Family
The Autumn Reset You Didn't Know You Needed
Six easy ways to lighten your emotional load this fall.
Islenia Mil
The harvest is in. The bathing suits packed away. The nights cooler and longer. Coffee shops are starting to advertise their pumpkin spice coffees EVERYWHERE. Grandkids are heading back to school, and so should we.
But the question is: What do you want to learn (or relearn) this season?
Take a class at the local community center! Eat more kale! Make your travel bucket list! Post a new online dating profile! Try couples goat yoga!
I believe that the answer to autumn renewal does not lie in any of these easy fixes.
Instead of looking to external renewal tactics this fall, I’m going to do an inside job. Turning inward, not outward. I’m barely religious, but it hasn’t escaped my notice that most faiths specifically preach an inward-focused philosophy toward aging.
Zen mindfulness beliefs include seeing the later years of life not as a disaster, but as a “precious wonder in itself.” According to Hinduism, the third stage of life, Vanaprastha, begins when our daily obligations to our families diminish, and we move to “the forest time” to devote more of ourselves to seeking solace, knowledge, peace and freedom.
Ask yourself one simple, transformative question: What do you want to let go of?
Here are six starter ideas; use them like sourdough yeast to bake your own bread of self-love and renewal. As for me, I’d like to let go of all of these!
Negative Self-Talk
What is the worst thing you say to yourself in the middle of the night? Here’s mine: I have a roll of fat around my waist that falls onto the sheet like raw pancake batter. I ruined my kids’ lives by getting divorced (10 years ago! And they are thriving). I forgot to pay my insurance bill last month because I’m a complete idiot.
Critical Body Image
What is the wrinkled section or body part you cringe at in the mirror? Besides the pot belly, I have wrinkles everywhere, including on the backs of my calves.
Regret
What are the life mistakes you regret most and review most harshly? I have an explosive temper that I cannot control when I believe (often mistakenly) that I am being attacked. I have had about 20 conversations with loved ones that I’d chew off my own arm to retract.
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Self-Denial
What is the pleasure you most often deny yourself? Hmmm… I eat a pint of Häagen-Dazs every other night and I own two horses purely for my individual joy. So let’s just say I’ve made a lot of progress on this one.
Saying Yes When You Mean No
What do you say yes to when you wish you could say no? Like so many women, I love doing favors for others and being thought of as thoughtful. Until I’m baking cookies for the fair at 1 a.m., driving two hours to deliver them and cursing myself. Until there’s been one too many Zoom meetings for another nonprofit I can’t actually help grow. I’ve learned “No” is a full sentence, and I can say yes in the moment, then later admit I was wrong and need to change it to “not this time.”
Saying No When You Mean Yes
What do you say no to that you wish you could say yes to? Back in 2018, after a bleak divorce-filled 2017, a friend suggested I make it the year of YES. I said yes to a week at a spa in Baja. Yes to a helicopter ride in Hawaii that terrified me. Yes to volunteering to work with wild mustangs in Utah. Sounds pretty awesome, right? It was.
Now, changing ingrained patterns is admittedly hard. It takes patience, creativity, fortitude and self-respect. Each morning, before I get out of bed, I practice a timed, closed-eye meditation where I breathe out the things I want to discard, and breathe in peace and kindness for three minutes (I know you are laughing, but three minutes is LONG!).
My friend Jill stares in the mirror twice a day and incants, “Jill, I love you,” as if it’s a magic spell. Another friend Noelle stops in front of public plate-glass windows to compliment herself on her favorite body parts (her boobs and butt).
Small disciplines like this can work inner miracles.
Every time I see her, my 93-year-old friend Edie Kressy, who lives alone in the New Hampshire farmhouse she shared with her beloved husband Chris for over 50 years, reminds me of this: “The journey continues…it just takes us inside ourselves at the end.”
Maybe now, in the autumn of our lives, we can stop looking outside ourselves for peace, validation and excitement. Maybe this fall is the time to turn inward for the restoration we all need.
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