Do You Know What Season You’re in Right Now?

A toddler I know has been working on climbing stairs.

Every chance he gets he beelines over in a sprint crawl to staircases and climbs them. He is determined to master going up staircases, and it doesn’t matter how many times he’s moved away from them. He’ll go back. Because that’s what he’s working on.

He’s pre-verbal, but he’s got a goal and a solid plan to achieve it.

We’re all like this toddler – working on something.

What we’re working on might be conscious or unconscious.

It might be constructive or destructive.

It might be effective or ineffective.

But we’ve all got some hypothesis we’re working on for how the world works and how to get what we’re wanting in life. And we work on it. Repeatedly.

There’s a drive to us. A lifeforce. A stubbornness.

It’s kind of cool.

Sometimes, like a toddler escaping to a staircase unsupervised, this drive can be kind of annoying.

I had this experience in my own life in my first year of online dating coming off being divorced.

In my mind I thought it would be a very good idea to work on my business and get myself onto more solid financial footing.

And in reality, I kept going to that staircase of online dating because I was fascinated with figuring it out. (Also, dating apps are designed to keep you engaged.)

I wanted to understand how online dating worked.

I wanted to conceptualize and connect with a better relational experience than I’d had before.

I wanted to learn how to work with my own parts that got activated through the dating process so that I could make better decisions.

Eventually I caught on that while work was logically my priority, the reality was that going through a dating learning curve was my lived priority.

Once that clicked for me, I got a part-time job (as a nanny watching the aforementioned stair climber) to make sure my rent was covered while I spaced on business building activities. I nannied about a decade ago as I was building my business, and I like working with kids, so this was a good fit for me.

My plan worked well! I was able to feel safer financially while also putting the majority of my mental effort towards figuring out what was happening with strangers on the internet and the experience of early dating with them.

And I got to go hang out at the park and goof around some too. (As well as deal with tantrums, bickering, getting sick, and the ongoing demands of three little people. I loved an Instagram reel I saw that said the thing no one tells you about having kids is how often you have to get up from where you're sitting. So true!)

And then the season changed again.

I made enough dating mistakes that I learned how to line up with the type of relationship I wanted. My intensity of focus there simmered down.

I streamlined my online dating system so that it didn’t take much effort or attention, which gave me more headspace to get back to work.

And I got to work creating an event series that had been floating in my head for a while, Friday Field Trips. The first one went down last Friday on a gorgeous day!

Business picked up, I gave notice at my nanny job, and I’m onto a new staircase of getting through the first few iterations of the Friday Field Trip events and some other business goals.

This is a pretty clean example of honoring the season you’re in and meeting it with the right support.

But sometimes we don’t know or haven’t accepted what season we’re in. Or it changed fast, and we haven’t caught up to it. Or our strategies for solving it aren’t working so well.

This is some of what we tackled at this last Friday Field Trip. We talked about the different seasons of life, how to get clear on what season you’re in, and the strategies that work best for what’s real right now.

We also played a type of charades with play dough and had some peaceful time out in nature, because fun and fresh air are important too! (Mark your calendar for October 17 for the next Friday Field Trip in the DC area! More details coming soon.)

When you have more conscious awareness of what’s happening, you can make adjustments that will feel supportive.

There will always be challenges, bumps, and bruises as you’re learning any given staircase in life, but there doesn’t have to be drama.

Life is always changing. There are seasons of loss and seasons of growth. Slow seasons and fast ones. Each season is a unique problem set to work with. The more we can embrace that truth and respond thoughtfully the easier it gets.