ON THE COVER - Maggie Harlow’s Everyday Extraordinary

By Alisha Proffitt • Photos By Matt Johnson

Maggie Harlow is suspicious of the stories people inherit about themselves. In her newly released book, Everyday Extraordinary, she encourages readers to question the assumptions they impose on themselves and their daily lives. She believes ideas about success, identity, and belonging should be reconsidered, and challenges that many of the limits people accept are ones they have inflicted on themselves.

That lightbulb first went off for Harlow when she decided to start her first business. 

"The most important moment that defined my life was deciding to start my first business," she shares. "It was a huge risk, a huge effort, and it taught me countless lessons about life." More importantly, building a company that supported employees while serving its community gave her confidence that she could create something meaningful. The experience altered what she calls her "self-perception."

That concern with perception, particularly self-perception, recurs throughout the book. Harlow believes that people often mistake imagined expectations for fixed social realities. "Most of us live under the shadow of expectations," she says. "But many of those are simply what we IMAGINE others expect." Rather than accepting our assumptions as fact, she encourages people to test them. Try something different, she suggests, and see what actually happens. "In most every case I've found the world makes space for me in ways I didn't realize."

This also applies to Harlow's view of authenticity. She observes that people tend to work hard to appear "normal," even though individuality is what makes life engaging. "People are all unique. Weird, different, special," she says. "If we learned to enjoy and embrace our uniqueness, we would live with such contentness and curiosity about life. Sounds fun to me."

Her daily habits complement that mindset. Harlow pays close attention to the thoughts that surface automatically, especially those self-conscious in nature. If she considers eating alone at a restaurant and immediately thinks others might judge her, she stops to question that belief. Most people are not paying nearly as much attention as we imagine, she says, and even if they are, their opinions do not need to dictate our choices.

The willingness and confidence to let go of other people's approval has become one of the most important lessons in her life. "The desire to be liked is pernicious and debilitating." Freedom begins with accepting the possibility of disapproval. "Learning that people NOT liking me is perfectly okay has been wildly freeing."

She tackles setbacks with a similar perspective. Rather than dramatize disappointment, Harlow and her husband respond with a phrase that has become a household refrain: "I have other gifts."

Her book closes on a note inherited from her mother, Kathleen Reno, whose aspiration was simple enough to resist sentimentality: "My goal is that each person I meet is made even a tiny bit better by interacting with me."

If there is one idea she hopes readers take with them from Everyday Extraordinary, "Life is a magic place. Even bad days can still have moments of wonder."