Spring Updates, Inspirations, Lessons, & Curiosities
 
Meandering throughts From My desk to yours

may - may - may - may - may - May - Ma 
May
 
“Sitting at our back doorsteps, all we need to live a good life lies about us. Sun, wind, people, buildings, stones, sea, birds and plants surround us. Cooperation with all these things brings harmony, opposition to them brings disaster and chaos.”
   - Bill Mollison, Introduction to Permaculture
 
This time of year more than others, I find myself remembering that things don't need to be as complicated as I tend to make them. “All we need to live a good life lies about us.” I have been honestly reflecting lately on where I am living in ‘opposition' to my life, and environment, and the unique resources and challenges that it presents me with, rather than in cooperation with it. I love to vision into the world of limitless possibility for the creative insights it gives me. Yet, lately working inside the bounds, limits, and gifts of my true lived reality has been offering me a different kind of creative freedom.
If you, like me, tend to resist ‘what is’ sometimes, I invite you to join me in asking “how could I cooperate with this situation to bring about a better solution than the one I can imagine in a world of ‘if-only-s’?", and may you be surprised by the innovation that is born from restriction. 

spring cleaning & a time of planting seeds
April, May, June
 
Every year we plant a garden. In our veggie and flower patch we select our annual seeds each Spring, to plant afresh. It's a process of delight to pick what we'll cultivate this season - there are always the favourites to grow, and also new experiments to try, or past failures to cross off our list. Yet, regardless of what we plant, we are not starting from scratch each year. We have spent the past 5 years building a foundation of rich soil, gathering learning and insights from each prior season, and establishing a wide array of perennials - herbs, berry shrubs, and fruit trees that return every year. 
 
In my life and business this Spring I am finding myself feeling very much the same. As I look at the options of activities I can invest my time into, or the ideas and new offerings I could 'plant',  I am leaning into the freedom of experimentation, as time has shown me that Spring comes every year. As I select my priorities I have this feeling of planting into a rich foundation of established soil, and am enjoying the ease of tending to budding ‘perennials' that continue to bear fruit years after planting.
 
No matter what area of your life you look at - whether it is your business, or community, or health, or career, or an important relationship - I invite you to reflect on:
  • How have you cultivated a strong foundation to ‘plant’ into in? Or how could you cultivate a foundation now for the future?
  • What do you want to ‘plant’ or invest in THIS season?
  • What is already established that you can trust to continue ‘bearing fruit’?
 

commitments & accountability
What will you Prioritize this season?
Spring is a season of fullness, and we literally can't “do it all”. Here are some ways I choose priorities to focus on in a given season:
  1. Revisit Values or Goals - Identify and name a handful of core values or goals you want to honour this season and use them as a filter for decision making.
  2. Identify one area of life that you know could use some attention, and one that is already thriving, and then think how you could improve each a little bit. This up-levels every aspect of your life.
  3. Zoom out and look at the needs that exist in your whole systems (family, relationship, workplace) and pick priorities that support the whole.
  4. Simplify. Give yourself permission to name all the possible things you could focus on, then dare yourself to pick just 3.
  5. Map out your schedule - for those that tend to overestimate their capacity 🙋‍♀️- try scheduling in your commitments as you make them. You'll quickly see what is realistic (and what isn't!).
Declare your commitments out loud, on paper, or to another person gives them to give them real staying power. 
 
 
 
