The fall is well known for many things – hot spicy drinks, sweater weather, apple picking, fairs and festivals, etc. To me it’s the last wind of somewhat warmish weather before the dreadful cold. Yes, winter is coming! (I don’t like the cold if you can’t tell). Aside from the fear of imminent frost, the fall is also the last stretch before the final clap of the year and the season to dig deeper and harvest your ideas.
I believe the common mistake we tend to make during Q4 is letting the panic gain in on us, and forcing us to rush around trying to bring to completion every single project and item left on our to-do list and goal list. Of course there is a place for that final surge to knock down tasks which have been sitting on that list you drew out last December or January, and I would actually recommend finding an accountability partner or a mastermind group to help you break out of the lethargy or pattern of fear that might have stopped you from making things happen so far this year. Specifically I would recommend Reina Pomeroy’s Q4 Refresh program. It is a mastermind group I was part of last year and which helped me tremendously with accountability, feeling like a belonged in this entrepreneurial world and forced me to look at my business closely and work better for it. But what if you have accomplished many of those projects and what if you’ve realized that those left need recalibration and simply more time? Then this fall season take the time to think upon everything you have learned this far in 2016, from the proud victories to the embarrassing miss apps. Lessons from your own experience or from others’, slowing the do-do-do pace and embracing the brainstorming season. The fall creates this melancholic, nostalgic like feeling, which hipsters live in all year long haha, perfect pocket to harvest your ideas and get your creativity steaming. It’s definitely not about hibernation, or analysis paralysis, it’s about giving a good bundle of time to the thinking and planning phase of projects before getting back onto the battlefield in the new year.
In order to help me do this harvesting and fueling my creativity, I assembled this mood board as an inspiration for this fall brainstorming season. The marigold color inspiration of this year’s Autumn is a theme I can absolutely get behind use as a creativity motivator. As a brief color theory minute for you, marigold is a golden yellow which is a love child of deep yellows and burnt oranges. It’s warm, fun, intense but also comforting. It conveys joy, creativity, intellect, friendliness, courage and confidence among others. I don’t know about you but those get me motivated and enthused about the next few months. It makes the cooling down outside a bit more worth it. You can see below what each image represents to me and why I have added it to the board.
1- Confidence + comfort in my own skin 2- Rest + relaxation at the heart of self care 3- Growth in quality time with people I love
4- Enjoyment of the weather and the outdoors 5- Study + learning with ease 6- Simple + clear design projects
7- Healthy eating 8- Weekend gateways for refresh 9- Beauty and care of the space we live in
How does this all come together? How is it connected to the concept of harvesting your ideas and all that marigold goodness? Well, I summed it all for us in three categories which I am calling the three ‘Y’s:
Being the artist type I’m naturally melancholic and the fall tends to exacerbate that feeling. This year I want to use all that daydreaming energy into something productive and positive. Yellow carries energy and cheer but also a feathery warmth which is the perfect incubator for creativity. It really is about the state of your heart and the attitude it produces. Use the potential disappointment of feeling behind to propel you and power up your mood into anticipation and excitement for new things. I want to encourage you to write out all that activity going on inside, don’t worry about it being organized and color coordinated, in a pretty notebook. Bullet journaling might even be the way to make this happen and eliminate the distraction. It’s not just about the color of course, that being said as a fun little perk of using this beautiful yellow palette, I plan to wear some yellow this season, or marigold rather – which will definitely stand out as a statement from my neutral affair with black and white.
As creatives we are dreamers, we are comfortable with the imaginary world but too often accept our imagination as just that – dreams. To me yielding to the process is not skipping that necessary step between dreaming and launching. It certainly can feel ‘hulky’ and daunting but it sets you up for success and allows you to materialize those dreams. Also, don’t wait for new year resolutions, the calendar is a tool not a prison. You have three months, still worth using, to enjoy the process of dreaming and plotting before taking action. Get a head start, be ready for the new year when I guarantee you, you will feel the urge to achieve new things and the temptation to just jump ahead because everybody else is launching.
I too often, sadly, let others take precedent on my time management – what can I say I’m a giver, haha! This fall and even beyond that, I want to say yes to me and the things that matter to me more. Concretely that means more self care, more focus on Reverie Lane projects, getting back to loving on the space we live in, consistently working out, eating healthy (thinking of starting Hello Fresh), getting back into ministry, the list goes on. It all trickles down to the concept of creating white space in my mind, in my life, in my days, to allow the things that truly matter to fill it out. Maybe you need to brainstorm ideas long ignored desires, maybe you want to hear the voice of God more clearly, maybe you have some relationships in your life which need some extra love and time. Whatever it is it requires a ‘yes’ and that means prioritizing.
REVERIE MINGLES: what’s your fall season default mode? How can you make it more productive?