Five Minutes to Find the Good

By the time Hannah Mitchell pulled into her driveway on Thursday evening, she had officially decided that the entire day could take a flying leap into the nearest dumpster.

Her alarm hadn’t gone off that morning. She’d spilled coffee on her favourite sweater, spent forty minutes sitting in traffic behind a construction vehicle moving at approximately the speed of a confused turtle, and arrived at work just in time to discover that the office printer had developed a personal vendetta against her.

By lunchtime, she’d answered seventeen emails marked urgent, attended a meeting that could have been an email, and listened to a coworker complain for twenty minutes about someone stealing her yogurt from the communal refrigerator.

Then it had started raining.

Not a pleasant, gentle rain that made the world smell fresh and wonderful. No, this was the kind of rain that came sideways, soaked through jackets, and somehow managed to find its way down the back of your neck.

Hannah had forgotten her umbrella.

Naturally.

By the time she reached home, her shoulders ached, her feet hurt, and she was fairly certain that if one more person asked her how her day had been, she might answer with a noise usually associated with an injured bear.

She dropped her keys into the little ceramic dish by the door, kicked off her shoes, and stood in the hallway staring at absolutely nothing.

“Congratulations,” she muttered to herself. “You’ve survived another episode of Whatever the Hell That Was.”

Her cat, Pickles, appeared from the living room, looked at her with profound disappointment, and walked away.

“Nice to see you too,” Hannah called after him.

She reheated some leftover pasta, changed into her oldest, most comfortable pyjamas, and settled onto the couch. The television was on, but she wasn’t really watching it. Her mind was still racing through everything that had gone wrong, replaying conversations, unfinished tasks, and all the things she’d have to deal with tomorrow.

Then she noticed a small notebook sitting on the coffee table.

It had been a gift from her grandmother, who had given it to her several months earlier along with a piece of advice Hannah hadn’t paid much attention to at the time.

“When life gets noisy, sweetheart, give yourself five minutes to listen for the good.”

Hannah remembered smiling politely and thinking that her grandmother clearly hadn’t experienced modern office life.

But tonight, she picked up the notebook.

On the first page, her grandmother had written a simple suggestion: Before going to bed, write down three little things that made you smile, feel peaceful, or forget your worries for even a moment. They didn’t have to be important. In fact, the smaller, the better.

Hannah looked at the clock. It was 8:47 pm.

Five minutes, she thought. Surely she could spare five minutes.

She switched off the television, placed her phone facedown, and opened the notebook to a blank page.

At the top, she wrote the date. Underneath it, she wrote, “Three Good Things.”

Then she stared at the paper.

Her brain immediately offered a detailed presentation of everything that had gone wrong that day, complete with supporting evidence and several colourful adjectives.

“Thank you,” Hannah told her brain. “Very helpful. Now shut up.”

She tried again.

And slowly, almost reluctantly, a memory surfaced.

That morning, while she’d been rushing out the door, she’d noticed a tiny yellow flower growing through a crack in the pavement beside her driveway. It was ridiculously small, with slightly crooked petals, and somehow it had managed to grow in a place where nothing should have been able to survive.

She’d stopped for perhaps three seconds to look at it.

At the time, she’d barely thought about it.

Now she smiled.

She wrote, “A little yellow flower growing through the pavement.”

The second memory arrived more easily.

At lunchtime, she’d gone to the café across the street to buy a sandwich. The young man behind the counter had accidentally dropped a stack of paper cups, sending them rolling across the floor like tiny cardboard tumbleweeds.

Instead of becoming embarrassed, he’d looked at the mess, raised both hands, and announced, “And for my next trick, I’ll attempt to remain employed!”

Everyone waiting in line had laughed, including Hannah.

She remembered how good that laugh had felt. For a few seconds, the tension in her chest had loosened, and she’d forgotten all about the chaos waiting for her back at the office.

She wrote, “The café guy making everyone laugh.”

Then came the third memory.

This one surprised her.

When she’d arrived home, soaked and miserable, Pickles had been sitting in the living room window. As she’d walked past him, he’d pressed one paw against the glass, almost as though he were waving.

