Friday Reflections - Harnessing the natural rhythm of seasonal shifts 🍁
TLDR: What differentiates today as the first day of the next part of your story versus just another day, is simply your choice to believe something new could exist for you and a willingness to start living as if that were true. And, the natural rhythm of seasonal shifts provide a heightened opportunity to positively accelerate the impact of our choices.
This week and for the next couple of weeks, your social media feeds have likely been/will be flooded with first-day-of-school photos, captioned with comments like “First day of school in the books!” etcetera, et al.
It can be easy to dismiss these posts as white noise, cliché, posted for likes, or any other vaguely judgemental categorization.
To be honest, I sometimes feel the same, even as I print out my little sign for my kid saying “First day of Kindergarten 2023”, snap my photo outside our house, and shed my tears in recognition of “how fast they grow up”.
And yet, I think there’s something more for us here. Something universally opportune about this moment in time.
I’ve always felt a shift in the Fall. The air feels different. It feels thick with both the possibility of what is to come and nostalgia for what has already been and will be no more.
Even this week in Austin, where it’s been 100+ degrees for weeks now, the morning temperature dropped down to the 70s as if to acknowledge and agree it’s time to enter a new season, both literally and figuratively.
Returning to school is an obvious external marker and catalyst of a seasonal shift. The further removed from school we get though, it seems our tendency is to move deeper into nostalgia and further away from a sense of fresh and infinite possibility.
Perhaps we can sense the possibility on behalf of any young people in our lives, whether our own or nephews and nieces or friends’ kids. But less so for ourselves.
Perhaps this time of year stirs up feelings of grief or melancholy that life is passing you by. Or you miss the “good old days” of some other preferable time of your life.
But what if the same possibility that exists for my kindergartener, whose whole life is ahead of him, exists for you too? What if the same possibility that exists for a college freshman, exists for you too? What if the same possibility that existed for you, 10 years ago, still exists for you?
What if today was the first day of the next part of your story, marked by new learnings and insights and experiences and friendships?
What if the best is yet to come?
What differentiates today as the first day of the next part of your story versus just another day, is simply your choice to believe something new could exist for you and a willingness to start living as if that were true.
(Note: if you need help believing this, read about Betty Reid Soskin who became a park ranger at age 84).
I took this photo in jest but also, just saying 🙃.
As I walked my Kindergartener home from school yesterday, we happened upon one of his new classmates, Jackson, and his mom. We stopped to say hi and Jackson asked his mom to get my number to schedule a playdate. I gave her my number and she texted me her name.
Receiving her text catalyzed one of those micro decision points that collectively add up to particular outcomes over time.
I could simply acknowledge receipt and say, “let’s get the kids together sometime soon!”.
Or, I could make the more vulnerable choice, in service of my desire to develop more friendships with families in our neighborhood, and suggest a specific time and place.
Simple choices that are aligned with the person we want to be and the life we want to live, repeated over time, inform our sense of identity, which in turn informs our future choices, and subsequently our lived experience.
While we can make aligned choices any day, I believe the natural rhythm of seasonal shifts provides a heightened opportunity to positively accelerate the impact of our choices.
The rhythm of Fall invites us into a time of both harvesting what was previously planted and sowing seeds that thrive in cooler weather, which are then harvested in spring.
So my invitation to curiosity to you today is:
What are you harvesting in this season, based on the culmination of your choices up until now? To what extent are you now experiencing things like:
Clarity on what you want in your life, due to time spent in intentional reflection and a willingness to acknowledge what you’ve always known?
Courage to address that conflict you had previously been avoiding?
Connection, due to a willingness to be vulnerable and take a risk relationally?
A sense of peace and calm, due to your willingness to release judgment and expectations and focus on what’s possible versus what’s broken?
Confidence in the way you’re leading at work, due to your willingness to invite feedback, be decisive, think strategically, and/or equip and empower your team?
What can you begin planting in this season that will result in a beneficial emergence in the future?
What are you unintentionally planting that will yield something you don’t want to experience, e.g., anxiety, overwhelm, self-doubt, stuckness, lack of clarity?
As always, drop me a line and let me know what comes to mind. And if you feel inclined, I really would love to see your kid's first day of school pics 😍.
Stay curious,
Jessica
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