Permission to Pause: Making the Most of Summer

Tips for Enjoying the Season Without Losing Focus

It feels like summer in New Hampshire. The air is filled with beautiful humidity, birds are chirping, and you might spot a monarch butterfly. This is the time of year that most people dream about. While I absolutely love winter for its quiet reflection and the inspiration it brings, I also enjoy the fullness of spring and summer. There is some semblance and parallel between the two. The quiet of winter reflection is probably what I love the most. Also, the quiet of winter, the smell, the coldness smell, and the awesome beauty of ice, of snowflakes and the inspiration and the drawing in where all our wisdom lives is what I love. And we can do the same in summer.

Both seasons offer a chance to slow down and draw within.

Today, I want to talk about how to enjoy the beauty of spring and summer while finding quiet patches to reflect. It’s easy to get caught up in the busyness of the season. Just yesterday, a new client wanted to reschedule our initial meeting because she had overbooked herself—a common summer occurrence. With so many activities, it’s important to slow down and take small steps to stay grounded.

Slowing down and taking one small step at a time is truly the biggest, most important and most deceptively difficult thing you can do. The 3 tips I will share are all about taking time to slow down in the summertime to really identify what’s important to you -so that you don’t have to be all over the place and exhausted, enjoying a BIT, but being almost too scattered to enjoy everything.

Ok, here are your tips!

**1. Eliminate All-or-Nothing Thinking:** It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. You don’t need to take the whole summer off. Even a short period, like a day or an hour, can make a difference.. While it would be great to take the whole summer off or the whole month, the longer you give yourself, sometimes the more we tend to waste time. You probably are familiar with the concept of “I like to wait till the last minute.”

That’s because of something called Time Horizon. When we give ourselves too much time, we don’t feel that pull to do anything. So play with that. I invite you to play with how much time is “enough time.” I just got back from eight Days of Travel Bliss. Travel Bliss allowed me to have some adventures, have some downtime, connect with people, and have some solo/partner time. It was a really beautiful period of time, so that’s why I think a week is great, but it can be longer. It can be shorter. 

**2. Give Yourself Permission:** Sometimes, you need to give yourself permission to follow your heart and be yourself. Recently, I had a star reading from a Practical Astrologer. It was eerie and affirming at the same time. She told me “you have permission” to be you! It’s in your stars!

This is YOU and it’s okay to be you just as you are. Wow! So please give yourself this permission slip, whether or not you read your stars. When you hear yourself saying something like, “oh God, there I go again” give yourself permission to be her or him or them. Why not? You have permission!

**3. Take Any Step:** When pursuing a new goal, any step is a good step. It’s okay to experiment and not be sure what’s going to work. Having a mentor, a system, or a community can help you stay on track and avoid giving up.

What I find is that for the bulk of the people, including myself, when we don’t have a mentor, a system, a community, we tend to give up on whatever we’re going for. That’s why I do the work I do.  I would love to help you to support you in going from, “I like this and I like that”, and I want this and “I want that, and I can’t choose”  to going through step by step and help you and support you in the thing that you really want to do.

Your next best step to that is to come along to my Free Monthly Wisdom Warriors this coming Monday at noontime Eastern. FYI – I will not be doing one in July. So this is your last opportunity until August. When you come to wisdom warriors with an idea, you are able through that process of being with this community for only an hour, to then manifest this idea. Then,  when you go along into your fall and into the rest of your year, you will not be quite as all over the place and more focused. And when you’re more focused, guess what? You get more traction. And when you’re more focused on the thing that you try to do and get more traction, then you’re going to manifest what you want more quickly.

You’re going to be more solid in what you want. You won’t go off track and have those terrible voices that say how guilty you are or shameful. We don’t want that. We stay away from that. So that’s why you want to come to Wisdom Warriors, come with some ideas, come with no ideas, come to be inspired. Ideally come with a seed of an idea because I’m going to help you germinate that seed. 

It is time to germinate. It is time to flower.

Blessings, love, and joy to you this spring and summer. I can’t wait to see you at Wisdom Warriors Monday June 10 at noon eastern, and support you on your journey.

Coach Carol