My Commitments & Desires
 
If I'm honest, writing this section made me laugh, given what I just shared about prioritization and working within our bounds and limits. Gosh I tend to overestimate my capacity. So after a few re-writes, here's what I'm prioritizing this season: 
  • I have a full one-on-one client load right now, and it goes without saying that they are a priority to me, and get treated accordingly.
  • I've been completing my ORSC (Organizational and Relational Systems Coaching) training through CRR global (Center for Right Relationship) and am focusing on building up my relationship/team coaching work.
  • I'm carving out more ‘down time’ that is unstructured, tech-free, and doesn't include any to-do's to allow creativity to flow, and to practice rooting into more presence in the everyday.
  • In my evenings and weekends I'm prioritizing the garden, being active, time with my kids & husband, our in-person community, and sitting in the sun every time it pokes out from behind spring clouds.
Looking towards the next season: 
  • I'm planning a “spring-clean” edit and restructuring of my website to bring it up to speed with how my work has evolved this past year.
  • I'm calling in support to help me ‘clean-up’ some of my digital clutter, and simplify and organize my backend systems to be as efficient and supportive of my business as possible.
  • I'll be focusing on calling-in the next cohort for my re-villaging course in the Fall!
  • And of course, in the summer my main job is ‘beach’ so that will get all the top-spots in my calendar
  • (Note that after writing this I've realized that I need to table that exciting new project I was dreaming up and let it be for another season altogether 😅)
 
What are yours?                 
 
It all begins with clarity of
purpose & intention 
my approach
“I keep spinning my wheels and getting nowhere”
Is there a task, goal, vision, relationship, decision, or conversation where you keep going ‘around and around’? For me - it's writing these darn emails! I tend to feel like I'm saying the same thing over and over, and also saying nothing at the same time. And the longer I've been at it, the more ‘spun out’ I feel, and the more I resist. 
This morning, after a particularly frustrating tech glitch that had me feeling pretty done with the whole thing, I closed my computer, refilled my coffee and pulled out my journal... At the top of the page I wrote: “Why am I writing these emails anyways? What's the point? What purpose are they supposed to serve?”
Returning to my 'Why' ( connecting with people, building relationships, expanding reach and impact, serving, inviting, offering and generating reflection) I was able to gather myself, and sit back down and get to it with more efficiency.
 
Whatever you are spinning your wheels…
Return to Purpose. It will always reorient you.

 
I'm pretty much always thinking about the interconnectedness of all things.
 
Lately I have been loving the overlapping nature of my circles and the redundancy of ideas I keep coming across. I used to feel like I needed to have something new and original to say for it to have any value. Recently though, I have been delighting in coming across books, podcasts, Instagram accounts, programs, and conversations where I think “yes, exactly! That's what I've been saying too!”
 
Here are few resonant things that have come into my world recently - and I'm so excited to point you towards them…
 
[Robin Wall Kimmerer]
The Serviceberry - Abundance & Reciprocity
Robin Wall Kimmerer's new book is top of my reading list - we have a forest of serviceberry growing in our yard - and everyone knows I love a good garden metaphor for deeper themes of community. If you're looking for just a taste I found this great essay of the same name she released in 2022.
Read the Essay
01
Cultivating community requires us to cultivate courage…
… and you can start right now by hitting reply and sharing with me: 
  • One way you're going to work with, instead of against, your circumstances this season.
  • Your commitments & priorities this season.
  • What you planted in your garden this year! (Literally or metaphorically)
I'm genuinely interested in what's going on in your world!

 
Impact requires sustained effort over time.
 
Keep practicing. Keep showing up - to your life, your people, and your work. With almost everything I teach I find myself encouraging clients & participants that they just need to ‘practice’. Practice implies that we still have learning to do. Phew.! We don't need to have things all figured out yet.
 
Somehow I think we have more grace with ourselves and each other when it relates to new tangible skills and tasks - but I'm witnessing a lot of people lately working on building new ways of relating, communicating, and understanding themselves and each other. The same principle applies, maybe more than ever, in relationship - Keep Practicing!
 
If you're finding that you're needing support in clarifying purpose, priorities, values, direction or alignment as a team, community, or in any relationship. Or are simply needing help identifying what you could be practicing together to improve your interpersonal dynamics. Right now I am taking applications for coaching work with couples, organizations, and community building projects. Send me an email if you're curious about this!
 
Our Common Life (my six-month long community building course) is currently Wait Listed, but enrollment is opening soon! Feel free to reach out about that too!
 
I would also love to hear if you have particular curiosities you want me to speak to in these emails, over on Instagram, or in future free workshops. I am all ears!
 
 
 
With deep 
gratitude, 
Sarah
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