Coming in for a landing: the bumps along the way

It’s often a bit bumpy when you fly in for a landing and go through that layer of clouds. It seems like a good analogy for the experience of re-entry into the atmosphere of your daily life after being away on a trip. It’s bound to be somewhat jarring.

There’s something wonderful about being away in a completely different environment for a time, especially when you are mostly cut off from the usual deluge of electronic bits of information, with its ensuing demands, on your time and energy. Quite liberating!

So I guess it’s no surprise to feel somewhat overwhelmed by the mountain of information, requests and demands that seem to have accumulated in your absence.

What to do?

The natural response is to tighten up, stop breathing, dive in head first, and try to tackle it all at once. Whoa!  Not a good idea. At least, not in my experience.

Having learned from past uncomfortable landings, I gave myself a whole day to do nothing but putter around and nest this time– take a nap, unpack, visit, and just land. That really helped!

And as to the mountain of to do’s? I remind myself that just because they exist, doesn’t mean I actually have to get them all done at once. I can actually choose, prioritize, delegate, postpone or even scratch them off my list entirely. After all, I am in control of my life, right?

Next time you face a bumpy landing, dear reader, take it from me, give yourself a break and remember – you get to choose what you do with your time and energy. It’s your precious life.

Lessons on letting go from Mother Nature, or to put it another way: Does a tree freak out when it’s leaves turn color?

As summer gives way to fall, and green turns to gold and red, there is no doubt that change is in the air……

And speaking of change, have you ever realized that you were over committed and that you needed to let go of something in your life?

This happened to me last week…  as a self employed entrepreneur, I’m constantly needing to assess where my time and energy are going, and looking to see if I’m on the right track to my goals. Even though I know that life is all about change, when it comes to having to actually make a change, and let go of something in order to make room for something else, it isn’t always so easy. 

I’m complaining about my schedule. My business coach asks me “Don’t you think you might be over committed?”  “Who, me?!”   Well, indeed the answer was yes. And it was fairly easy to hone in on what it was I needed to let go of.  A commitment I’d made a year ago, that made perfect sense at the time, was no longer serving my goals, even though there were so many things about it that I loved.

Ok, that’s clear.   I knew it was true. End of story, right? No.  As my always wise spiritual counselor Jeff  Anderson likes to say, we have that inner knowing of what is the right thing to do, but then our head wants to get in on the act, so that knowing creeps right up our necks and our head gets all crazy with it. “Oh but….. “, “What will they think?”  “What if…”   But still, we know, and I knew, so I thanked my head for it’s machinations, and listened to my inner knowing.

And so, dear reader, what’s your inner knowing telling you this week? Is there something it’s time to let go of, and gracefully accept that “to everything there is a season”?