Last week I was getting a mani-pedi – a yummy, indulgent, experience to be sure.

And yet…

As I looked around, I noticed that every single woman in a pedicure chair was looking at her phone. Every. Single. One. (That means me too.)

I started up a conversation.

It turned out that we were all quite a bit alike. We all complain about how busy our lives are. 
We all agreed that we are more (much more) stressed than we want to be most of the time.
We all yearn for a couple of “free spaces” in our weeks where we can truly recharge.

And there we were…

On the phone, in our email, scrolling Facebook, etc.… and completely missing out on the fact that we were in one of those spaces. Even for those of us who thought of a mani-pedi as a treat, we admitted that we never dialed it back enough when we were in there to actually appreciate the experience.

We put away the phones.

We took a couple of deep breaths, closed our eyes and focused on the amazing sensory
experience we were having.

One by one, we waddled over to the drying bar. The room was silent. The energy was calm
and soothing.

The silence broke as the first of us got up to leave. “Wow,” she said. "I feel like I just came back from vacation.' We all agreed. It had been a completely different experience. It wasn’t any longer or any more luxurious than any other time we had been there.

We had simply been present.

This week’s tip is a challenge: Find a moment each day that you would normally let slip through your fingers, take a deep breath and experience it.