On social media, even an ordinary Tuesday can look like a scene from a movie. Someone buys flowers for no reason and takes a photo with the bouquet; someone else sets a beautiful table for dinner after work; another person films the city glowing in the evening on the way home. Nothing extraordinary seems to be happening, yet other people's everyday lives somehow look so appealing that you want to recreate what you see. Sometimes there is even a hint of envy: why does everyone else's ordinary life seem so aesthetic and interesting while yours appears to consist entirely of work, rushed mornings, and takeout eaten on the couch?
In reality, the difference between your everyday life and the version you see online may simply be that someone else is consciously romanticizing theirs while you are not. There is even a popular hashtag for it: #romanticizeyourlife. The idea is to treat your own life as an engaging story in which even ordinary activities deserve attention, pleasure, or a little visual beauty. But can small rituals actually make daily life feel better? And how do you create that feeling for yourself, especially when circumstances are not going the way you hoped?
Why Ordinary Days Can Feel Like They Are Not Enough
We are used to marking major events: a new job, a promotion, a move, a wedding, or a long-awaited trip. Naturally, these become reasons to take photos, tell friends stories, and create memories we enjoy revisiting. Yet most of life does not happen during milestones but in the stretches between them, which can make ordinary days feel as though nothing worth remembering is taking place. That judgment is subjective, however, and it changes with time.
In 2014, researchers at Harvard Business School conducted a series of experiments to see how valuable memories of everyday life become later on. In one experiment, 135 students were asked to write down what they had recently talked about, what music they had been listening to, and what they had been doing, then predict how interesting those notes would be to reread three months later. Most participants expected very little future interest. Three months later, however, they enjoyed revisiting the entries much more than they had anticipated and said that returning even to those ordinary memories felt unexpectedly pleasant. Similar experiments produced the same pattern: people tend to underestimate how much they will later enjoy remembering everyday experiences.
Put simply, while we are living through an ordinary day, it feels ordinary enough that we rarely think to preserve its details. A few years later, though, a random photo of an old apartment or a message thread with a friend can bring back an entire period of life. Memories do not have to be saved only during holidays and vacations, and there is no need to keep an elaborate diary either. A few scattered notes of several lines each may turn out to be a genuine treasure years later. There are other ways to romanticize daily life as well.
Why Small Rituals Matter
The same breakfast can be eaten in front of a laptop while answering work messages, or you can give it ten quiet minutes, make a favorite drink, and sit at a table covered with a lace cloth. Nothing fundamental changes in the second version: the food is the same, and the work is still waiting. But the experience itself feels different-and may be remembered differently too.
In 2013, researchers from the University of Minnesota and Harvard Business School conducted a series of experiments on how rituals affect enjoyment of food. Participants were asked to break chocolate in a particular sequence before eating it or complete other small sets of actions before consuming different foods. Those who performed the ritual themselves tended to enjoy the food more than participants in the control groups. The authors linked the effect to greater engagement with the experience. The experiments focused specifically on food, so it would be inaccurate to assume that the same effect applies to every routine activity. Still, they suggest that enjoyment can depend not only on what we are doing but also on how much attention we give it.
Familiar routines, especially in the morning, may matter for another reason as well: they help give the day a sense of structure. In a 2023 study published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, researchers followed participants' daily lives through short surveys completed throughout the day. Across two samples involving 190 people, routine activities were associated with a stronger sense that life felt meaningful. The relationship remained visible even during the pandemic, when many people's normal routines had been disrupted. The authors did not claim that routines themselves directly caused that sense of meaning, but they found that even simple repeated activities can carry psychological significance.
How to Romanticize Life When Nothing Is Going According to Plan
Imagine a woman who has been looking for a new job for several months. She sends out resumes, goes through interviews, and receives rejection after rejection. The uncertainty gradually turns into frustration. It begins to feel as though someone has put her life on hold: once the right job finally appears, she can start making plans again, buy herself little things she enjoys, and arrange interesting weekends.
But a job search can last much longer than expected, and if every pleasant part of life is postponed until it ends, months of waiting can turn into an endless sequence of obligations.
Romanticizing a situation like this does not mean learning to enjoy rejection letters or convincing yourself that every difficulty must be happening for a reason and will inevitably lead to success. She can still be worried about work while also going for a walk after sending applications, meeting friends, or spending time on a hobby. At least part of the day then belongs to something other than recruiters' responses.
In 2023, researchers at McGill University published a study in Psychophysiology involving 105 people who reported their emotional state and daily experiences several times a day over a ten-day period. They found that even during stressful periods, days containing more pleasant events were associated with more positive emotions, although the strength of the relationship varied depending on individual differences in reward responsiveness.
When a Beautiful Life Becomes Another Obligation
There is an opposite trap as well: instead of noticing pleasant things in ordinary life, a person begins demanding a flawless aesthetic from themselves. On social media, simply drinking coffee does not always seem like enough-it should ideally be served in beautiful cups, with flowers nearby and morning light falling across the table. A walk also looks more appealing if there is a carefully chosen outfit and a few good photos to show for it.
Gradually, attention shifts from the experience itself to how attractive it looks from the outside. If reality fails to match the image, irritation follows: why does everyone else's ordinary day look cinematic while mine comes with a messy kitchen and a pile of unfinished tasks?
Taking photos, however, does not necessarily pull people out of the moment. In 2016, researchers from the University of Southern California, Yale University, and the University of Pennsylvania conducted a series of experiments and found that photography could, under some circumstances, actually increase enjoyment of an experience. When participants looked for interesting details to photograph, they paid closer attention to their surroundings. When taking pictures interfered with the activity itself, that effect disappeared.
You can spontaneously take a photo of morning light falling beautifully across the wall, or spend ten minutes trying to find the perfect angle and end up annoyed because the picture still does not look right. In the first case, the photo adds to the pleasant experience; in the second, it replaces the pleasure with frustration.
The desire to make everyday life more beautiful can also turn into unnecessary spending. Social media can create the impression that a pleasant evening requires new dishes, expensive skincare, stylish loungewear, and the right interior details. Attention gradually shifts from the experience itself to the things that are supposedly necessary to create it, even though the original idea of romanticizing daily life is precisely about learning to find pleasure in the environment you already have.
Nor does every day need to become an interesting story. After an exhausting workweek, it is perfectly natural to stay home, order food, and watch a show without inventing additional activities. Rest does not have to be beautiful or eventful to feel good. The same applies to difficult periods in life. Not every setback has to become a valuable lesson, and there is no obligation to search for a positive side in every unpleasant experience. Romanticizing the everyday does not mean maintaining a good mood at all times; it simply means noticing pleasant moments when there is genuinely room for them.
