You can listen to the full episode here: Ep 29: How to Decide What to Keep Doing
Late spring often brings a strong urge to get everything done before summer begins. Energy is high, projects are growing, and it can feel tempting to carry all of it forward. But this season is also a time for discernment.
In this episode of Anchored & Alive, Blaze explores how to decide what’s worth continuing, what needs to be pruned, and how to work with late Spring energy in a way that feels powerful without becoming unsustainable.
🌿 In this episode we explore:
• why late spring often creates urgency and overcommitment
• how to tell what’s really thriving in your life right now
• why pruning is a necessary part of healthy growth
• the difference between effort that supports you and effort that depletes you
• how to build in off-ramps so your nervous system can relax
• why you don’t need to maintain peak Spring energy forever
Hello and welcome back. This week we're going to talk about how we decide what's worth carrying forward, not only just in the Spring and the season, but in the entire year and going forward. The energy that I'm feeling right now is a lot about assessing things.
Wanting to look at what's working, wanting to decide what I'm willing to continue forward.
What I'm going to be willing to put effort into when it's Summer and I'm going to have my daughter home a lot more, and my whole work and life load just shifts and I know that's about to happen so,
For me, there's a little bit of anxiety in the middle of May, realizing that I'm only a month out from craziness.
And there's this hustle that I have to get everything kind of completed now so that I don't have to work as hard later.
And it's an interesting sensation because I think it's kind of mirrored in nature and in growth. Like everything is coming up now. Sprouts are really like visible.
We're not having as many cold nights. It's starting to feel like, "Oh my God, we might be able to have windows open more often and actual fresh air all the time."
Am I dreaming? I can't wait. So there's a lot of excitement building for me.
But I think it's a good time to take a step back and look at it all and ask myself,
What's growing really well? What's working in my life that I don't want to screw up? What do I want to keep doing that's already working that's not taking a ton of effort or that is using my effort well?
What might that look like? How can I make space for that? And how can I just pluck a few things that maybe I don't need to do so much?
And I think about this as: Are there tasks or ideas or things in my head that I'm thinking about too much that aren't even my responsibility that I can let go of?
Like when you think of all of the conversations you have with coworkers and stuff, like are you taking on too much responsibility? Is there you trying to do other people's jobs?
Are you doing it with good intentions thinking like if we just get it done this way it'll be easier later or is there stuff that you can relax and let go of because it's not your responsibility or it's not really in your control anyway and you've just had the illusion of control over it?
And what might do really well if you could just prune it down?
Looking at all of the growth happening with seedlings, this is where I realize like sometimes, I've jammed too many seeds into one little section and they're choking each other out.
And if I don't separate them or just lose some of them, none of them are gonna do well. And that, I don't know, there's some sadness for me in killing anything or weeding out stuff that I wanted to grow.
Sometimes I will again overcommit and be like, I can save all of them and put them in different things, but usually when I try to do that the ones that got pulled out don't really retake somewhere else and I have to let them go.
And then there's another part of me that just has some kind of glee. Like, I get to be a goddess and just decide what lives and doesn't. Ha ha ha, like with my garden. And I feel weird about that. But there is something empowering to me about making a choice and just like going with it and recognizing that in order for life to really grow and do its own thing and thrive.
That's what happens, whether I do it or not. Whether I do it or not, so I can get on board or I can... just watch it happen and deal with the consequences. And when I get on board, I tend to have like a really healthy thriving plant, so it's okay.
It's so interesting that I think in gardening we're very willing to do this and then in other areas of our lives we're like, "I couldn't possibly have that conversation or reduce any effort whatsoever on my part from this."
And yet if we take the time to think about the wheels turning in our lives and the gears that are happening, maybe there's some spots that have some friction that we could oil and grease the wheels and make things easier.
So where in life are you willing to let go and let things become easier?
I can tell you that the energy is reaching an all-time high. We're gonna feel like we just wanna do All the Things.
Particularly as we're like we're almost there. We're like only two weeks from June. That feels amazing.
When there's sunshine and even like rain, it just smells and feels different right now. It feels so good.
There's something so enlivening about it and you just feel nice and you know all the good things are coming. It can make you just feel either really relaxed or really like you just want to do all the things.
And for me, I want to think about what's already happened that surprised me in a good way. Things that I'm excited to continue to nurture forward or that I'm excited to discover how they go and to stop being, I guess, such an adamant director of all things.
I want to reintroduce a little bit of whimsy into my life at this phase and not worry about if I'm doing everything perfectly or if I'm doing it right. I think perfectionism can really creep in at this time of year and we kind of want to set everything up to do great and some of that urge I think is like pre-emptive.
Like if I can get it all done really well then it's okay for me to go on vacation in a few weeks and just enjoy the nice weather.
And some of it is just a lifetime's worth of wanting to be seen as good and to be seen as worthy and want to have everything that we worked on and everything that we touched, look and thrive and be great.
And underneath all of that, there's the panic of realizing that we don't get to have that. Everything won't be perfect, no matter how hard we try. There's always going to be something that's going to do its own thing.
