The other day, I found myself at the train station on the way into work, watching the sun rise over the mountains, when it hit me: life is a lot like this sunrise. It doesn’t rush. It doesn’t skip any steps. It just shows up, moment by moment, a little more beautiful every time you notice it. The sun isn’t in a hurry to impress anyone. It’s just doing what it’s always done—showing up faithfully, day after day. And I thought to myself, What if I lived my life like that? What if we all did?
See, we spend so much of our time thinking about the next big thing—what we’re going to do tomorrow, what goals we want to crush next year, or how we’re going to make our dreams come true. But what if the secret isn’t in the big stuff at all? What if the secret is hidden in the tiny, everyday moments? The ones we don’t even notice because we’re too busy rushing past them?
I think life works a lot like that sunrise—it’s a slow, faithful showing up. We want things to change in a flash, but more often than not, real change happens little by little, with the small decisions we make every single day.
Let me tell you a story.
A friend of mine decided he wanted to run a marathon. Now, he wasn’t a runner. In fact, the only thing he ran toward was the ice cream truck when it came through his neighborhood. But one day, something inside him said, I want to do something I’ve never done before. So, he set his sights on the marathon.
Now, you’d think the story ends with him crossing the finish line, right? But that’s not really the point. The real story is in how he got there. It wasn’t the race itself that changed him. It was the habit of getting up every morning and lacing up his shoes. It was in the days he didn’t feel like running but did it anyway. It was the habit that shaped him, long before the marathon ever did.
See, the big stuff—like running a marathon or living a life full of meaning and joy—doesn’t just happen out of nowhere. It’s built in the daily, ordinary stuff. It’s built in the habits we form when no one’s watching, when there’s no crowd cheering us on. We make our habits, and then our habits make us.
I don’t think we realize the power of these little choices we make. But here’s the thing: they add up. Day after day, week after week. You pick up your phone to call a friend, you show up to the hard conversations, you take a moment to breathe when everything feels overwhelming. You make a habit of showing up for life, and before you know it, you’ve built a life worth showing up for.
Here’s what I’ve learned: Living isn’t just something that happens to us; it’s something we decide to do. We can make living a habit. We can choose to be present, to notice the beauty around us, to find joy in the little things. And we can make a habit of doing that, over and over again.
Maybe it’s not about adding more to our lives, but about doing the things we’re already doing with more love, more intentionality, more presence. Maybe it’s about turning the mundane into something meaningful, just by showing up and doing it with our whole hearts.
You don’t need a five-year plan or a vision board to live a meaningful life. You just need to show up today and take care of the people around you. Maybe that means sending a text to someone who needs encouragement. Maybe it means finally forgiving yourself for that thing you can’t seem to let go of. Or maybe it’s just letting yourself breathe a little deeper, and trusting that life is happening, even in the quiet, unseen moments.
So, here’s the challenge: make a habit of living. Not in some grand, sweeping gesture, but in the small, ordinary moments. The ones where you choose love over fear, where you choose grace over guilt, where you choose to show up, even when it’s hard.
The best part? As you make living a habit, you’ll notice something incredible happening. Your life will start to change. Not in a flash or with fireworks, but slowly, steadily, like that sunrise. You’ll wake up one day and realize that the habits you’ve been forming have been forming you all along.
So, lace up your shoes. The marathon might seem far away, but the journey starts today. One small step, one habit at a time. Let’s make a habit of living, and watch as life becomes more beautiful than we ever imagined. Go live my friends!