Cara Harvey (00:00.79)

Welcome to Purpose Triple Mom’s Day episode 503. We are in the month of March, which means I’m giving you a sneak peek behind the scenes of my brand new program, On Purpose You. On Purpose You is here to help you figure out what you want in your life, how you can make a plan that fits your season and where you’re at and how you can gain momentum and actually cross things off. Now this is different than the Purpose Triple Mom Club, which is my group coaching program. On Purpose You is a membership that you can join month to month.

that gives you the information you need and every single month I’m gonna launch out brand new content. So as long as you remember, you’ll get all of those things. We have it set up university style. Very fun, I was a teacher for 10 years and we’re loving this kind of university feel because On Purpose U is the study of the you. How often do we ever allow ourselves to pause and become people who study ourselves, who really.

dive into the things that we want to learn about us and our needs. We are ever changing and evolving creatures. And in On Purpose You, I’m going to help you get there. Now each week in the month of March, I have been sharing with you a sneak peek so you can go back and watch the other episodes of what you get inside this membership. When the membership is launched, you can go to purpose-drivenmom.com slash on purpose you.

you will get the core curriculum. So we have three different schools, School of Clarity, School of Alignment, and School of Momentum. They each have a 101 for you to go through to get the basics. Every single month starting in April, I’m gonna start launching a new major so you can deep dive into something that you’re interested in, a minor if you want a little bit more, or an elective class just to learn a little. We are gonna be continuing to add content to this incredible membership. But the core of this membership is here, and I’ve had 50 founding students

going through this program in February to help me make it really something transformational. And I’m so proud of what we, and I say we, because they really did help me put it together, what we’ve come up with. In today’s episode, I’m going to be sharing with you one of the core videos in the School of Alignment. And alignment is all about how do you create rhythms that fit your season. That’s really what this video is. And that’s what we do in alignment. In the School of Alignment, we also talk about things like

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creating time blocks to fit your structure, matching your energy to your schedule. How do you find time for your goals when you’re fully at capacity? And how do you create routines that stick even when life is uncertain? The School of Alignment is about taking all the things you want in life and figuring out how to make them happen. You can check out show notes at A Purpose Driven Mom.com slash podcast 503. And you can always head to A Purpose Driven Mom.com slash on purpose you, we’ll link it up in the show notes.

to learn more about On Purpose U and how you can become a member today. We’re keeping it open all the time, but if you join us this week that you’re listening to this, we will be having some special launch bonuses, including some price breaks. So you’re gonna wanna make sure you check that out. OnPurposeUMom.com slash On Purpose U. I hope to see you there and enjoy this episode and this sneak peek into this brand new program. Deep into our alignment, let’s talk about how you can create rhythms that will fit the season that you’re in in the moment. We’re gonna go through and I’m gonna give you an overview of what I think

some general seasons are, and we’ll talk about how you can adjust your rhythms for your particular season. In this first phase of the School of Alignment 101, it’s really about recognizing where you’re at so that we can make plans in the second phase with the different time blocks and the habits and all of that. But let’s talk about your season and where you’re at. Seasonal rhythms matter because they give you the freedom and the flexibility to be human. They give you the freedom and the flexibility to say,

This is what’s important to me now and they allow you to take the pressure off. Life is seasonal. It is not static. We talked about this in the balance lesson. Your energy is different daily. The needs of your kids, your work jobs, your health, your responsibilities, everything changes often. And it’s important to recognize that. Everything’s shifting every day. And the problem isn’t that you can’t keep up.