Or something will sprout that you didn't even plant and you don't even know what it is and that's just how it is in life.
But we want to try to make it as good as possible in this moment.
Mmm. So trying to find my center. I'm...
I'm nurturing what is. I'm trying to really get into my routines and I guess establish the level of commitment that I'm willing to keep for the next several months.
Knowing that if I start out strong now and I'm able to like show up and make sure everything is happening the way it's happening, it'll be easier to keep doing it when things get packed in a few months, and when things get too hot and humid and lazy or something else happens that interrupts my life, I want my routines to carry themselves without me having to do them with so much mental effort and emotional effort, I want it to just be boring and the thing that I'm doing.
So I'm looking ahead and setting myself up for that kind of experience and going, "Okay, where can I set up the watering can?" So it's like the most available one.
What day of the week is it best to just like move stuff and handle weeding and all of that stuff? I am planning you know, even laundry days and adjusting when I'm timing everything so that it becomes even more smooth as everyone starts being in the house at the same time.
I'm adjusting when I'm going for walks and how long I'm taking for breakfasts and all of that stuff and planning ahead on where am I going to be.
Knowing that my ability to think about all this stuff is gonna fall off a cliff in a few weeks because I'm almost there you guys. I'm almost out of capacity for thinking about all of it. But I still have the energy and it's good.
I find that this season is such a fascinating moment of wanting to do everything and having all of the capacity to do it and all of the thoughts, (paired) with an underlying anxiety about how to keep it all going like this forever.
And I think it might be because the end of spring seems to me to be like the epitome of capitalism or something where we build all the things and we want to buy and do all the things and it's us having the energy and capacity to be working really hard and driving everywhere, doing stuff like
We have a lot of light, there's a lot of energy. The weather generally is pretty decent by now. There's less unpredictability and we like all of that and we thrive there.
But I feel like it's a false setup and it's not how all of life is. All of life isn't like these few weeks, it's just these few weeks. And yet I think we've created an entire society built on energy as though it's always this week forever.
That feels upsettingly true to me, as I said it. So I'm thinking about how I don't want my life to be like this forever.
I don't want my life to be constantly full and always exciting and loud and busy and planning and doing all the things. I don't always want to have big projects that require my attention and effort and focus and time always. That's too hard.
And I think it's too hard for any human. I think it's why, you know, work is work, and why we have lots of people working on projects so that we can like spell each other out and other people can come in and help with things.
And yet there's somehow this expectation of us that we all can do it by ourselves and we all should do it by ourselves and we're all brilliant smart people and we should just always go at this capacity.
And yeah, you can take a break, but don't talk about that because we value hard work and discipline and all those things.
And I think hard work and discipline might come a little bit more naturally right now in this season.
But I don't think that it's the flavor that anyone can sustain for an entire year, let alone an entire lifetime.
And let's talk about that too, like when you've been sustaining springtime energy levels for months, years, decades of your life.
Is it any wonder that we burn out? Is it any wonder that we get tired and we can't really do it anymore and then we wonder what's wrong with us and what's happening?
So I wanted to address that because I think that this energy really aligns with what we've been asked to do with our lives since the time we were kids.
We were told like, You're gonna grow up and get a job and do things and your life is gonna be busy and then you're gonna have this but you're gonna want to go out and have friends and you're also gonna want to have hobbies and...
Do all the stuff and also be really buff and go to the gym and eat really well and all of the stuff. It's asking so much of you.
For a few weeks of a year, it's almost easy to do it. And we should probably enjoy this week, the week surrounding it where we do have all of this energy, understanding that it should be temporary.
It doesn't have to be forever. And if you don't think of it as having to continue constantly forever for the rest of the year, for the rest of your life.
This can be a really awesome time to just plug in and get things done. So if you're really feeling the vibe of this energy. This is the time where you start really wrapping up ideas.
Really understanding where they're going, clarifying plans, setting things down and writing and setting up your systems and knowing what you're going to do for the next few months or through the end of the year with your projects.
And basically using that energy for the forces of good in your life so that you have a really nice harvest and like really good things come from your efforts right now.
If you have a lot of energy and it happens to line up, it's amazing if you have projects that are demanding like 12-hour days, and it's fine because you have that energy and the daylight is increasing and you feel great about it.
Fantastic. Enjoy it. Use that energy. And also simultaneously remind yourself in a few weeks, in a few months, it's okay to allow yourself to wind it down and not sustain this level of effort constantly.
It is a whole lot easier to push and use that energy and really stretch yourself when you know that there is actually an end to it.
So if you call that out to yourself, even just in your mind, like, I'm going to do this, but only for three weeks, or I'm going to do this, but only for two months.
You know when your off-ramp is and that allows you to harness it without freaking yourself out.
Remember that you're not just your mind, like you're a whole body system and your body responds to everything that's happening and how you're treating yourself and how you're feeling.
If you're giving it all of the adrenaline and the motion and the movement, and you know that there's the off ramp, you can actually let yourself power down and relax.
