maybe it looks different, but it doesn't really matter. Probably not. So most of their time like ours is spent doing things that are ordinary, doing laundry, drinking coffee, walking the dog, facing a blank screen, trying to fall asleep at night. All of those things are human. Commonalities things we have in common. The pursuit of continuous happiness is more of an illusion, and that understanding that might just be the key to living a rich and fulfilling life. This has come up a lot in conversations with friends as well as clients and colleagues. I would say that whole idea of that we should be happy more than we're not. My coach used to say 50 50. I wanna talk about that myth of constant happiness. Dr. Lori Santos. She's a Yale professor and the creator of the Science of Wellbeing course, and I've taken that, I've gone through that course twice now, um, because I just thought it was so helpful and there were so many things that I needed to take hold of. It emphasizes that our brains are wired in a way that we can, that can actually work against our happiness. In fact, we often overestimate what will make us happy and. Underestimate how quickly we adapt to both good and bad situations. And that's a phenomenon called the hedonic adaptation. Now, I also had a coach that used to say, uh, we would celebrate wins or we would say how bad the week was. And he would always remind us Nothing is as bad or as good as we think, and. That always seemed a little pessimistic to me, but there was a lot of wisdom in that too. So we can ride the highs and lows and drive ourselves crazy, or we can accept what is. Really what's going on and get, go deeper with this Happiness, according to research is not a permanent state, but it's a fluctuating emotion. And, Santos highlights That sustainable wellbeing comes more from mindset shifts and habits than it does from external achievements. She's, most of her study is on college students, so we have to take that into consideration. But science backs this up as well. Studies suggest that realistic emotion ratio is about three to one positive to negative emotions, and that's in really, uh. Thriving or flourishing individuals. And according to psychologist, Barbara f Fredrickson. Her, broaden and build theory of positive emotions. that's not 10 to one, that's not a hundred percent bliss, but it's a steady stream of small positive moments in the midst of the mundane, and that's where we really need to pay attention. And that's why mindfulness is so important and why I've. Really found that to be a key tool from navigating those ups and downs, even throughout maybe the same day and maybe even a moment. Now, ordinary is really the foundation of extraordinary. So when I say default to. Your extraordinary self. This is all part of it. The pressure to be always on or perpetually passionate or happy, that creates that false binary, that ordinary means boring, unimportant, or less than, and that is, there's nothing further from the truth. The truth is that most of our lives are composed of those small, repeated moments, and those are really exactly. The building blocks of the extraordinary life. So think of your favorite authors, leaders, creatives. Those influencers or maybe people that you aspire to be like, or to succeed as they have, do the things that they've done. Their lives are also filled with ordinary tasks. They don't maybe put them on Instagram. We don't see them when they are being interviewed on our favorite. show. They write drafts, they attend meetings. They walk to clear their heads. They parent their kids. They fold their clothes. Well, maybe some of them don't fold their clothes, but the, the, regardless, they are doing ordinary things now. If we really listen to some of their interviews, we will be able to take hold of that. But they often make light of that. And they are funny to us when, because in that moment we are really paying attention to where they are and why we're listening to them in the first place. Those ordinary moments aren't the ones that go viral, but they do make up that hidden architecture of greatness. How many times have you heard a story about overnight success taking 10 years or multiple decades? That's reality. They did the work, they paid the price. They did a lot of ordinary, what we see as ordinary things, or even less than ordinary things, extraordinary isn't about constant peak experiences. It's I guess is what I'm saying. And so we need to adjust our expectations. It's about consistently showing up with intention and in the ordinary. that's where character is built and that's where momentum grows. So I wanna talk a little bit about a framework meaningful moments over magical ones. I think this will help us really be able to balance our mindset around the realities of life and being able then to celebrate those extraordinary moments and see the beauty in the ordinary ones. A helpful way to frame this is through the lens of meaning, engagement, and joy. Now instead of chasing happiness as a feeling we can cultivate meaning knowing our why and connecting those ordinary actions to a bigger purpose. Think about how those ordinary actions connect you to other humans and allow you to see the universe, see the see creation, see nature in a different way, taking a walk. You can find nature, you can find spots of beauty that you never noticed before. and then knowing your why, why are you getting up every day? Why are you doing the things that you do? For what purpose are you, what meaning are you seeking? What are you created for? the world does need your gifts, you've been given a specific. And unique set of gifts and a personality and a style and preferences that are all your own, but they are meant for a purpose. They are meant to contribute to the human experience, to your neighborhood, to your community. To the world and we all need you to be doing that. Not lamenting the fact that of this circumstance that's holding you, you feel like is holding you back, but to really show up and find meaning, know your why and