A ridiculous donut eaten in the sun is the perfect example of a load-bearing little treat. Photo: Zoe Cartwright.
Mornings are frosty, the cost of living continues to skyrocket, and international news is depressing at best and gut-wrenching at worst.
In this environment, the load-bearing importance of little treats has never been higher.
Little treats are not holidays to Bali, that expensive pair of jeans you’ve been eyeing off or a big night out with your mates.
Little treats are the bread-crumb trail we must follow through each day to arrive at the end of it as kind, sane human beings.
Ideally they should cost less than $10 (free is better) and make you feel like you’ve done something a bit cheeky.
On the boring but reliable end they include a cup of coffee from your favourite cafe or a piece of perfectly made baklava; on the more exciting but high-risk end they include jumping in the ocean on your lunch break or telling a stranger their handbag is spectacular.
There’s an art to it.
You have to be self-aware enough to know what counts as a treat for you.
If talking to strangers fills you with introverted dread, random compliments probably aren’t a treat for you.
You have to be creative and flexible enough to switch it up – something you do every day is no longer a little treat, it’s just a habit.
Also, for it to work, a little part of your brain is going to tell you not to do it.
“If you never bought a takeaway coffee again, you’d save eleventy million dollars this year,” it whispers.
“Imagine what you could buy with eleventy million dollars!”
It may choose a different tack.
“You are so busy and rushed, you cannot possibly take 10 minutes to go to the park,” it says
“One day, when you are not busy, then you will be the kind of person who takes breaks.”
These thoughts are fatal. They are also lies.
Unless your little treats have burgeoned into substance abuse disorders or a gambling problem, you are not going to save eleventy million dollars.
That bit of cash you don’t spend on a weekly coffee will be siphoned off by something less fun and enjoyable.
It will come in the form of a bill, or a pair of boring, sensible shoes that need replacing and your eleventy million will dwindle away to nothing.
Get the coffee. Wear those old joggers for another couple of weeks. It’ll be fine.
Secondly, if you are the kind of person who never takes time for yourself, you will never take time for yourself.
Stuff, unfortunately, keeps happening. All the time. It never stops.
You clean the kitchen and the dog vomits on the rug.
You empty your inbox just to get an urgent phone call.
Maybe it’s one of those days where one of the kids breaks their leg and the urgent phone calls do not stop coming and also you have to cook a three-course dinner for your in-laws who are arriving from interstate; these days happen.
But there are a lot more days when we convince ourselves we’re busier than we are to avoid the friction of saying no to someone; when we do that the person we end up saying no to is ourselves.
Say no to yourself often enough and you’ll become cranky, burnt out and no good to anyone.
When there are genuine emergencies – when you need to live on tuna and rice for a bit to pay the bills, or shit hits the fan at work or home – you won’t have any gas in the tank to push through.
The antidote?
Pre-emptive little treats.
Go on – you deserve it.