And I know we say this, I know we think this, I know we exist in this space where we’re like, well, I just can’t keep up. It’s not that. It’s that you are trying to run your life on last season’s rhythms in this season’s life. When today changes, you need to adjust your season to go with it. And when I’m talking seasons, yes, winter, summer, spring, fall, we can look at it that way. We can look at it every single day, every single month. And we can also look at it off the calendar, which is what we’re look at today. So feel free to take this and

Cara Harvey (04:41.846)

You know, make it calendar specific or feel free to take it and think about these different seasons of your life instead. You can use all the tips I’m gonna give you today for specific, like this is what January is like versus June. But I also want you to think about what season your life is in. Because a season is a temporary stretch of life. And again, could be monthly, but often it is defined by your capacity, your priorities, your energy, your demands, and also your emotional bandwidth. I don’t think we think enough about this.

We make these plans not taking our emotional bandwidth into consideration. There are four seasons outside of winter, summer, spring, and fall that I feel like a lot of us go through. We’re gonna go into these in detail. Growth, maintenance, recovery, and transition. When we go through each of these, I’m gonna walk you through what it could feel like, some of the pitfalls, what you might need to support yourself. And this is a video you might wanna go back to multiple times because your season will continue to change. All right, let’s kick off with the growth season, okay?

When you’re in a growth season, you are feeling the energy, right? You’re like, I’m here, I’m excited. You feel very clear. You might already have all that clarity you need. So you’re ready to build something and stretch something. This doesn’t have to be just work. I want you to think about your home. You’re working on a project, whatever it is. This is, if you have a business, could be like, hey, I’m launching something. Like right now I am in a growth season getting this brand new program off the ground.

Growth season can also happen when your kids are more independent. Now I was talking to a couple parents this morning, I volunteer every other Wednesday morning, and I was talking to some of the parents there who have littles. Like I think their oldest is in kindergarten, right? So then they have maybe like a toddler and stuff. That is a different life than I live right now. My kids are eight, 10, and 19.

They’re right now entertaining themselves in the other room. If I said to my daughter, go practice your cello, if I told my son to go brush his teeth, while we will have stomping and whining, not like they’ll do it so happily, they’ll still go do it. I don’t have to be there. We’re actually starting to be in the phase where my 10 year old can stay home for 15 minutes if I have to run to the store really quickly. That’s a different phase. Like this is a growth season for me. When your kids are younger, like that might not be your growth season, right? It’s also a nice personal.

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expansion phase where you’re, you know, hitting your butterfly coming out of a cocoon phase. We talk a lot about the midlife here, right? This could be where you’re ready to expand things for yourself. If you find you’re in a growth season, you might need one of the following rhythms. You might need more structured, focused time where you’re like, I’m going to take some time on the weekend to work on this project, things like that. Very clear priorities because everything feels exciting when you’re in this vision.

growing stage, you want to do absolutely everything. Or you might need protective boundaries to say, cannot do this right now. We just talked about this on a coaching call for my other program, The Purpose of Vermont Club today. I was coaching someone through something and they said that they made a goal that in May they were going to work on it. So she said, I keep getting excited about other things, but I keep saying, cannot work on this till May, right? You have to give yourself boundaries. The pitfalls of a growth season is that you over commit sometimes because you’re just so excited.

Let me do this, let me do that, let me do this, let me do that, right? And I’m gonna tell you this happened to me literally this morning. was, or was it last night? It was yesterday, I think. I was recording videos for this program and I was getting so excited. I was like, ooh, this feels good to me. And I opened up my Voxer, which is like a walkie talkie app to talk to my team. And I was like, guys, I’m not really saying this, but I’m saying this. I think this program could be my next book, which you heard it here first, right? Like I truly think this could be all the content in school.

the on purpose you I feel like I think it might be my next book I’m so scared to say it out loud but I have but I told myself I said but we’re gonna be careful here here’s my protective boundary I’m not gonna get excited or distracted right now because I’m in a growth season so I’m very excited I cannot put more on my plate and I can’t I honestly can’t even think about right another book right so that’s what it feels like we sometimes forget rest I have been going non-stop for the past two months and and I feel this and you say yes to everything

Growth still needs sustainability though. So you need these rhythms. You need to make sure you’re making rhythms, specifically the boundaries, priority, structure, focus time, all these we have, you know, we’ll have videos on for you. These are the rhythms you’re gonna need inside the school of alignment. All right. Sometimes though, we’re in a maintenance season. When you’re in a maintenance season, it’s just, you are sustaining what exists. You’re like, I have a lot going on.

