Crowning Every Little Moment
What is Crown ELM?
Crown ELM is a practice, a philosophy… a reminder to celebrate all of me and all of life’s moments.
This idea to crown every little moment (Crown ELM) happened a few years ago. I was reflecting on my time as a community organizer working in Baltimore, MD.
I was shadowing my mentor one day when I asked her how does she find the courage, the stamina to keep doing the work of organizing residents around environmental issues. She explained that she “celebrates the small wins” because although major problems persist on a global scale, focusing on successful local solutions and events is a way to make progress and not feel burned out or hopeless.
I translated this notion of celebrating the small wins into Crown ELM— a philosophy of making every (little) moment a memory by crowing it.
What does this philosophy actually mean in practice?
To crown every little moment means to acknowledge one’s experience with grace and gratitude.
We all experience moments in our lives that feel too sad or too heavy. Moments where we felt overcome with anxiety or embarrassment. There are even moments that are full of mistakes we wish we could take back or redo.
The point is that we can get caught up in these unhealthy emotions and experiences when we replay these negative moments. I believe focusing narrowly on these small setbacks can unconsciously cause these same unfortunate moments to reproduce in our reality.
Rather than harping on these misfortunate events, I crown that moment by seeing the light in it. I am thankful that I had the experience. The key to crowning every little moment is perception.
I cannot change the events of the past but I can reorient my understanding of the events so that it nourishes and encourages me to move forward as opposed to remaining stagnant out of fear of making a similar mistake.
I change my perspective on my past mistakes by seeing it in new context or from an appreciative angle. I interviewed for a job once and had a wonderful first interview followed by a practice assignment to asses my statistic skills.
To put it shortly, I did not get the job and really struggled to find the courage to keep applying. Changing my perspective, I realized that my background is in qualitative research (not quantitative) and at least I had a good interview and applied for it in the first place.
I Crown ELM by moving in gratitude, shifting my perspective, learning from my mistakes, and celebrating my time with loved ones.
How do you Crown ELM?
