August 31st, my lovelies.
There is something about the end of August that always makes me want to slow things down just a little. Summer is my favourite season, so for me, this time of year always feels a little bittersweet. I’m never quite ready to let it go.
That said, I have plenty of reasons to love September too. I love routine, fresh starts, cooler mornings, new notebooks, organized calendars, and that back-to-school, back-to-business energy that seems to arrive almost overnight. I am the person who can get genuinely excited about a fresh calendar and a newly organized drawer, so I am certainly not anti-September.
But before we all start racing toward fall, I think there is something worth remembering.
Summer is still here.
And instead of squeezing one more productive thing out of it, maybe what we really need to do is notice it.
One of the things I have learned through years of coaching, teaching yoga, journaling, and talking about self-care is that feeling better is not always about making a massive change to your life. Sometimes it is about becoming more available to the life you already have.
Positive psychology researchers actually have a word for this: savoring.
Savoring is the practice of intentionally noticing, appreciating, and extending a positive experience. It is the difference between drinking your coffee and actually tasting your coffee. Between sitting outside and noticing the warmth of the sun on your skin. Between having dinner with someone you love and being present enough to realize, this is a good moment.
It sounds incredibly simple.
And yet I think many of us have become surprisingly bad at it.
We eat beautiful meals while looking at our phones. We walk through gorgeous evenings while answering texts. We finally sit down with a cup of tea and use the time to mentally reorganize tomorrow.
We are technically having the experience.
We are just barely there for it.
That is why these little luxuries matter. They are not really about tea, flowers, peaches, or fresh sheets. They are tiny opportunities to practice presence.
So before summer slips quietly into September tomrorow, here are 20 little luxuries I hope you let yourself savor.
1. Drink Something Beautifully
Not while answering emails. Not in the car. Not while standing over the kitchen counter like you are competing in some kind of beverage speed round.
Make the tea. Pour the iced coffee. Add lemon and mint to your water. Use the beautiful glass.
I had a cup of tea outside recently and caught myself about to bring it back to my laptop. Instead, I sat there for ten minutes on my front porch and did absolutely nothing. I watched the streetcars go by, held the warm mug, and realized nobody needed anything from me for approximately seven consecutive minutes.
Luxury.
The tea was lovely. The pause was better.
2. Eat the Peach
Or the perfect tomato. Or the corn. Or the watermelon. Or the berries that actually taste like berries.
Eat the foods that belong to this exact moment of the year.
There is something grounding about seasonal food because it reminds us that life moves in cycles. Things arrive, peak, disappear, and eventually return.
Also, if you live in Canada, good berries in February are priced somewhere between fine jewelry and a mortgage payment, so enjoy them now.
3. Use the Good Scent
I have always loved scent because of how quickly it can change the feeling of a moment. It is one of the reasons I created Bliss Essential.
Our sense of smell is deeply connected to the brain systems involved in emotion and memory. That is why one familiar scent can transport you back twenty years in seconds.
Put a little Bliss Essential on your wrists. Light the candle you are “saving.” Wear the perfume at 10:00 in the morning.
You do not need dinner reservations to smell fabulous.
4. Take Your Journal Outside
Grab your journal, find a quiet spot, and give yourself ten minutes.
Not an hour. Not a life audit. Not a 47-step personal development exercise.
Ten minutes.
Ask yourself:
What gave me energy this summer?
What drained more energy than it deserved?
What do I want to carry with me into fall?
Writing by hand has a way of slowing our thinking down enough to hear ourselves more clearly. And before we start setting new fall goals, it can be incredibly valuable to ask what the season we are leaving actually taught us.
And speaking of journaling, we’re already halfway sold out for Back to Routine, Back to You, my Fall Wellness Morning in Montreal with Susan Homa. Join us for three restorative hours of de-stressing yoga, sound healing, and reflective journaling, and you’ll also receive your own copy of my LIST YOUR GOALS Journal to keep the reflection going long after the morning ends.
5. Sit Outside After Dinner
Leave the dishes for a little while.
Take your glass outside. Sit on the balcony, the porch, the front steps, wherever you can catch a little evening air, and let the day stretch out before you start tidying everything away.
One of the gifts of summer is that the evenings feel generous. The sky stays lighter, later. Conversations last a little longer. Nobody is rushing inside because they are freezing. And remember, it isn’t technically fall until September 22nd, so we still have a little summer left to savor.
The dishes will still be there in twenty minutes.
Summer won’t.
Fresh air feels good.
Stay outside a little longer.
6. Put Fresh Sheets on the Bed
On a Wednesday.
For absolutely no reason.
Fresh sheets are one of life’s most underrated luxuries, and I will stand by this forever.
Can’t you tell? I have always loved fresh clean sheets… and my bed!
So, take the shower. Put on clean pajamas. Fluff the pillows. Climb into bed with a book and nowhere to be.
Our surroundings affect how we feel more than we sometimes realize, and creating a calm environment can become a quiet signal to your brain and body that the day is finished.
Also, I maintain that almost every problem feels at least 8 percent more manageable in fresh sheets.
7. Take the Long Way Home
We spend an enormous amount of our lives trying to arrive faster.
Take the longer route once in a while.
Walk instead of drive. Drive with the windows down. Put on the song that instantly makes you feel sixteen again. Stop somewhere just because you feel like it.
Not every minute needs to be optimized.
This may be one of the biggest shifts I have made in how I think about self-care.
A well-lived life cannot be optimized within an inch of its existence.
Sometimes the detour is the point.
8. Buy Yourself the Flowers
Do not wait for someone else.
Buy the flowers.
