If you’re like me, you gloss over the many conversations about burnout.

Burnout has become a buzzword.

We all know to avoid it, yet we live a lifestyle that reflects anxiety, overwhelm, and frustration. We may even accept that stress and anxiety are just realities of adulting.

I get it. Been there, done that.

We are here to (un)(re)learn how to live a slowed-down life so that you can make intentional, embodied choices that lead to empowered cultural and communal changes in your life and work.

Both/And is more than some trendy rhetoric. The space it creates feels much more critical.

In that space, we can drop our rigidity and walls of armor. We can soften. We can loosen our grip and hold our worlds more gently.

The transitional seasons, whether in the calendar or our lives, invite in this both/and energy and intention.

Both/And is a paradigm shift that promotes well-being and resilience in a regenerative way, so it’s particularly useful as we transition. In last week’s Grow Boldly workshop, I talked about the transition out of summer into autumn by embracing a softness of both/and.

A softness that creates space for a slow and intentional way of living and working. The both/and that embraces the energy of late summer and the abundant goodness of harvest time.

Confession. 

I thought I was ready for the ‘back to school’ seasonal transition last week. 

I wasn’t. 

And it hit me hard. Lots of overwhelm–and, this is hard to admit, some lashing out at my loved ones.

Here’s where things went wrong…

Procrastination is a symptom.

It shows up in our behaviors as a lack of action and in our mindset as a sign of where beliefs are stuck thus preventing forward movement on what you actually want.

Procrastination is wrapped up together with anxiety, worry, and stress. It’s an exhausting repetitive cycle of self-defeat.

Procrastination comes up around the time of transitions. Since it’s back-to-school time, this is a common conversation right now with clients and even my own internal dialogue.

We are at step #4: Action.

With every cycle of assess - access - align, there is a choice of change - action.

You can take embodied action through nudging your mindset and behaviors. This is how you show up and keep moving forward even when it feels like you’re not. The previous steps (assess - access - align), as one client says, are “Guide rails to refer back to when making decisions about activities to pursue and accept.” 

Action for the sake of movement just leads to saying “yes” to most everything because you think it might:

• Advance your career

• Help you outwork or outshine colleagues

• Let you look Pinterest perfect

• Make you agreeable or a ‘good girl’

• ???

I get it. There was a long time (ahem, like 40 years) where I was a ‘yeser’ for many of those reasons.

Let’s talk about step 3 - Align - today.

Align is about the way intentional, embodied alignment to your why and higher goals resets the nervous system to calm. Your why and impact is BIGGER than your j-o-b. (And remember that work is still a j-o-b even if it overlaps with your passion.)

Last week I had the honor of speaking to this year’s leaders of The Junior League of Denver as part of their Leadership Kickoff celebration.

When summer finally hit Colorado, it hit HOT.

In ways, it feels even worse than usual. The usual acclimation process didn't happen due to an unusually long, wet, and cool start to this summer. Then, with a climate crisis heat wave pattern, it flipped to 85-95+ highs.

Last week, I sat outside in the shade working as long as I could to help my body adjust to the higher temperatures. I felt the discomfort set in at 85, so I stayed until 88 then I was back inside with the fans.

Summer is the season that teaches us to embody being too much with its big temperatures and extra hours of light. Sometimes, summer pushes me to feel and experience too much. Too hot. Too long in the sun. Too much clothing. And add pre/menopause/post variable high body temps.

Our modern educational and work systems move in ways that create a whiplash of chaos, crisis, and tension. We are offered very small moments of relief - weekends, a holiday - that barely do anything to shift the body’s nervous system out of flight, fright, and freeze.

It is by systemic design that we find ourselves as adults burnt out, physically and existentially exhausted, and wholly disconnected from our body and soul.

There was a time when I didn’t even know I was disconnected from my own body. I didn’t know the extent of that separation until I started to access that connection to Mother Nature, my own soul work, and my embodied experience.

My typical response when asked what I wanted was, “I don’t know.”

“Who are you? Tell me about yourself.”

Seven years ago this question floored me as I sat in a therapist’s office on the cusp of what would become a transformational breakdown of my body from chronic overing.

At the time, I couldn’t answer with anything else other than, “I’m a professor. I’m a mom.”

Ask me that same question today – who are you? – and I’ll tell you a radically different story that involves embracing summer’s transformative powers.

Every 90 days, I facilitate quarterly client community sessions, bringing all of my 1:1 clients together as a group. In our recent one, we reflected on where we are one month after our Create your Restorative Summer workshop in early June.

I thought I’d share the four step process I led them through with you. You can use this process and reflection questions to take stock of summer so far and see what may need shifting.

With the seasonal shift to summer time, I see gardening as an invitation to the embodiment of the soul. Gardening is a practice of deep play and intentionality. Gardening as an active devotion to Nature.

While yes, there are the mechanics and logistics of gardening.

• How to do this or that?

• Where and what grows here?

• When to plant seeds?

These are the questions of our thinking brain. Important ones, but we as a society live so much from our brains that we can become disconnected from the nature within as well as outside of ourselves.

Welcome Summer! June 21st marks the Summer Solstice here in the northern hemisphere.

This late start to the warmth here in Colorado makes it feel like summer is more fleeting this year than years past. I want to grab and devour it like it’s delicious salted pistachio gelato.

Deep sigh.