SL Journal · Connection · Mindful Movement
The Autumn
Joy Edit
What if this season was less about doing more, and more about making room for what makes you feel alive?
There is something about September that always feels like a second New Year.
After the looseness of summer, routines return. Diaries fill up. Work gathers pace. We start thinking about what we want to achieve before Christmas.
And almost without noticing, life can become very full again.
So this autumn, I want to suggest something slightly different.
Rather than beginning with a list of everything you want to do, begin with a list of everything that brings you joy.
Not the things you think you should enjoy. The things that genuinely make you feel lighter, more energised, more connected and more like yourself.
Start with a little life review
Open your journal and ask yourself:
Take ten quiet minutes.Who brings me joy?
Who are the people I feel better after spending time with? Who makes me laugh? Who allows me to completely be myself?
What brings me joy?
Dancing? Cooking? Walking somewhere beautiful? Music? Gardening? Reading in bed? Barre? Swimming? Hosting friends around a table?
Where do I feel most alive?
Outside? By the sea? In a busy kitchen? In a studio? Around family? Somewhere completely alone?
And then comes perhaps the most important question:
How much space am I actually giving these things in my life?
Sometimes we don’t need another wellbeing practice. We need to make more room for the things we already know make us happy.
Joy is more serious than we think
We often talk about longevity through the lens of nutrition, exercise, sleep and biomarkers.
But there is another extraordinarily important part of the picture: our relationships with other people.
The Harvard Study of Adult Development has followed participants across adult life for more than eight decades.
Greater likelihood of survival for people with stronger social relationships, in a meta-analysis of 148 studies involving more than 308,000 people.
People represented in a major analysis examining loneliness, social isolation, living alone and mortality.
One of the Harvard study’s most striking conclusions is remarkably simple: good relationships are strongly associated with both happiness and health. When researchers looked back at participants in midlife to see what best predicted who would be happy and healthy at 80, satisfaction with relationships was a stronger predictor than cholesterol or blood pressure at 50.
And the evidence extends well beyond one famous study.
Another analysis, involving more than 3.4 million people, found that loneliness was associated with a 26% increased likelihood of mortality, social isolation with 29%, and living alone with 32%. These are associations rather than proof that loneliness directly causes earlier death, but the size and consistency of the relationship is difficult to ignore.
There is even evidence that variety matters. Research involving more than 51,000 people found that having a more diverse mix of social interactions — family, friends, acquaintances and even strangers — was associated with greater wellbeing.
Perhaps our social lives deserve to be thought of as part of our health plan.
Connection can also get us moving
This is one of the reasons I love movement so much.
Movement doesn’t have to be another solitary task to tick off before breakfast.
It can be joyful.
Walk with a friend rather than walking alone. Take a dance class. Join a Pilates or Barre class where you begin to recognise the same faces each week. Go for a cycle with your children. Put music on in the kitchen and dance while dinner cooks.
There is a wonderful sweet spot where movement, connection and joy overlap.
And I suspect that is where many of our healthiest habits become sustainable.
The workout you enjoy is the one you’re more likely to return to. The walk becomes easier to prioritise when it also means an hour with someone you love. Movement stops being punishment for your body and becomes one of the ways you experience your life.
Your five-pillar joy edit
At Silver Linings, we think about wellbeing through five interconnected pillars. This autumn, I would encourage you to look at each one through a slightly different lens:
Mindful Movement
Don’t only ask, What exercise should I be doing?
Ask, How do I love to move?
Find the music, teacher, environment, friend or activity that makes you look forward to moving your body. Strength matters enormously as we age, but so does creating a lifelong relationship with movement.
Sleep
Joy needs energy.
Protect the evening rituals that help you soften out of the day. Make your bedroom somewhere you genuinely want to retreat to. Give yourself permission to go to bed when you’re tired.
Rest is not time stolen from life. It gives us the energy to participate in it.
Nourishment
Food is nutrients, but it is also one of humanity’s oldest forms of connection.
Cook something beautiful. Invite people over without waiting until the house is perfect. Eat around a table. Try a new seasonal recipe. Take your time over Sunday lunch.
Sometimes nourishment is as much about who is sitting beside you as what is on your plate.
Rest & Illumination
Leave some white space.
Not every free hour needs filling.
Read. Journal. Wander. Sit somewhere beautiful. Notice the changing light. Spend time outside. Give yourself enough quiet to hear what you actually need.
Joy often appears when we stop rushing past it.
Connection
This is the pillar I would place right at the heart of our autumn.
Look again at the names you wrote down at the beginning of this exercise.
Then do something beautifully simple:
Put them in the diary.
Book the dinner. Arrange the walk. Call your sister. Join the class. Invite someone for coffee. Reconnect with the friend you keep meaning to see.
Don’t leave the people you love for the gaps in your calendar. Make them part of the architecture of your life.
Schedule Joy.
Perhaps that’s my autumn challenge to you.
Look at the next three months and intentionally put some joy into them.
Not huge bucket-list experiences.
Small things.
Because a healthy life isn’t simply a life in which we have successfully avoided illness.
It’s a life we actually want to be present for.
And perhaps one of the most powerful questions we can ask ourselves this autumn isn’t:
What more should I be doing?
But:
What brings me joy — and how can I make more room for it?
That feels like a very good place to begin.