Put them somewhere you will actually see them. On your desk. Beside your bed. In the kitchen.
Beauty has value. Pleasure has value. Creating an environment that makes you feel good is not frivolous.
And no, you do not need a special occasion.
Being alive on a Tuesday is enough.
9. Read Something That Has Absolutely Nothing to Do With Improving Yourself
Put down the productivity book.
Step away from the podcast promising to make you 46 percent more efficient before breakfast.
Read the novel. The beach book. The mystery. The memoir. The magazine you love.
This is mine right now.
We have somehow managed to turn even leisure into another opportunity for self-improvement.
Sometimes reading can simply be pleasurable.
Imagine that.
10. Walk Without Tracking It
This one may make some of us twitch.
Go for a walk and do not look at your pace, heart rate, distance, calories, zones, rings, or whether your watch is emotionally satisfied with your performance.
Just walk. Gasp… leave your watch and phone at home.
Notice the neighborhood. Look at the trees. Say hello to someone. Let your mind wander.
Technology can give us wonderful information, but not every healthy thing needs to become a metric.
11. Have Ice Cream for Dinner
Okay, maybe not every night.
But once?
Absolutely.
There is something about summer that gives us permission to bend the rules a little. And I think adults need that too.
Go get the cone. Sit outside. Let it melt faster than you can eat it. Make a mess.
Joy does not always need nutritional justification.
12. Have Breakfast for Dinner
Summer is a good time to loosen the rules a little.
Make waffles for dinner. Add berries. Sit outside if you can. Let the evening feel slightly less structured than usual.
There is something playful about doing the ordinary out of order, and I think adults need more of that too.
Not everything has to make perfect sense.
Sometimes waffles or French toast at 7:00 p.m. are reason enough.
13. Call Someone Instead of Texting
Call your mother. Your sister. Your best friend. Your grown child who may initially assume something terrible has happened because apparently nobody phones anymore.
Have an actual conversation.
Human connection is one of the strongest predictors of well-being that researchers consistently find, and yet our communication has become increasingly efficient and increasingly fragmented.
Twenty minutes of real conversation can feel very different from seventeen text bubbles spread over three days.
14. Take a Midday Bath or Shower
There is something deliciously luxurious about taking a shower when you technically do not need one.
Wash your hair. Use the good body lotion. Put on something soft afterward.
It interrupts the day.
And sometimes that is exactly what we need.
Not a total reset.
Just a tiny line between what came before and what comes next.
15. Have a Picnic in the Park for Dinner
Make something simple, or heck, grab sandwiches from the local deli or Subway and call it dinner.
This does not have to be complicated.
Bring a blanket, a few drinks, maybe some fruit, and eat somewhere outside while the evenings are still warm enough to enjoy it.
There is something about taking an ordinary meal out of the kitchen and into the park that makes it feel like an occasion.
Same sandwich.
Completely different experience.
And that is really the point of savoring. Sometimes we do not need something bigger or better. We just need to experience the ordinary a little differently.
16. Do Nothing for Ten Minutes
I know.
Terrifying.
No phone. No laundry folding. No meditation app telling you how well you are doing at meditating. No catching up.
Sit somewhere.
Let your thoughts come and go.
We have become so uncomfortable with empty space that the second a few quiet minutes appear, we reach for something to fill them.
But creativity, clarity, and even emotional processing often need a little room.
Leave some room.
17. Wear the Outfit You Are Saving
The dress.
The shoes.
The earrings.
The lipstick.
For no good reason.
We save an astonishing number of things for imaginary future versions of our lives.
Use them.
Wear them to lunch. To the grocery store. To dinner with your bestie. Wear them on a random Thursday because you feel good in them.
Your life is the occasion.
18. Watch the Sunset From Beginning to End
Not for thirty seconds.
Not until you have taken the picture.
Watch the whole thing.
There is something humbling about sitting still while nature takes its time.
The changing color in the sky is magical. I have done this a few times this summer, and every time I think, why don’t I do this more often?
Give it twenty minutes. Watch the sky change.
Pretty good return on twenty minutes of doing absolutely nothing.
19. Let Something Be Easy
This may be the most luxurious one of all.
Order dinner.
Say no.
Cancel something you do not need to attend.
Ask for help.
Take the shortcut.
Self-care is not always adding another beautiful ritual to your day. Sometimes self-care is removing unnecessary difficulty.
There is no medal for making everything harder than it needs to be.
I checked.
20. Stay Five Minutes Longer
This is the one I really want you to try.
The next time you notice that you are in a good moment, resist the urge to leave it immediately.
Stay.
Five more minutes at the table.
Five more minutes outside.
Five more minutes in the conversation.
Five more minutes reading.
Five more minutes beside someone you love.
Do not start mentally preparing for what comes next.
Just stay.
That is savoring.
And maybe these 20 little luxuries sound small.
They are.
But that is exactly why I chose them.
We spend so much time waiting for the big things to make us feel better. The vacation. The promotion. The weekend. The retreat. The new house. The life change. The mythical future date when everything finally calms down.
Meanwhile, our well-being is being built in much smaller increments, in the ordinary moments we either inhabit or rush through.
That has become one of my deepest beliefs about self-care.
It is not always about doing more.
Sometimes it is about experiencing more of what is already here.
So before summer ends, choose a few little luxuries and experience the hell out of them.
Make the tea. Use the good essential oils. Open the journal. Eat the peach. Buy the flowers. Change the sheets. Call the friend. Watch the sunset.
And when something feels good, notice that it feels good.
You do not need to squeeze anything more out of these final days of summer.
You just need to be there for them.
Which one spoke to you today? I’d love to know below.
