Choosing Joy on Purpose: What Happens When You Start Romanticizing Your Real Life

How I stopped waiting for perfect conditions and started finding magic in the beautiful mess of motherhood.

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photo of me and my girls by Olivia Rike

There's a version of me with too much free time who desperately wants ten more minutes of this life—sticky hands, loud screams and all. I've started showing up for her.

This thought lives rent-free in my head. I think about it no less than ten times a day, and it's changed everything about how I move through my days as a mom.

The truth is, yes, there are days I desperately want even just ten minutes of free time in this overflowing, chaotic period of raising little kids. But on the other side of this, I know there's a version of me with too much free time, an openness to my days that will feel overwhelming. And that version of me—all she desperately wants is just ten more minutes with her little kids and their little voices and little hands.

So I've been showing up for the future version of me that longs to be exactly where I am right now. This perspective shift pulls me back into the moment, and I try my best to cement into memory all the things happening around me. And I gotta tell you, when it works, (because it doesn’t always work, some days are just that hard), it's seriously so magical.

Here's what I want you, my dear fellow mom, to ask yourself: What if joy is something I choose, even in the mess?

The Mindset Shift: From Waiting to Choosing

I used to think joy was something that would find me when things got easier. When I was more rested. When the kids were older. When the laundry pile shrunk from Mount Vesuvius to maybe just a gentle hill.

I remember the moment a few months ago when I realized I'm truly never going to just "have" an uninterrupted 60-90 minutes to complete a task. There were bigger tasks I kept thinking I'd get to accomplish every weekend, and the time never appeared. In fact, weekend time just seems to evaporate like rain on blacktop on a 95-degree day.

That realization could have sent me spiraling into a pit of resentment (and let's be honest, some days it still does). But instead, it became this weird liberation. If I was never going to have perfect conditions for joy, then I had to get creative about finding it in imperfect ones.

It was like finally accepting that my house will never look like those minimalist Pinterest boards, so I might as well learn to love the beautiful chaos instead of waiting for some mythical future where everything has a place and is in its place.

This shift isn't about Instagram-perfect gratitude—not that "I wake up grateful for dirty dishes because they mean I have a family" kind of way (though no shade if that works for you). It's more like a "I'm going to find something worth celebrating on Tuesday at 3 PM when everyone's cranky and I'm pretty sure I've been wearing the same shirt for 48 hours" kind of way.

Practical Daily Practices That Actually Work

Here's where it gets practical, because theory is nice but implementation is everything. These aren't grand gestures—they're tiny pivots that have transformed my ordinary days.

Waking up before the kids to have a slow morning alone. I know, I know—another person preaching about 5 AM wake-ups like it's the cure for all of life's problems. But there's something almost sacred about being the only one awake in your house, drinking coffee that's still hot, maybe reading a few pages without someone asking for a snack or needing help finding their other shoe. It's not about productivity; it's about remembering who you are when you're not needed by everyone else. This act of kindness toward myself—getting up early to find my anchor before the craziness begins—starts my day from a grounded and calm place. I can't skip a single day.

Co-creating with my kids instead of being the cruise director. I only create strong-willed, boisterous children.😂And with that, I've learned through the years that I could plan the most kid-friendly, fun-filled day, and my kids will fight me on every tiny detail just because they hate being told what to do. I'm telling you, I could tell them we're going to Disney World and they'd have problems with something. So instead of fighting this reality, I let go of resistance and we co-create plans together. I have ideas, they come with ideas, and we do a little mix. The pressure is off me to plan everything, and they have a stake in what we do each week, which makes them less apprehensive when it comes time to actually do said things.

Dance party clean-ups. This sounds so simple it's almost embarrassing, but there's something about moving your body to music while you're doing something mundane that transforms the whole experience. Suddenly you're not just unloading the dishwasher—you're having a tiny dance party. The dishes still get done, toys get cleaned up, but you feel more alive doing it. Each kid gets to pick one song, and at the end of the songs we stop cleaning. The mess doesn't disappear, but the energy around managing it completely shifts.

Reading in micro-moments instead of waiting for the perfect hour. I spent years telling myself I didn't have time to read because I couldn't carve out proper reading time. Then I realized that three pages while my coffee brews, or five pages while dinner cooks, or even just a paragraph before bed still counts. It's not about consuming entire novels; it's about feeding the part of your brain that craves story and beauty and ideas bigger than your daily to-do list. This applies to anything you love—doing it in micro five-minute doses might seem pointless, but I'm telling you, doing something you love for five minutes a day equals 35 minutes a week, and that's infinitely better than zero minutes, my friend.

The truth is, I've spent years figuring out how to make ordinary days feel meaningful without waiting for life to get easier (spoiler: it doesn't). Below, I'm sharing the specific micro practices that have genuinely changed how I move through my days—the tiny acts of self-care that actually fit into real life with kids.

Because you deserve to enjoy your life as it is right now, mess and all.

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