I'm a coach, educator, and podcaster who loves to talk about personal development, midlife well-being, and creativity. Subscribe to my newsletter.
October 1: Fresh Start Prompts
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Hello, October. If you’ve been here for a while, you know I love the first day of a new month. A blank page. A little threshold. An invitation to notice where we are and decide how we’d like to meet what’s next. But I’ve been thinking that our fresh starts don’t always have to begin by adding something. A new goal. A new habit. A new plan. Something else to accomplish. Sometimes a fresh start begins by putting something down. So before you decide what October needs from you, here are a few questions to play with: What is taking up more of my attention than it deserves? What have I been meaning to deal with, decide or complete? What am I doing simply because I’ve always done it? What could I remove, reduce or do differently this month? And perhaps most importantly: What would I love to have more space for? You don’t have to answer all of them. In fact, don’t. 😉 Notice which question catches your attention and stay with that one. I’ve been thinking about these questions a lot since helping my parents move the final load from their home of 40 years. Several of you responded to that email with your own stories about moves, belongings, unfinished projects and things you’ve been meaning to deal with. And I’ve realized again how rarely it’s just about the stuff. It’s the pile we walk past every day. The appointment we haven’t made. The decision we keep revisiting. The commitment that no longer fits. The digital noise. The unfinished project. The expectation we’re still trying to live up to. Individually, they may seem small. Together, they can create a low hum of stress in the background: I really need to deal with that. And every one of those things asks for a little piece of our attention. That’s what we’re going to explore inside LIGHTER. Yes, we’ll declutter. We’ll also look at what we’re consuming, what we’re tolerating, and some of the habits, expectations and old rules that may be taking more energy than we realize. Not so we can create perfectly organized lives. So that we can experience what happens when there’s less noise and more room. More room to focus. More room to breathe. More room for creativity. More room for delight. More room to hear ourselves. And we’re going to keep it intentionally manageable: One project. One experiment. One week at a time. I’ve also decided to give us a little more breathing room before we begin. LIGHTER now begins Monday, October 12. (turns out I needed more space before starting!!) We’ll spend eight weeks together, and registration will remain open through Friday, October 9. The investment is $222, and you’ll also have my digital Energize Your Life tracker as a companion for noticing where your energy is going along the way. LIGHTER before December. [LEARN MORE + JOIN LIGHTER] https://she-force.kit.com/products/lighter But whether you join us or not, perhaps this can be your October 1 experiment: Don’t ask what you need to add this month. Ask: What could get lighter? And see what happens. Love, Aimee P.S. You don’t need to arrive organized, motivated or knowing exactly what you want to work on. Come curious. Come cluttered. Come exactly as you are. Self-acceptance is the first step.
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She Force
I'm a coach, educator, and podcaster who loves to talk about personal development, midlife well-being, and creativity. Subscribe to my newsletter.
Hello friends, Something interesting happened during our first LIGHTER gathering this week. We started talking about the words we use to describe the things that weigh us down. Not just the typical- Junk. Junk food. Junk thoughts. Also the hidden meanings in everyday words. And we discovered that although we all get the meaning, not all words resonate the same with everyone. Which got me thinking about how quickly we can turn something that’s meant to help us into another thing we think we’re...
On Tuesday, I helped my parents load up the very last of their belongings from the place they had called home for 40 years. Forty years. A house. A garage. A shop. A small farm. Eighty acres. And all the stuff that accumulates when you have enough space to keep it. But of course, it wasn’t just stuff. It was memories. Decisions. Identities. Relationships. A way of life. Things that had been useful once. Things that hadn’t been useful for years. Things that were easy to release and things that...
Here in Montana, there are signs everywhere that the season is changing. The light is different. The mornings are cooler. Gardens are giving up the last of what they’ve been growing. Leaves are beginning their turn. And next week, we arrive at the autumn equinox, that beautiful threshold between seasons. I’ve been thinking about harvest. We often think of harvest as abundance. Gathering. Bounty. Seeing what has grown from everything we’ve tended. But harvest also requires discernment. What do...