Of course, he’d probably just been trying to catch a moth.

But for one tiny moment, it had felt like someone was happy she was home.

Hannah glanced toward the armchair, where Pickles was currently sleeping upside down with one back leg sticking into the air.

“You ridiculous little creature,” she whispered affectionately.

She wrote, “Pickles welcoming me home.”

Hannah sat quietly, looking at the three things she’d written.

A flower. A joke. A cat.

Nothing extraordinary. Nothing that would make headlines or change the course of history. Just three tiny moments scattered through a day she’d been ready to throw away.

Yet something had shifted.

The day hadn’t magically become wonderful. The printer had still been possessed, the traffic had still been terrible, and tomorrow’s workload hadn’t disappeared. But the day hadn’t been entirely awful either.

There had been little pockets of goodness tucked between the frustrating parts.

She simply hadn’t noticed how much they mattered.

Curious, Hannah turned to the next page and wrote a question: “Why did these things make me feel better?”

She thought about the flower first.

It had been growing in an impossible place, surrounded by concrete, dust, and the occasional careless shoe. Yet there it was, bright and stubborn, making the world a little prettier without asking permission.

Maybe she’d liked it because she’d needed a reminder that difficult surroundings didn’t have to determine everything.

The café employee had reminded her of something different. He’d made a mistake, but instead of letting it ruin his mood, he’d found a way to laugh. He hadn’t pretended the cups hadn’t fallen. He’d simply decided that a small disaster didn’t have to become a personal tragedy.

Hannah considered how often she treated her own mistakes as proof that she wasn’t doing enough.

Maybe tomorrow, she could be a little kinder to herself when something went wrong.

And Pickles?

Well, Pickles reminded her that sometimes the best part of the day was simply coming home to somewhere she belonged, even if that somewhere contained a judgmental cat who occasionally vomited on the carpet.

She leaned back against the couch.

For the first time all evening, she felt peaceful.

Not wildly happy. Not overflowing with gratitude. Just calm, comfortable, and a little less burdened by the day.

And that was enough.

Before closing the notebook, Hannah decided to take the exercise one step further. If those three little moments had helped her feel better today, perhaps she could make room for similar moments tomorrow.

She couldn’t control the traffic, the weather, or the printer’s ongoing campaign of psychological warfare. But she could leave home five minutes earlier and take a moment to notice the flowers along the sidewalk.

She could stop at the café and enjoy a friendly conversation instead of rushing through her lunch break.

And when she got home, she could spend a few minutes playing with Pickles rather than immediately collapsing onto the couch with her phone.

None of those things required money, complicated plans, or a complete transformation of her life.

They simply required her to pay attention.

Hannah turned back to the first page of the notebook and noticed something she’d missed earlier. Beneath her grandmother’s original instructions was another sentence, written in smaller letters.

“Don’t forget to thank yourself for making it through the day.”

Hannah stared at those words for a long moment.

She was good at thanking other people. She thanked the barista for her coffee, her coworkers for helping with projects, and the delivery driver who brought packages to her door.

But when was the last time she’d thanked herself?

She thought about everything she’d managed that day. She’d shown up to work despite a terrible start. She’d completed tasks, helped a coworker, solved problems, and made it home safely through miserable weather.

She’d been patient when she wanted to scream. She’d kept going when she felt exhausted. And she’d done the best she could with the energy she had.

Maybe that deserved a little recognition too.

At the bottom of the page, Hannah wrote one final sentence.

“Thank you, Hannah, for showing up, doing your best, and making it through today, even when it wasn’t easy.”

She read it once, then again.

And unexpectedly, her eyes filled with tears.

Not sad tears. Not exactly happy ones either.

They were the tears that sometimes come when you’ve been carrying more than you realized and someone finally acknowledges how heavy it has been.

Even if that someone is you.

Hannah closed the notebook and placed it beside her bed.

The following evening, she repeated the exercise.

That day, her three good things were a stranger holding the door open when her hands were full, the smell of freshly baked bread drifting from a bakery, and a spectacularly dramatic sneeze from a tiny dog she passed on her afternoon walk.

