How can I create a Perfect Day as good as Lou Reed’s?

Declutter your mental hard drive to focus on the little things that make life worth living , writes Jim Duffy

Lou Reed performed the song Perfect Day. It had not been one of my favourites, to be honest. Until now.

S omething has changed this year. There has been a shift in how I am feeling about things, about stuff. S ome things that were impor tant a year ago and front of mind are no longer occupying my thoughts.

I don’t have the fight in me that I had a few years ago. More mellow? Maybe.

Perhaps it's growing older, less testosterone, not as fit and supple as I was and not sleeping as good as I used to.

My mental health is good and I am eternally grateful for that. This pandemic has changed how many of us think and act and feel. For me, it has made each day that little bit more impor tant as I strive to have my Perfect Day.

For years as so many of us worked long hours, fought with bosses or par tners or neighbours etc, we may have missed so many oppor tunities to have that Perfect Day.

Running too fast with stuff, burning the candle at both ends and seeking advancement in careers can take its toll on our lives.

R aising kids is not easy either as we worr y about them, their health and well-being, their education, their friendships and their futures

And then we have that boomer generation, my generation’s parents, who we now need to look after as they too advance in years at a time when the pandemic has robbed so many of a lifest yle and, in many cases, life itself.

This all makes me think hard when I wake up in the morning about how to create that Perfect Day.

Listening to the lyrics in the Lou Reed song is good to do. But, I guess many of us are not looking for nir vana ever y day. I don’t think that’s on the table.

What is and could be is just knowing that we can influence someone’s life for the better for a few moments.

Perhaps cherish that cup of tea or coffee with a family member. Take that little bit extra time to get inside the head of our kids and grandkids to help them work out their “problems”. I think that could be the makings of a Perfect Day.

But, there is so much more to it than that and it has to star t with mindset.

The world just now is obsessed with so many things that we have no control over, but which take so much space in our mental harddrives.

Our brains only have so much capacit y. A bit like the hard drive on a computer. We buy a computer or ipad-t ype device and it comes bundled with say 128 gig of memor y space.

That space is where stuff is stored. And it gets cluttered with documents, securit y updates, files, photos and a whole lot more. But, just imagine that to be your brain.

Despite your best effor ts to organise it, it gets ver y busy and this affects its performance and ultimately our performance.

This may resonate with you. With a lot going on inside our heads, we can wake up discombobulated before the day even star ts. And that is not great for creating a good mood.

Or we can let events of the day get to us. One only needs to look at the chaos and volatilit y being played out in the USA at the