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So I need to just sustain. I don’t need to put new goals on my plate. I don’t need to do more. I just need to maintain. Sometimes this happens like in the summer for me. I’m like, I don’t want to put anything new on my plate. I just want to exist. Like I just want to exist. It’s a maintenance for me. You’re not expanding. You’re excited about stability. Maybe you just had some good routine sticks and you want to work on them and you’re protecting the systems that work for you and your family. This is about keeping your routine steady, not adding a big project.

and maybe protecting some of those family rhythms, which is why for me often summer becomes a maintenance season, because I’m like, I just wanna make sure we have time together, right? And there’s nothing wrong with that. I feel like because we are in this culture of more, more, more, it feels like if we’re not going after, like quote unquote, going after the big dream and the big goal, we’re doing something wrong. But there’s nothing wrong with being in a maintenance season. When you’re in a maintenance season, you need simplicity.

Okay, you need repeatable routines that you can do over and over again and less moving parts. But often when you’re in a maintenance season, you might find yourself hitting these pitfalls. You compare yourself to your growth season energy. Ooh, this happens to me. If I’m in a maintenance season, I acknowledge I’m in a maintenance season. I’m like, it’s maintenance season, like all that kind of stuff. And then I have like a quote bad day. I’ll be like, I should have, right? Done the stuff.

When I had all the energy, look at all the stuff I did and I compare myself to just me, not even comparing myself to anyone else, I compare myself to growth season mate. It can make you feel like you’re behind because you’re not striving after something big or thinking that you should be doing more. But the thing about maintenance is it is leadership. It is self leadership to say I’m in a maintenance season and that’s okay. It’s not stagnation, you’re not standing still, you’re maintaining and that’s a good thing. If you don’t have any maintenance seasons in your year, I highly recommend you put some in.

because this is where routines and habits become sturdy. This is where they stay and they become sustainable. If you’re always in a growth season, if you’re always going, going, going, and you never move into maintenance, then things are not gonna stick. They’re not gonna be those sticky things we want. Now you might also find yourself sometimes in a recovery season and we’re all there. And again, when I’m talking recovery, we could be saying like, hey, this is my, in the.

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Winter I’m in recovery. could say in this month I’m in recovery. When I’m in this week of my cycle I’m in recovery. And again, there’s a whole section coming if it’s not already here in one of the areas on cycle syncing, like a whole major on that, because it’s a deep topic. When you are in recovery season, your energy is lower, okay? So like pushing doesn’t work because your energy is physically lower. This could be, you know, like I’m coming, I’m sick. Again, I have my period.

I’m coming off something emotional, right? That emotional fatigue, again, that we always ignore. We don’t always acknowledge it. This could be, you know, like a healing period, regrouping, and life just kind of feels heavy. I’ve been talking to lot of friends lately, and I feel like something happened, like after we came off the holidays, and all of us feel like kind of heavy right now, just trying to figure things out after coming out of a very chill season for the holidays. Some examples of this are like, hey, I hit burnout, so I’m in my post-burnout mode.

Maybe I have some health shifts, things like that. Or I’m having a major life change, right? Like something is changing in my life. Rhythms that you need when you’re in a recovery season is fewer commitments, 100%, putting less on your plate, having more margin and protecting your rest. We call these beautifully like when the poop hits the fan blocks, you need to have those. But oftentimes we get stuck into this like trying to push through and do it all even though we know we need the recovery.

It’s about feeling guilty that you’re slowing down at all, and it’s pretending you’re in growth mode and not acknowledging the truth. But you cannot build from depletion, right? We know this. Our final season I wanna talk about is the transition season. This is when things change. Now this often will hit us like in between actual like natural breaks. Hey, we’re going back to school, we’re going into summer break, winter break, things like that. But it’s when you feel the change.