connect your ordinary actions with bigger purpose. Then there's engagement, being present and mindful in the task at hand, no matter how small that is. The practice of the presence of God is, not just a book, but it's also a spiritual practice that was popularized by Brother Lawrence, a 17th century friar. Who encourages us to live constantly in awareness and communion with God throughout those daily activities. And the story of practicing the presence of God is really about acknowledging that those moments, uh, washing the dishes, working in the kitchen as Brother Lawrence did, doing everything in a way that acknowledges the presence of God in those things and the way that it serves the community. We can find meaning and purpose in everything that we do if we just trace out how it maybe impacts our community. When you serve somebody in your family, they feel that they take it out where wherever they are going, maybe they take it to work. And that feeling of feeling supported maybe, And We don't always really know how that's landing or how it's manifesting. The point is, is just really appreciating, first of all, that they're capable of doing it. Some people aren't, and so there are a lot of things in that engagement, being present and mindful in that task, no matter how small it is. There's a verse in scripture in the book of Colossians that encourages us to do everything that we do with all of our heart as if we're doing it for God, and That's the idea, the principle of finding meaning and knowing that there's a bigger purpose involved in even the little things that we do. we might not ever really see or really grasp that purpose. That's, and that's really not the point, is just to be present and mindful. And no matter how small the act action is, not knowing how that's building in us, What we need and how maybe that's contributing to the community and the the world that we live in and then there's joy noticing and savoring those small pleasures, the sunlight, laughter, a clean room, a kind word. These don't have to be big things. These are normal everyday things that we just notice. So that we can find that joy, in our midst. We don't have to go looking for it outside of our circumstances. This is the heart also of the PERMA model. This was developed by psychologist Martin Seligman. Um, it's positive emotion engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishment permit that those five elements practiced in ordinary life, That's what cultivates extraordinary, so I'm gonna invite you to just really contemplate this Reflect on your own mindset around this, your mind about this. How, where, what are you feeling? What are you thinking? and how is that manifesting? Are you getting the outcomes that you really want? We want to train our brains to help us to show up in the world in the way we really want to. And a lot of that starts with awareness. So I'm gonna invite you to ask yourself some questions. So. First, ask yourself, where in my day do I find moments of quiet satisfaction or peace, even if they're not exciting. I know that when I was on a walk yesterday, I was caught by a rose and I immediately had to stop and just take a picture of it and capture that moment. First, I just looked at it and then I looked at it against the brick that it was. Up against. And just really the color contrast, the way it was moving and the wind just really caught my eye. And that was something I didn't wanna be on that walk, it was starting to rain, it was kind of cold and I, my heart was not in getting up and going for a walk. So finding those moments of that satisfaction and that peace and in. Whatever it is that pops into your environment, I guess. So where in my day do I find moments of quiet satisfaction or peace, even if they're not exciting? The second question is, what makes me think someone else's life is more meaningful than mine? What's the story behind that comparison? And then what if those, the ordinary parts of my life were sacred parts? How might I shift my perspective? What would it look like? If you saw those ordinary parts as the sacred parts? Then what three small repeatable actions could you start doing today that would bring more engagement and joy? And maybe can't think of three, maybe just one. So if not three, one, what's one small repeatable action that you could start doing today that would bring you more engagement or more joy? And then simply contemplating how do you define extraordinary? And is this definition serving you or stressing you? So how do you define extraordinary? And how does that serve you? Maybe you need to redefine it if it's causing you stress. If it's causing you distraction, then maybe it needs a new definition. That's the beauty of this is that your extraordinary is not the same as everyone's extraordinary. It's really just summoning the best of yourself, and that's gonna look different for all of us. We want different things. We are equipped and called to different things, and that all works together. It's a beautiful thing actually. So how do you define extraordinary? hopefully answering those questions and really getting some awareness around this, you will go. forward, not need feeling the need to be relentlessly happy or constantly productive to live a meaningful life. Being ordinary doesn't mean being forgettable. It means being real, and you can default to extraordinary, not by chasing it, but by honoring your daily rhythms, your subtle shifts, your quiet strengths. So letting the ordinary, like. The rose resting on that brick, letting the ordinary moments become the backdrop, become the thing from which ordinary grows. So next time that you're doing the very ordinary things, like emptying the dishwasher, pulling your clothes outta the dryer, driving to work, just let yourself smile. Appreciate that first of all, that you can do all those things and then just let those things. Be that ordinary backdrop to all the things extraordinary as you go out every day, as you show up every day and default to yes, your extraordinary self.