The next day, she wrote about a perfectly ripe peach, a beautiful song on the radio, and a coworker who left a little chocolate on her desk without explanation.

Some evenings, finding three good things was easy.

Other evenings, it felt nearly impossible.

There were days when Hannah was tired, frustrated, lonely, or worried. Days when the world felt too loud and the responsibilities piled up faster than she could manage them.

On those evenings, her list sometimes looked like this: “My shower was warm. My socks were comfortable. I got through the day.”

And she learned that those things counted too.

She didn’t have to pretend that every day was wonderful. She didn’t have to force herself to feel grateful when she was struggling. The notebook wasn’t there to erase her difficulties or convince her that everything was fine.

It was simply a place to remember that difficult days could still contain moments of comfort.

Over the following weeks, something interesting began to happen.

Hannah started noticing little things while they were happening instead of only remembering them afterward.

She noticed the way sunlight made the kitchen walls glow in the morning. She noticed how her neighbour always waved when she drove past. She noticed the satisfying sound of rain against the windows when she was safely inside with a blanket and a good book.

And whenever something made her smile, she found herself thinking, “That’s going in the notebook.”

Her days hadn’t become less busy. Work was still work, traffic was still traffic, and Pickles was still a furry little dictator who believed breakfast should be served at 5:03 am.

But Hannah was no longer measuring her days entirely by what had gone wrong.

She was learning to notice what had gone right, too.

One Sunday afternoon, her grandmother came over for tea. While Hannah was preparing their drinks, her grandmother spotted the notebook on the kitchen counter.

“You’ve been using it,” she said with a smile.

Hannah nodded. “Every night.”

“And? Has it changed your life?”

Hannah considered the question.

“Not in some enormous, dramatic way,” she admitted. “I still have bad days. I still get stressed. Sometimes I still want to throw my laptop into a lake.”

Her grandmother laughed.

“But I think it’s changed how I remember my days,” Hannah continued. “I used to get home and think about everything that went wrong. Now I can remember the good parts too. Even when they’re tiny.”

Her grandmother reached across the table and squeezed her hand.

“That’s how a lot of happiness works, sweetheart. It doesn’t always arrive in grand gestures. Sometimes it comes in little pieces, and we have to notice them before they pass us by.”

That evening, after her grandmother had gone home, Hannah sat beside her bedroom window with the notebook open on her lap.

Outside, the sky was turning a soft shade of lavender. A gentle breeze stirred the leaves, and somewhere down the street, a child was laughing.

Pickles jumped onto the bed, turned around three times, and settled directly on top of the notebook.

Hannah laughed.

“Well, I suppose that’s one of my three things sorted.”

She gently moved him aside and began to write.

Her first good thing was having tea with her grandmother. Her second was the beautiful evening sky. Her third was Pickles being an absolute nuisance.

Then she wrote about why those moments mattered. Her grandmother reminded her that she was loved. The evening sky reminded her that beauty existed even when she wasn’t looking for it. And Pickles reminded her that joy sometimes arrived covered in fur and with absolutely no respect for personal boundaries.

She thought about tomorrow and decided she would call her grandmother during her lunch break, take a few minutes to sit outside if the weather was nice, and buy Pickles a new toy.

Finally, she wrote her sentence of self-gratitude.

“Thank you for learning to find the good without pretending the hard parts don’t exist.”

Hannah closed the notebook, switched off the bedside lamp, and settled beneath the blankets.

Tomorrow might be wonderful. It might be exhausting. It might contain unexpected problems, spilled coffee, or another printer-related incident requiring emotional recovery.

But somewhere inside that day, there would probably be a little moment worth remembering.

A kind word. A funny mistake. A warm breeze. A favourite song. A small victory that nobody else noticed.

And when the evening came, Hannah would give herself five quiet minutes to find it.

Because she’d discovered something lovely along the way.

A good life isn’t necessarily one where every day is good. Sometimes, it’s a life where you learn to recognize the little bits of goodness hiding inside the ordinary days.

And five minutes can be enough to remind yourself that they’re there.

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