Last week I brought up the Semester Scaries and offered you access to my client community session, where we will talk antidotes. Sign up here. It’s only an hour, and I’m confident you’ll feel lighter afterward.

Here’s Part II of the Antidote to the Semester Scaries: Planning

Planning is a way that shifts you out of overing anxiety and too many commitments in the wrong places. But I’m not talking about the typical back-to-school planning with a bazillion tasks paired with cramming all the summer wish lists into the same few weeks.

Tell me if any of these feel like I can overhear your thoughts and feel your feels:

• Dread that feels like a sucking out of your life force.

• Wondering where the back to school excitement went.

• An imminent sense of doom but you can’t place why because you’re okay.

• Anxiety that feels like tension in your chest and shoulders or knotted up stomach.

• A general pessimistic cloud that hasn’t been your usual.

• Burnout. Rusted out. Blah.

• Wondering if THIS is your mid-career crisis playing out.

If a version of these resonates, you’re in good company. Talking to clients and colleagues in the last few weeks I’m noticing a lot of what I’m naming as the Semester Scaries or, if you’re outside of higher ed, then this shows up in that palatable shift from summer to fall.

Last month, I put the type of leadership I wrote about last week to the test. I went outside of my comfort zone to co-lead a women’s backpacking retreat that required packing in over two miles to an off-the-grid gorgeous mountain hut at 10,000 feet.

I’ve led many things over my career, including study abroad trips, but this one pushed me. One of my responsibilities was leading our morning movement sessions. On the surface that seems easy and simple enough. It should have been an easy part to prep. And yet in the month leading up to the retreat all the brain gremlins came out.

Heart-forward leaders are facilitators of growth - their own, others, and their communities.

As the second half of 2024 starts, I want to spend a little time addressing the need for all of us to step up as embodied leaders. When I think about leaders I do not necessarily mean those limited to positions or job titles that involve management, decision-making, or administration. But, of course, anyone in a position that influences others, like people managers and educators, are 100% leaders. By leaders, I mean folks who identify with that as a purpose in our world. If you look around, I think you’ll agree that our communities need all of us to lead right now.

This month, I’ve been sharing about the shifts in my mentorship coaching work–meant to grow access to what I feel is really important work these days. As I talked about last week, I aim to create different levels of access points, so here’s a free gift for you. 

In my community program, I host a seasonal workshop every 90 days to reflect on and rebuild our intentions and goals. My clients are so gratuitous in welcoming me to play with various metaphors and embodied practices that I feel fit that current season and moment. 

Maybe you missed the news - I revised my mentorship coaching programs by reducing their prices over 20%. This is not a gimmick or quick, slick sales attempt. It’s been a fully embodied response to this question I asked of myself and my business this year:

How am I, both as a human and a business, adapting and transforming myself and my community in ways that are regenerative and mutually beneficial?

Questions I’ve heard so far:

In starting my business, I stepped out of the mainstream so that I could genuinely support folks in the traditional institutions to change their lives and work in value-aligned ways, shedding the overing and burnout.

Reflecting on the third-year anniversary of my business being my full work focus, I see that a regenerative model promotes interconnected resilient work. That’s why I’m building a regenerative business that is community-oriented and with values of embodied connection and transformative growth.

Resilience is about how we adapt and transform in response to the environment and what’s around us. Having a resilient business means evolving in response to the changing environment. The nature of my work evolves in response to the needs of my clients and community.

In applying my own resilience framework to myself and my business, I have been reflecting on this question this year:

How am I, both as a human and a business, adapting and transforming myself and my community in ways that are regenerative and mutually beneficial?

One answer is clear…

What helps you thrive through challenging times and moments?

I was a department chair of two large graduate programs during the pandemic shutdown. While it was a really challenging time and disproportionately impacted folks, I felt purpose in guiding the program through it. In hindsight, I can see how it foreshadowed the work I do now related to resilience and the messy middle of change. That said, how I led during that time definitely came at the cost of my mental health. I mean, ultimately, I ended up taking FMLA and then transitioned my work out of academia.

This is why a lot of you come to me with the question: Should I stay or should I go? My response: Let’s shift your relationship to work first, then answer that question. Here’s why.

Summer solstice makes its hot entrance this Thursday here in the northern hemisphere.

The official mark of summer season highlights longer days with more time to be outside and active in the evenings and lots of garden watching for me. Last summer solstice felt like an invitation to devotion. This summer solstice feels more both/and. Great moments of joy and a hefty dose of discomfort with the heat and lack of rain.

I think bringing my attention to moments of joy will help me feel embodied and connected this summer, instead of disassociating and wishing for something different.

Feel the resistance and do it anyway. 

Never in a hustle muscle kinda way though, right! We’ve come too far together to go back to burnout and disconnection.

Right now all my work seems to be sitting in the discomfort of the both/and space. Early summer must be the season for this. Makes sense. As I look over to the garden beds, I see the green bean seeds pushing up through the soil–yet, also curled in a little. Expansion is a push/pull - it’s a both/and. Can you imagine if the bean seeds felt the resistance at the top of the soil and were like, “Ohhh, that’s hard. No thanks. I’m gonna stay here in the dark.”

What’s your typical response when you start to feel uncomfortable in your body or in a conversation or when you notice your deep emotions?

Developing our capacity to sit in the discomfort of uncertainty is a necessary skill for this moment in history. Given the world, this includes learning how to cycle between joy and grief pretty regularly. I see this in my climate work in the Fort Collins community, folks want to jump to solutions or what to do, which would bypass the important inner work of anger, grief, heartbreak, all because they feel the discomfort, sometimes immensely.