Evening
the mini reset
I am sitting in the garden. Alone, which feels like an rather unexpected treat. Everyone else has gone inside and I am left with my notebook, pen and thoughts. It feels like the first time this season where I have just sat and enjoyed what is around me. I think how I need some time to connect to the garden space which dosen’t involve work and so I do. It’s evening. I watch as bumbles still hurry around, marveling at their work ethic, and the adorable cuteness of the new generation of bumbles no bigger than my little finger nail. I inhale scents. Honey from the hives (the honey bees have knocked off for the day), the mix of roses, jasmine and sweet peas along with that summer smell of heat and grass and moisture from watered plants. The roses are in their first flush, a delightful mix of candy colours against a backdrop of new green. Birds begin their evening chorus. I inhale it all in, a relaxed sigh follows.
It all seems to feel like an extension of a recent read “Do Reset” by Jillian Lavender, a mediation coach amongst other things. When I head indoors and finish the last few pages of her book it resonate and weirdly answer the question of what I have been feeling of late. As the year draws to a close it is most definitely the end of year tired I feel for sure but there is something else. A nervous sadness of sorts that seems to linger no matter what I do. I could feel it shift after sitting in the garden and Jillian’s words confirmed what I was feeling. I need to reset. She writes:
“A reset is all about shifting things up. When you’re looking to make a change, it doesn’t make sense to keep going in the same way that took you to the point of imbalance. This doesn’t have to be a major realignment in how you’re functioning in the world. You can take a moment for what I call a “mini reset’ - a moment to gently redirect yourself…”
She goes on to explain the three phases of a mini reset:
Stop and let go - pull back from whatever it is that’s got you to the point of discomfort
Settle down - move away from over-excitation and towards a calmer place
Create space - open up room for what’s coming next.
I realise that I am exiting phase 1 and drifting unaware into phase 2. I had made a few tweaks to my ‘work work” and now that things are improving for the better I just need to settle for a bit before I moved on to what I can do with my energy now that I am experiencing less discomfort. I read how we find it hard to just settle into phase 2 and that we like to race to the new thing and I could see that this is why I was feeling a bit off. Perhaps it wasn’t just end of year tired I was feeling, maybe I am just rushing to move from one thing to another.
I reflected back to my time in the garden. How I sat and wrote (Essay Camp - a unexpected joy). I looked. I smelt. I listened. I invoked my senses, all things that you can do to reset your body and I thought how the garden is such a perfect place to do this. I think of the summer months ahead, of my growing summer reading pile and my chore list in the garden that is slowly shrinking. I then think of booking some time in the garden as all this unfolds to reset and to create some space for what is coming next.