Finding Clarity for a Meaningful Fall

It is hard to believe that Labor Day is upon us. It feels like not that long ago I wrote “Growth and Renewal” which was a deep dive into summer.

What pieces of ourselves deserved to be tended to?  As the summer stretched out ahead, could we turn up the volume on ourselves?

So- let’s unpack it- how did you do? Did you occupy yourself with the “wants” or were you bogged down by the “shoulds”? Were you able to shift your lens away from doing and have a sense of being? 

One of my dearest friends said to me the other day, as we were both lamenting and excited by the passage of time (her oldest child left for college that week) that she had admired this year I seemed “tethered in”. I had my bearings and my priorities in order.

I was grateful to hear her say that- first because I value her and her opinion deeply, but also because I had worked on that this year. I had not realized that it was visible to anyone but myself. 

I read a memoir this summer We Are The Luckiest, The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life by Laura McKowen. It is a sobriety memoir that I highly recommend as McKowens ruthless honesty and self-awareness can be appreciated and is relatable across all struggles.

In fact, she says exactly that throughout the book.  To paraphrase, ‘alcohol is my thing, but everyone has a thing’. She also used a phrase which is very common in AA which was “take what you need and leave the rest”. I found this landed differently when I read it in her book. I thought about how often we get overwhelmed by things because it feels like we have to do all of it at the same time.

We cannot just take a walk, we have to “get fit”. We can’t just read a book, we must “start reading again”. It’s as if the only acceptable approach is to revolutionize the entire activity instead of just doing one simple thing.

I say frequently to my patients, who want to know what happens next in their stories, that before we write the entire script, we need to live the beginning and middle so we can figure out the end.  

I like the simplicity of “take what you need and leave the rest”. I think we operate better and with less urgency when we don’t feel overwhelmed by volume and can focus on a thing or two at a time. We do not need to feel that we have failed or succeeded if we can’t do everything.

Piece by piece is how real change is made, layer by layer. 

Doing one thing at a time is how we create new patterns, new normals, tackling one task or one issue at a time.

This fall- I am going to do my best to take what I need and leave the rest. I am going to try and appreciate the individual things as they occur and tear my gaze away from the collective experience of “success”. Each day is a success. Each dinner we make, or individual soccer game we attend, or moments when we can actually engage our teenagers in dialogue and have them laugh at our humor.

I will take what I can…and work on appreciating that one thing, the rest I will leave. The guilt, the anxiety, the anguish of not “getting it all done”. I am going to try to ditch the ‘not good enough’- I just don’t need to take it with me.  

What is your fall mantra? 🍁 ☮️