Autumn, a new season: a good time to reflect and make changes?

I was listening to a podcast last week which talked about how lots of us look for specific moments to make a fresh start or to make big changes - times like New Years, Birthdays, the start of a new month as well as the start of a New Season - it's called 'the fresh start' effect and it made me ponder a bit about how relevant this was to me and how it linked to the changes I've made in my life and with this week being the start of my favourite season, Autumn, whether it actually does have any relevance to me.

If you wanted to listen to the podcast I heard this on, its The Happiness Lab, episode 11 of Season 1 - A New Hope.

Autumn is my favourite season, and a quick scroll through my photos on my phone definitely back this up - every October, I seem to have a huge amount of photographs of trees in all shades of yellow, orange and red, my feet as I stroll through the fallen leaves and photos of me on the many walks I go on throughout the month enjoying the beauty of nature and the ever changing colours.  It's one of my dreams to go on holiday to New England, USA during Autumn just to walk through the forests and soak it all in.

However, I got to thinking - do I use the start of a new season as an incentive for a fresh start to make goals?

For anyone who knows me, I'm very 'small goal' driven - at the start of every month, I sit down with my journal to write out my goals for the month and to review the goals I set myself last month.  The start of a new year is a HUGE one for me - setting both monthly targets as well as really thinking about what I want to achieve in the upcoming year.  I even set myself daily goals of the key things I need to do that day - just by writing them down at the start of the day and being able to tick them off before I go to bed, really adds to my feeling of accomplishment.

Yet, I've never actually set myself any seasonal goals before.  I love the start of a new season but I've never linked them to actual goals or reviewing the previous season for its changes and accomplishments.

And actually when I think back to some of the biggest and life-changing decisions I've made, they've not actually been linked to a usual 'fresh start' time - I joined Slimming World in early June 2010 - not linked at all to the start of summer a couple of weeks later but actually triggered by a friend's bowl of pasta (am sure there is a blog post in there for the future), I started running in order to take part in a Race for Life after seeing an advert on TV and I decided to train for and run the London marathon after a chat with my husband one Sunday evening about personal challenges and the power of the mind.

Goals therefore to me, appear to be trigger driven rather than using specific times in the year to make changes.  It got me thinking about my many New Year's Resolutions over the years - pretty much from the age of about 15, my New Year's Resolution was 'to lose weight' - well that didn't work for close to 20 years!  Another standard Resolution was to exercise more - again not something I'd stick to for more than a couple of weeks of January when excuses to not do it quickly found their way into existence.  

I'm definitely not dismissing the 'fresh start' effect for goal setting and my monthly goals definitely work and help me to make habit changes, learn new things and challenge myself but I'm going to carry on trusting my instinct and going with 'the triggers' to make those big lifestyle changes which seem to stick and last a lot longer.

So even though the start of Autumn appears to be a perfect time to sit down and think about some seasonal goals, I'm not going to do it - I'm going to carry on enjoying my autumn adventures drinking in the colours of change and enjoy all things pumpkin related and I'll wait until the start of October to set myself some new monthly goals and review how September went.

Picture below was a gifted home grown pumpkin from 2 years ago - this thing weighed 2 stone 9lbs!

I did see a lovely quote though which is something I'm going to focus on this month - change, in whatever shape or form it takes, can be beautiful and its through change, that we continue to grow.

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