I don’t know about you, but as I sit here stuffing my face with Trader Joe’s pumpkin-flavored everything, the big picture seems to be closing in. There are so many things it’s easy to lean into about fall - sweater weather, the crisp autumn air, leaves changing, Pumpkin Spice White Claw - but it’s harder to lean into the bigger, energetic shifts that fall brings. We’re in a sort of purgatory between wedding season and holiday season, forced to reckon with everything we thought we’d get done this year.
It’s started to feel like minute 60 of my 75 minute sculpt class… just when you finish the last standing series, you breathe a sigh of relief and then hear me shout “But for those of you who want ONE. MORE. PUSH…. “ It’s overwhelming, and my instinct is to hunker down and avoid the inevitable.
I find myself getting take out instead of cooking, or hunkering down to binge watch Modern Love on a Saturday afternoon instead of spending time with friends because it’s foggy and I’m exhausted AF. Life right now feels like too much to juggle; it’s the time when Sunday Scaries get scarier, and my Monday mornings are fueled by anxiety and Blue Bottle.
In those last fifteen minutes of yoga sculpt, it’s easy to make the mental leap out of my body and into what I’ll be doing after class, or analyzing my performance over the last sixty minutes. When we get tired or uncomfortable, the easiest thing is to jump out of the moment. But this moment - this final push - is your opportunity to have faith in how you’ve shown up thus far.
Sure, it might not look exactly like what you pictured when you sat down to make your vision board in January. That’s a good thing. Maybe whatever you didn’t accomplish so far this year had its reason for fading into the background. Can you play with the idea that, as you’ve evolved, your priorities have aligned to meet your values, and you’ve been becoming a You-er You? Try to stay present in the autumnal purgatory, because, as the leaves are falling, anything that is no longer true for you is melting away.
Don’t get me wrong, aspirations are helpful, and goals are essential. But remembering our core values, remembering who we are, that is critical. So instead of seeing this time of year as a final push, we can see it as a time to remember why we’re pushing.