The other day at my son’s Hip Hop class some of the other moms were discussing camps they were booking for their children for Summer. Summer?! It’s January. We are still in Winter. I laughed a little at their urgency around needing to get their Summer camps booked now. This event left me with two thoughts…
Last week during the first week of the new year, I invited each of my clients to slow down and consider their intentions for themselves for 2026. I invited them to imagine themselves at the end of the year and how they wanted to feel at the end of 2026. Then, based on their insight on how they wanted to feel at the end of 2026, I invited them to consider what will matter most to them this year.
So often, we kick off the new year with an intense pressure to set goals and go after some new things that we have decided we will be doing this year, before considering if all the new things we are suddenly committed to actually aligns with what truly matters to us – or will matter to us this year – and who we want to become as we grow and evolve this year.
The culture we live in which values productivity over everything else, impacts us in significant ways. It’s why we feel so much pressure to add more to our to-do-lists – like those moms were doing. They were all frantically booking Summer Day Camps on their phones. And what they were not doing, was looking at the bigger picture of their year to consider how the Day Camps will fit into their intentions for their Summer. Or how they wanted to feel when Summer comes around. What will matter most during Summer?
I’m guessing driving up and down like a lunatic to drop children off at day camps and fetch them again, isn’t something anyone sets out to create when they think about what they want to spend their time doing over the Summer. Maybe it is. I don’t know. Let me know if any of you have this on your list as something important to do this Summer…
Now, to be fair, no-one has ever slowed them down and invited them to consider this. And if you are reading this, and recognizing that you also experiencing some internal pressure to add more stuff to your already-full to-do-list, then consider this your invitation to slow down and reconsider.
If you were to Zoom out, and ask yourself the two questions I mentioned above – i.e. how do you want to feel at the end of 2026? And what will matter most this year? – how does that change what’s currently on your to-do-list?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against doing things. In fact, I’m a firm believer in action. Action is how we create what wasn’t there before. It’s the only way to change the status quo. However, I’m also an advocate for aligned action or intentional action rather than mindless action. To put it another way, before you start climbing the ladder, make sure it’s up against the right wall, or you might find yourself reaching the top of a wall you had no intention to climb in the first place…
The other thought I had as I sat listening to those moms worry about how they would occupy their children over the Summer, was to ask myself how much I am resisting the season of Life I find myself in right now? See Life moves in cycles or seasons. There is a season for everything, and that is true of our own lives too.
Winter calls us into stillness, reflection, and rest. This is a time to process, tend to ourselves, and generate warmth from within. Our creative reserves are replenished here. Winter is the season of dreaming and deep internal work. This is definitely the season I am in right now – although I might be moving into another season soon. I have spent most of my time since September of last year in a season of Winter. It just so happens to coincide with the current season out in nature too. I’m choosing to see that as progress towards my intention to be more aligned with Life.
Spring arrives as a time of awakening and release. Energy begins to move forward, inviting new life, fresh ideas, and possibility. It’s a season of letting go of what no longer serves us, and opening ourselves to change. Spring is the season of reinvention. I can already feel the spark of release and new possibilities opening up inside. An important part of this season, is the willingness to put down that which no longer serves you, and to claim your longing for yourself in a bigger way.
Summer brings long days of activity, creation, and harvesting. This is a season of memory-making, visibility, and abundance. We are actively engaged with the world, taking creative risks, and living in the vulnerability of new endeavours. Summer is where growth and work lives. Summer is the season of growing, learning, thriving. It’s were everything we long for gets created.
Fall invites us to slow down again, turning toward reflection and intentional planning. It’s a season of transition, a time to reflect on what we’ve created, to review, and decide which projects will carry forward, and which seeds to plant for the coming cycle. It’s a time of intentional choice around what needs to be completed now, and what will be retained to continue growing when Spring comes again.
I want to invite you to consider for a moment what season of life you find yourself in right now? Not where you want to be. Where you actually are? Why is it important to be honest about that? Well, simply because we can only start where we are. If we try to make ourselves be anywhere else than where we actually are, it takes longer to move forward, and asks more energy from us than we might have available to give.
So, dear reader, if you are reading this at the start of the new year, and feeling the urge to be in Spring or Summer, while recognizing that you actually find yourself in Fall or Winter, stop. Can you tell yourself the truth in THIS moment? Notice what happens inside when you do admit – even if only to yourself – what season you are actually in. What’s different?
Once you have told yourself the truth, I want to invite you to identify the biggest gifts of the season you find yourself in, and identify the challenges you see with being in this season. I want to point out that even Summer and Spring have their own unique challenges, so don’t make the mistake of thinking that one season is better than another.
I recently invited a client to watch the animated film, Orion and the Dark, because it addresses the culture we live in which values productivity and busyness over play, rest and reflection. We think we would love it if it were Summer all the time. And when you slow down to consider it – really consider it – there is a very real possibility that you might get bored of it, or get tired of having to be on all the time, with no opportunity to slow down, stop, rest, recover, play, or reflect.
Every season of life brings with it its gifts and its challenges. When we choose to meet reality as it is, we don’t have to expend so much energy trying to resist it, and we can simply get on with the work of being a human, and being alive in this world at this time.