A Satisfying Ending Needs A Good Beginning

by Tracie Nichols

A few years ago I drove my youngest son to New England to start a dream summer job at a mountain bike park.

My son loves downhill biking. LOVES it. He’d be working with a good friend. They’d found an apartment they could share. He could save money for school and do something he loves all summer long. On paper, this seemed like a charmed opportunity for him.

The trip was a disaster in nearly every way possible.

Esme, my faithful orange car, broke down. When we finally reached his apartment the landlord was unprepared and unavailable, meaning no key and no moving in. This after many text messages confirming our arrival time. At the mountain, his future boss was out sick. He couldn’t check in and get his work schedule or his ride pass so he couldn't be at the mountain that day.

Marooned with no place to be, we stood there at the base of the mountain he'd hoped to be riding all summer, worried and bewildered.

It felt like a truly awful beginning, but it was really a truly awful ending to a journey begun without focused attention from everyone involved. The beginning actually happened weeks before; a tiny trail of haphazard communication among just my son and his friend.

They were communicating through the exhaustion and worry of their finals, the busyness of a sister’s graduation and the chaos of visiting family. Their passion and enthusiasm were driving the bus. Thoughtfulness was half a mile behind, out of breath and losing ground fast. Despite good intentions, this bus had “Yikes!” written all over it.

All of us had divided attention when talking about this opportunity: kids, parents, landlords and employers. As my son and I stood at the bottom of the mountain that day, we both realized we’d had gut feelings of unease we shrugged off because everything looked good on the surface. And, because it seemed like such an exciting, not-to-be-missed opportunity.

What we all learned from our experience is that beginnings have their best chance of becoming satisfying endings when everyone involved commits their full, thoughtful attention to the planning process. If they share gut feelings as they arise, and respectfully call out anyone who isn’t fully participating.

Clear, honest communication is essential at every step. I know that seems obvious, but you’d be surprised how many endeavors are launched driven by passion and enthusiasm without the map of thoughtful, honest communication.

The next time you’re beginning something new, anything from getting a new dog to transitioning out of a corporate job to open your own business, here are a few suggestions for making it a good beginning:

1.     Check in with your intuition and ask if this project is truly viable. If it involves considerable resources and affects the lives of other people, consider verifying your choice with trusted advisors.

2.     Ask yourself what a satisfying journey will look and feel like. How would you like this process to end? Be sure you have a clearly drawn map, and then turn your passion loose to keep you moving.

3.     Enjoy your passion and enthusiasm, and consciously invite your mind and intuition to join the party. (Deep breaths can help navigate over-exuberant enthusiasm.)

4.     Think about who needs to be part of the conversation. Does it feel realistic to ask for their focused attention for this project? If not, is there someone else you can invite?

5.     Pause often and ask yourself if you are fully present. Are mind, enthusiasm and gut all paying attention? How about everyone else?

6.     Enjoy the ride!

Tracie Nichols is a holistic business coach offering coaching that’s comfortably practical with its roots in nature-informed solutions. She helps body-centered practitioners and highly sensitive women build successful businesses guided by the wisdom of their bodies and the natural world. You can learn more or drop her a line at TracieNichols.com.

Autumn and The Art of Gracefully Letting Go

by Tracie Nichols, MA, CCSP

Fall is my favorite season. I love the colors, the way the earth smells, and I especially enjoy having fewer humid days. But, what I most love is how the seasonal rhythm encourages me to deepen my personal development journey.

Every year autumn invites us to distill all we have acquired, learned, and experienced through spring and summer. New habits, freshly discovered strengths, new ways of seeing ourselves - these are all integrated and refined to guide us as we discern the next right steps.

Autumn also demonstrates the art of gracefully releasing what we no longer choose to carry. Take a moment to notice what your wild neighbors are doing, now. Trees release leaves. Plants let go of what is above ground and pull their energy into their roots. Deer drop antlers.

Consider consciously aligning with autumn’s gentle releasing rhythm to let go of beliefs, fears, or habits that no longer nurture you.

Here are a few suggestions to get you started:

Spend uninterrupted time outdoors observing and feeling the pace of life in your ecosystem. Let it sink into your bones. 

As you watch leaves fall, visualize the things you choose to release drifting away from you.

If you rake leaves or pull weeds, imagine gathering those things that no longer serve and composting them with the garden trimmings.

On foggy autumn mornings, imagine that the fog represents the things you are releasing. See them being evaporated as the sun rises.

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
    love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Listen to the poem here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/hnifn3rf6mndsud/Wild%20Geese%20~%20Mary%20Oliver.m4a?dl=0

Tracie Nichols, MA, CCSP is a Holistic Career Coach who believes we can learn a lot from nature about being happy humans. She offers individual career coaching and strategy sessions, as well as classes helping highly sensitive and multipotentialed people create a meaningful, enjoyable work life. Learn more about Tracie at tracienichols.com or connect with her at tracie@tracienichols.com or 215-527-5457.

Possibility and Presence through Transition

by Tracie Nichols

What if, by holding our questions a little longer, we saw answers where we least expected them…” Victoria Kindred Keziah

As day transits to night, I’m wrestling with words for this article about transition, specifically about the possibilities found in times of transition. I’ve been resisting the urge to “power through” and reach the end. Holding my questions a little longer, looking for a bit of unexpected inspiration.  

I notice that outside my window, low-angle sunlight flickers through sycamore leaves teased into movement by cooling daytime air. I’ve held my questions until I reached this transitional moment of the day. There are certain things - certain qualities - that can only exist in transitional zones like this late summer evening. Things like golden sunlight, rising breezes, and cricket song.

When we’re talking about transitions in our lives, the same principle holds. There are certain possibilities that only exist in the complex both-and state between problem and solution, ending and beginning, here and there.

Biologists call the transitional space between two distinct states of being an ecotone. In nature, these are places like a stand of shrubs between forest and field, or a reed bed between land and water. In our lives, these are the uncomfortable in-transition places between situations like being partnered and being single, or between one career and another.

Often we only notice ecotones in passing, if at all, our goal being to get out of the discomfort of between by moving quickly from here to there.

“Possibility only lives on the edge.” “Presence is the only way to walk the edge...” Margaret J. Wheatley

Translated from Greek, “ecotone” means “house of tension.” While tension can equate to unhelpful stress, it also means the productive, supportive kind of tension that our muscles exert to hold our bodies upright (without which we’d be floppy floor-dwellers), or the motivating tension of curiosity and anticipation.

To find the productive tension that opens us to possibility in our personal ecotones, we need to approach life transitions mindfully, bringing our full presence to the dance.

Then tension suspends us, holds us upright so we can notice possibilities being created by our here and there rubbing together sparking new ideas and opening paths we never would have seen had we only focused on reaching there.

The next time life tosses transition into your path, I invite you to bring your whole presence to the experience, be willing to surrender to healthy tension, and notice both what is and the unique potential of what could be.

Tracie Nichols, MA, is a Certified Career Services Provider with a Master’s degree in Human and Organizational Transformation and a passion for helping people explore their in-between places. She offers individual career coaching and strategy sessions, as well as classes helping people create a meaningful, enjoyable work life. Learn more about Tracie at tracienichols.com or connect with her at tracie@tracienichols.com or 215-527-5457.