Leo Tolstoy once said: “Spring is the time of plans and projects.”
As a life coach — and a fellow (hopefully evolving) human being — I believe I’ll need every wellness tool and practice I’ve ever shared with clients to get through all the projects I have planned for this spring.
Spring is the season we most associate with new growth and optimism. That’s how I’m choosing to approach the next few months — as I relocate to a new home in a new state, move my mother into an assisted living community, and complete a new round of further credentialing as a coach. As I move through this busy season, I'll post updates on each of these topics, along with the tools and techniques I've learned as both a coach and a participant — and as I tackle them in real time.
Dig deep, spring into action, and start by breathing deeply
Here’s one thing I’ve learned so far: big, life-changing projects don’t just require good planning. They demand physical endurance, mental fitness, and emotional resilience — especially when everything seems to be happening at once.
There are lots of tools for getting into shape and for improving our physical endurance. One simply involves breathing.
"Through the action of our diaphragm, even breaths that originate deep within the abdomen stimulate the vagus nerve in a way that signals safety and cues our bodies and minds to relax, restore, and release chronic and unhealthy patterns," reports Karyn Bailey of the Yale School of Medicine.
We'll explore more techniques to help us get physically ready, especially after perhaps some long winter months of inactivity. We'll also put all that scientific jargon into plain English, especially that bit about the vagus nerve. It's pronounced the same as the desert locale, but doesn't involve gambling to get a payout. It's free and entirely within our power to do.
Preparing our minds and emotions for what life brings
Most wellness experts define mental fitness as a proactive approach to regulating our emotions, shoring up our support network of family and friends, and understanding the links between our physical well being and our mental health.
"Mental fitness refers to the process of building inner strength and resilience, no matter what obstacles come your way," note the writers at Calm, the popular app for reducing stress. "Meanwhile, mental health refers to everything from your daily moods to conditions like anxiety, depression, and burnout."
That also applies to emotional resiliency. It's the ability to adapt to life's challenges — a skill we can develop at any age. Elizabeth Scott, an expert on stress management, advises us to strengthen our connections with others, manage our thoughts (focus on what's positive), and practice self-care.
Scott and I share a strong commitment to the field of positive psychology, a branch of psychology that focuses on what we can do to stay mentally fit rather than wait until it rises to the level of mental illness. It's one of the key foundations of Positive Intelligence®: a globally recognized approach to mental fitness, which also utilizes the fields of neuroscience, cognitive behavioral psychology, and performance science.
The program description notes: "Our science-backed program strengthens your mental muscles by rewriting your brain for sustained positive change. You learn to intercept your self-sabotage and access the part of your mind that turns life's challenges into opportunities."
PQ's approach is one of the cornerstones of my coaching practice, and we'll no doubt be exploring its many tools and techniques going forward.
Let's get through this Spring together!
Over the next few months, I’ll be sharing what this season's call for action looks like — as I live it. And not just the logistics, but the inner work required to move through it without burning out.
That includes:
What to do when our energies are limited and our decisions feel overwhelming.
Why it's vital to have a workable daily structure (even on low-capacity days) to stay grounded.
Where to locate the appropriate tools and support to make our transitions easier.
When to notice our bodies' reactions to uncertainty when there are no perfect answers.
Who to turn to for encouragement and support when we should be moving beyond “just getting through it” to charting forward momentum.
How to manage anxiety — and the small practices that keep us balanced and tuned into all our wisdom centers.
Shaking off those winter blues
Like many of us, I spent the winter hunkered down — focusing on the day-to-day and trying to picture brighter days ahead, both literally and figuratively. I had health issues to manage, life-changing decisions to make, and family dynamics to navigate.
Unlike most people, I coped with my stress by enrolling in a six-month training program in burnout coaching. At first, it seemed counterintuitive. Why add more to an already overloaded calendar?
Part of me saw it as a way to expand my work with clients. Another part recognized something more urgent: I was heading toward burnout. Again.
I recognized the signs: chronic fatigue, disrupted sleep, gastrointestinal issues, high blood pressure, headaches, and a low-grade irritability that never quite went away.
I’d been here before. Different decades. Different careers. Same pattern: push through … until I can’t.
This time, I wanted a different outcome.
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"
Thanks, George Santayana. He's the philosopher who wrote those wise words back in 1905. It remains sage advice to apply to life today. I want to be more consciously aware of noticeable patterns and how these affected my past decisions. I don't want to just cope with impending burnout, I want to understand how not to get to that point ever again.
