"Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the Fall".
– F. Scott Fitzgerald
Greetings!
We have officially crossed the threshold into the beauty and abundance of Fall. The rustling of the trees, chilly breezes, and harvest all remind us of what is on the horizon. Utilizing the medicine of the season to not only take stock of our lives, look honestly at what we are wanting to let go of, but also to courageously begin to carve new pathways to our existence.
As we make this transition, it is also important to recognize and acknowledge all of the work that we have done on ourselves to get to this point. It is easy to focus on where we may be lacking or what needs to change and to discount all of the growth and progress we have actually made in our lives and in ourselves.
Can you take a moment and really honor who you are and where you are on your path?
Holding both close as we navigate the terrain of Fall in moving closer to the dark and quiet time of year.
Whenever we are going through any kind of letting go or unwinding process of outdated ways of living and being, we may begin to start to feel like a foreigner in our own skin. This is when is it is time to consciously choose to try different some different things in approaching our bodies, our hearts, and our lives as a whole.
Quite often it is a trial and error process as to what feels aligned in our new skin. What feels integrated and in integrity with our new selves? What feels easeful and embodied?
It is a process of breaking through old stories and messages. It is a deep listening to your inner self and what it is that you are needing, rather than operating in auto-pilot of what you always have done.
We have to be willing to step out of our comfort zones in order to grow. If we continuously do the same things, make the same excuses, hide in our little bubbles....we will not grow and change.
I will share a brief story with you about my own personal process of evolution when I chose to do something that I do not normally do. This choice gave me the opportunity to break out of a mold of habit and I felt some incredible shifts as a result.
I had an unexpected afternoon into the evening to myself. Normally I would hunker down and focus on work or clean my house or run my endless errands. I chose to drive up into the mountains, to a trail that I had not been on since my son was a baby. I had been avoiding this trail due to some memories of a challenging time in my life. Today felt like the day to shift the imprint and create something new.
I walked for hours in solitude, with myself, my breath, and the trees. It was a heavenly reset.
I found myself sitting by a mountain stream while on this trail. I sat watching the water flow downstream moving around the rocks and boulders, witnessing the flow shift and morph depending on the placement of the rocks.
I was struck by the capacity that we each have as humans to move and shift our own personal rocks and boulders creating new possibilities and opportunities dependent upon their placement.
I recognized that I had moved my own rocks and boulders by making the choice to spend my afternoon in quiet and solitude on a trail that had had such negative connotation. I had shifted my own internal pathways and I felt a tremendous sense of relief and possibility.
Using this analogy and time of year to perhaps begin to move our own personal rocks and boulders of our lives around. Feeling into what shifts when we shift our energy stream.
Where can you move some of your rocks and boulders around to create new possibilities in your stream and flow?
Anytime we make a new choice on our own behalf we have the opportunity to carve new pathways in our existence.
Often it doesn’t take a tremendous amount of movement to create changes. They can be subtle shifts in our everyday lives that have the most impact. Subtle shifts which then lead to other subtle shifts and open up to new possibilities and opportunities that we did not even know existed.
We have to start somewhere.
Old stories and patterns of living and being have to be unwound and redirected.
If we continuously do the same actions on repeat we will continuously end up with the same result. By shifting our personal streams, moving our rocks and boulders around, we open ourselves up to new connections and opportunities and we create new pathways of existence.
We can choose every day to consciously, gently, and compassionately place our stones and boulders in ways that are supportive and life-enhancing. Honoring that we may not know exactly where the stream will carry us yet having faith that we are in integrity with our own flow.
We cannot rush this process of becoming.
And, we can take action.
New choices every single day, no matter how small they may seem, are important.
Remembering that this life we are living is a process. It is a dance. There is no end point where you land and then everything is golden. We have the opportunity every day to make new choices on our own behalf, to shift in our perspective, to take excellent care of ourselves on every level, to move our stones and boulders around, and carve new pathways to our existence.
I will leave you with this statement which played on repeat when I was in a treatment center over 2 decades ago. I remind myself of this daily and hope that it will help you as well:
If you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always gotten. How about change?!?