But if you feel like I need to keep going and running and running and running and you haven't shown yourself in your mind or with your emotions that there is an off ramp, that's where your system never learns how to turn off. And it's always stressed out. And it's always like wondering when to sleep and it can't do it properly.
There's a difference between pushing that hurts you and pushing that fuels you.
And this is the season to... start to feel the difference between the two.
You can build into your life an awareness and a way of being that allows you to harness energy when it comes up and allows you to let it power down and learn how to power it down and learn how to work with your nervous system.
in all times of the year. And that's something that I really enjoy teaching and working with.
It's been so helpful for me to have practices that help me with the turning it down when it gets turned up.
And I can tell you from experience that it's not only this time of year that I'll get like amped up and need to remind myself of how to turn down. It happens at all times of year.
For me, it's particularly over the winter months when I have no outlet and can't leave. Like I just feel like I'm just stuck inside and there's so much going on.
Too much energy. But it happens now too. Whenever that happens, when you have learned how your own body communicates with you about stress, when you are familiar with your own signals, and your own triggers and your own loops and the things that you go through again and again, you learn how to identify it so much faster.
And then something that I teach is how to put into place practices that help you regulate kind of automatically and simply and without drama on a regular basis throughout your life.
And I love having that and, in my toolbox, to be able to say, "Oh, okay, I've noticed that I've ramped up and I need to give myself an opportunity to ramp down and I know the thing that I need."
And here's 15 different ways that I've remembered that I've learned how to do it over the years. So which one feels appropriate or available to me to do right now?
So much of having a smooth experience is having a lot of different experiences to pull from and to remember them or to just know that they exist so that you can go,
"Oh, I can't do these five because I can't leave or this person isn't around or I don't have the money to go on this trip. But these other five things are possibilities for me right now. And I'm gonna go do one of them and help myself calm down, power down, and feel really great about who I am and where I'm going and what I'm doing so I can keep up the level of energy that I want to keep up."
Or relax. I'm a huge fan of relaxing.
The Spring or the Summer, it's interesting. We talk a lot about vacation and relaxing, but I don't think it's as conducive to rest as the fall and the winter and the early Spring energy is.
So I think building in regular moments of rest and capacity building is important, but I find that I don't need longer periods of time. I actually don't even need as much sleep in the Spring and Summer as I do in the Winter.
And that just happens to be how it is. It seems to be true for me. I know that once I hit the Autumn, I'm gonna just need to sleep an extra hour every night. And it's just how it is.
And I'm okay with that. But right now, it's cool. I wake up earlier and I actually kind of love it because I get to go out and like hear the birds and do things before anybody is really up in my business. So I love that too.
Mmm, friends, I hope that you are having an excellent week and that...
Through this talk, you've kind of thought about what's important to you and the aspects of right now that you do want to carry forward in your year.
But also that you've identified what level of energy this is and how much of that is possible to carry forward in the year. Take advantage of it while it exists.
But don't worry about trying to replicate it forever.
I think right now is a brief and exciting and wonderful gift that we get for right now. So please enjoy it.
Next week we're going to talk about all of this rising energy because I think we are nearing the peak right now as we go into June.
I think it gets a little bit more frantic and more excitable and there's also a lot of commitments and things that are on the cusp that we start to realize are coming and kind of can add an underlying sense of joy but also panic. So we're going to talk about all of that.
Have a wonderful week, and I will see you next time.
Before you go, I wanted to let you know that I'll be holding a live summer solstice gathering on June 24th.
If you're feeling the shift in energy already and you want a space to move through it with support, you're very welcome to join us.
You can find the details on my website.
🌿 Related Episodes
Continue exploring this late-spring series on sustainable growth, self-trust, and building rhythms that last:
🌿 Why Keeping Things Small Can Help Your Dreams Grow
How scaling a dream down can create stronger, more sustainable growth over time.
🌿 The Discipline of Self-Trust: How to Build a Life That Supports You
How supportive routines, preparation, and feedback help you grow with more ease.
🌿 How to Use Spring Energy Without Burning Out
Why rising energy doesn’t have to mean urgency, and how to build momentum without exhausting yourself.
🌿 The Urge to Reinvent Yourself in Spring — And How to Change Without Burning Out
How to experiment with new ideas without overcommitting or overwhelming yourself.
🌿 Start Living in Rhythm with Your Energy
If you’re noticing how your motivation, capacity, and emotions shift through the seasons, the Living in Rhythm Starter Kit will help you work with those rhythms instead of fighting them.
Inside the free guide you’ll find tools to help you:
• understand your energy patterns
• reduce overwhelm and burnout
• create more supportive routines
• make decisions that actually fit your real life
Download the free guide here.
🌿 Join the Summer Solstice Gathering
If you’re feeling the shift into summer and want a space to move through it with support, I’ll be holding a live Summer Solstice Gathering on June 24th.
It’s a gentle, real-time space to reflect, reset, and work with this transition in a more grounded way.
Explore the details and join us here.
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