After a stretch of blog silence since last November, I spent much of winter testing tools and approaches on myself. Some worked immediately. Others did not. But all of them taught me something about what it actually takes to create sustainable momentum in a positive direction. That included prioritizing self-care alongside managing movers, finding new doctors, and efficiently packing (and unpacking) all my stuff. To be sure, it remains a work in progress.
Since I'll be a certified burnout coaching practitioner in about a month, I'll let you know how it's going — from both a professional and a personal standpoint!
Being okay with not knowing what you don't (or can't) know
My next post will take you inside one of the biggest stress points I've tackled so far: the decision to buy a condo three states away — one I only toured via FaceTime. It added another layer of anxiety to an already stress-inducing situation. I had to make peace with making a major life decision without perfect certainty. We move in next month, ready or not.
Washington's cherry trees: brief blooms but enduring symbolism
As I look out my window of my current place situated just outside Washington DC, spring has arrived. The area's famous cherry trees are unfurling new leaves every day, with peak bloom still to come.
In a month I'll be my new place in metro Detroit in Michigan. As I chronicled in a blog about a year ago, I grew up in Detroit then moved around a myriad of suburbs as I went to college and held different jobs. Then I moved across the country and even did a spell overseas for the next few decades. it's now been about 20 years since I called Michigan home.
What I do remember is how a Michigan spring seems more like a taxing version of weather peekaboo. One day it's balmy and nearly 70 degrees with brilliant sunshine. The next day — or later in the same day — temperatures can plunge and produce a wave of snow flurries. After a long winter, the latter can make many locals want to cry.
To best describe one aspect of what's ahead for me, I'll let my mother Fran lend her perspective.
Fran will be 98 in October and hoping to make it to 100, which many of us are convinced is not only possible, but probable. She's healthy, and for the most part, remarkably of sound mind and body. I take about the same amount of blood pressure medicine as she does — and suffer from a similar lower back pain. Yet, while I battled through IBS and GERD most of the winter, she continued to enjoy her beloved sausages, indulged her sweet tooth, and enjoyed the occasional martini. I understand it's largely because of my mother's mindset as much as her biology. More on both of those later.
My mother is also going "home" when she moves in May to Michigan, where she spent most of her life before we took her with us to Missouri, Arizona and Northern Virginia. As I mentioned above, for this move, she'll be getting her own small apartment in an assisted living community not too far from us.
And she seems to be facing this next move — one most of us would find unsettling — with an open heart and her ever-present curiosity. Unlike me, who has to fight the urge to drift into past regrets or future worries, she's always been able to live in the moment.
Fran is also looking forward to living on her own again for a host of reasons, especially after living with me or my siblings off and on ever since my father died 18 years ago.
Sure, her new place is in a community designed to meet the needs of someone who's aging, and inevitably facing decline. Still, she reports looking forward to making friends, trying new activities, and watching her favorite TV shows without her adult children's frequent eye-rolls.
Like me, she's only glimpsed her new apartment via a shared video. What she was most curious about was the view out her windows. While showing her, I apologized for the bare tree branches and the icy raindrops on the glass — not wanting the wintry context to discourage her. Instead, she cheerfully offered, "Oh, good. Then I'll get to see spring arrive there to welcome me."
That response jolted me out of my obsessive, overwrought mindset that, at the time, was fixated on paint swatches and drowning in oceans of bubble wrap. Along with my formal coaching notes, I quickly jotted down the lesson she just handed me. In my own words, I wrote: Just roll with it, Marilyn. You can't control everything that lies ahead. Have a little faith in your ability to adapt ... and let the universe help with some of the heavy lifting ahead.
I also put my mother's mindset into action. I put down the strapping tape and notebooks full of to-do lists long enough to go out and find a few cherry trees to enjoy. Even in their current "teaser" stage, they're perfect just the way they are — with their visible florets slowly transforming into full, fluffy pink and white blossoms.
Like me, they're hard at work waking up from winter and now focusing all their energies on the task at hand. I'm no arborist, but I imagine even after their blooms have faded, they return to being essential parts of the DC landscape. They no longer need to show off or work quite so hard. Who knew you could learn so much from a tree?
It's part of a larger lesson I'm learning. To wake up each day and relish "home" — no matter where that is or for how long. Home is not just where the heart is, as the saying goes, it's also where we make up our minds to live each day to its fullest. To embrace our surroundings and let our five senses savor whatever we see, smell, hear, taste, and touch.
For me, I found "home" alongside a cherry tree. Tomorrow and the days to come, home will be wherever I am — and whenever I allow my mind, body and spirit to come together.
If you need help with anything that was shared in this blog, or want to share your thoughts, book a Discovery Call below. I'm here to listen and help you map your path forward.
