Hello and welcome. I'm glad that you're here and I hope you're doing well. If you like this podcast, if it has helped you in any way, could you do me a favor and leave a rating or a review? Whether you listen to it in Spotify or in Apple Podcasts, when you leave a rating or a review, it really helps. And I know sometimes it can be easy to forget or to not even think to do that. So I wanted to invite you to do so if you haven't already. So we're moving into the end of the year 2024.
We're down to the final weeks and I am feeling reflective. I've been working through my own year in review process. The Year Compass is the tool that I've been using. It's been really helpful. I talked about that more last week in last week's episode and I'll put another link to the tool in the show notes. It's free, it's simple, and I find it to be really helpful for guiding me through my own reflection through different parts of my year.
And I'm getting ready to start the second part of the year Compass, which is about setting intentions and vision for the year ahead. I think this is one of the things that is hard to do as an adult because when we're kids, we have so much, you know, we often have so much structure set around us, especially around our formal education. And so there can be a very natural sense of cadence and progression and goals and moving forward and moving on and
growing. And when we get into the adult world, sometimes it can be harder to feel connected to that. It can be harder to know when is it time to move on or what is the thing that I have learned. You know what, what did test me this year and what did I learn and what capacities have I gained? How have I grown as a person? What relationships have been
important to me? And so, you know, I think sometimes when we don't have that sense of connection to a bigger vision or a sense of where we want to go, it can sometimes feel very disorienting and the sense of like, am I using my life right? Am I doing the thing I want to do? You know, if I'm feeling restless or like I want to do something else, is that because
it's time to move on? Or is that just because I, you know, I sort of have gone into a numbing routine and I've stopped seeing the magic and the mundane? And I think too, our appetite for change and growth and our the way that we Orient and organize our lives can also change over time depending on what's happening in your world. If you have kids, that can really shape the flow of your day and you know, your sense of time in the world.
And if you don't, then it can be something else, whether it's something related to your work or your community or something else that feels important to you. But taking the time at the end of the year to do this for yourself personally, as well as thinking about, you know, what role does your profession play in your life? Like what's your relationship to your career, to your profession, to being a leader, to managing people?
I think you know, as a manager, it can be easy to be focused on others, especially when you're a very heart centered, service oriented manager. And it can be easy to put yourself last and to kind of neglect to consider for yourself, like what's important to you beyond this specific
role. I think when we're able to tend to that part of ourselves, it allows us to show up in our role as leader and manager in a more grounded way because we have this understanding of my time here is temporary. And so while I'm here, here's what I would like to do. Here's how I would like to affect the people that I work with. Here is how I would like to advance the mission or the the intention or purpose of this
organization. When we have that sense of, you know, whatever we're going through, this is temporary. Whether it's something wonderful and joyful or whether it's something deeply challenging and very frustrating. Our time here together is always temporary. And sometimes it's simply because you know, you maybe you're looking at retirement around the corner, or maybe you're realizing that you only want to be in this role or this organization for a certain amount of time.
Or maybe it's the acknowledgement that the people on your team are not going to be with you together all at the same time. Maybe you have a sense that there's someone on your team who is actively looking or wants to move on to something else. So that sense of while I am here, how do I want to use my time both in your specific role, but also when you think about your life more broadly.
And so from this place of feeling really reflective coming into the end of the year, I wanted to share with you a passage from this book that I really like. It's called Upstream, and it is a book of essays by Mary Oliver. And you might know her. She's also a poet, and a lot of her poems get circulated throughout, you know, the course of the year. So you might be acquainted with some of her poems. But Mary Oliver was a poet. She has since passed away. And she also wrote essays.
And in this book upstream, it's a collection of essays. And there's this one passage that I wanted to read to you. If you have the book that, you know, if you could actually pick it up, I will tell you. This starts on page 19. And here's what Mary writes. You must not ever stop being whimsical, and you must not ever give anyone else the responsibility for your life. I don't mean it's easy or
assured. There are the stubborn stumps of shame, grief that remains unsolvable after all the years, a bag of stones that goes with one wherever one goes, and however the hour may call for dancing and for light feet. But there is also the summoning world, the admirable energies of the world, better than anger, better than bitterness, and because more interesting, more alleviating. And there is the thing that one does, the needle.
One plies the work, and within that work a chance to take thoughts that are hot and formless and to place them slowly and with meticulous effort into some shapely heat retaining form even as the gods or nature or the soundless wheels of time have made forms all across the soft curved universe. That is to say, having chosen to claim my life, I have made for myself out of work and love. A handsome life. Isn't that wonderful? I have made for myself out of work and love, a handsome life.
I so appreciate that reflection and the way that she wrote that, and the way that it helps me to slow down and think about what am I making with my life, what am I working on, what am I creating? And there's an intimacy in that language too, that idea of the needle, that one plies something
small. And I think that it's true that in very small gestures, in very small moments, we create something that is actually really beautiful and really big and really meaningful beyond that which we can see. Every choice we make, every, you know, way that we choose to engage with and participate with others in our workplace, in our communities, in our bigger world, we're all participating and creating something meaningful.
And so I know this episode is a little different, but I feel like as we're coming into the end of the year and as I am feeling this kind of call inward, to quiet and to reflect and to begin to Orient towards the year to come. That's something I wanted to share with you by way of
invitation. And I hope that you too, find a way to slow down and reflect on who you want to be in this moment, with the time that you have on the planet, what you'd like to create, how you'd like to show up and participate and engage with the humans and the work. And, you know, really make use of in the most loving way, How do you want to be here as a person working with other people, knowing that our time together is temporary.
So with that said, I hope that you have a wonderful week ahead. If you are also in the place where you're thinking about, I don't know if this might be too late into the season, but if you're still thinking about, you know, performance reviews, if you're thinking about more of the technical planning, then definitely go through some of the earlier episodes where I talk about more of those specific frameworks and tactics.
But if you can take some time this week to just kind of simmer in that invitation and see what happens when you do. All right, that's what I wanted to share with you today. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you have a great day and I will talk to you next time.