It’s the uncertainty of what’s happening or what’s to come. Your identity shifts. We talk a lot about the midlife over here at On Purpose U or you’re reevaluating. So this could be lots of winnings. Yes, could it be the physical transition of the seasons? But it could be like your kid’s getting older. We left an orthodontist appointment today and we found out my daughter has one baby tooth left and I’m not okay, right?

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Cause they were like, well, you know, then we can do her phase two braces. And I was like, I’m not ready to think about that. Those are the braces she’s supposed to get when she’s like a teenager. And like, what, what are we talking about? Baby teeth gone? Like where’s my little baby? you know, when my oldest, he went to college this year as a freshman in college. And that, that was, this has been a weird transition. It’s been really strange. and so as your kids get older, this is a transition period. I remember.

when I left teaching, speaking of career shifting, I was a school teacher for eight years, over a decade ago, actually. It’s been crazy that that’s been how long it’s been, but I remember that first year after I left teaching, and I had the biggest identity shift. I really didn’t know who I was anymore or what I wanted, and career shift caused that transition in the season. Can I say this too? Transition, I’m sorry, career shift for you or a spouse, a partner, somebody you’re with, like.

All these things could impact them that become a transition for you. I’ve had a few times in our marriage, my husband’s been out of work, those become transitions for us. That midlife reflection where you’re getting older and you’re figuring your life out. Things like divorce, all of these are transition seasons. When you’re in these seasons, you need to give yourself reflection, you need a flexible schedule and space for clarity, like take yourself out on a date and think. You need to give yourself and your brain space.

But often when we’re in a transition season, we try to force the clarity and the certainty. Like, I must figure it out right now instead of letting it be fluid. Maybe we’re over planning the unknown. Hey, I think we’re going to move, but I’m not sure if we’re going to move. So I’m not sure where to go. Or we grab onto old systems that used to work. Transitions itself require curiosity and not control. So how do you know? There’s a obvious questions inside your workbook as always, but these are a couple I wanted to pull out.

Where is my energy right now? Like, what am I thinking, feeling, doing? What feels heavy to me and what feels exciting? What realistically can I hold? Again, as always, back to capacity here in this program. Or is there anything I’m grieving in my life or growing? And transition, I think a lot about the transition. Like, it is a, when you transition from jobs, friendship groups, things like that, I remember talking to a mom, she, maybe a decade older than me.

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and her kids were all done sports and stuff. And she was like, I lost all my friends. Because my whole life and identity had been like my kid was in travel ball. And that’s all we did. And those are the people hung out with. And now I don’t hang out with them anymore. Right? So what are you grieving? Or what’s growing? Just a reminder, though, your season is not always about your desire. It is about capacity. So we can’t just be like, I wish I was in a growth season when I’m in a capacity for a recovery season. That’s not going to match.

So what do I mean when I mean rhythms, right? This session is called Rhythms to Match Your Season. So we talked about the season piece. So what do I mean when I’m talking about rhythms? I’m talking about all the things. These are the routines, the systems, and the things that kind of like drive your ship. These are your repeatable patterns that support the season you’re in. They’re not exhausting your future self. You’re not putting so much on your plate that next week you needs a week to recover from it. And they’re not rigid, but responsive to what you need.

I use the word routine a lot, but rhythm is the one I land on more often lately because rhythm feels fluid, it feels flexible, feels like, again, we’ve talked about this in the program before, it honors my humanness. And your rhythms will adjust in three different ways. And I’m gonna give you some examples to think through how you can adjust these rhythms depending on your season and the second. So you can adjust the time of your rhythm, your intensity or your volume. So,

your rhythm, your routine, the system that you come up with. And in this second phase of the School of Alignment, we’re gonna go through and create your systems, right? So if you don’t have the systems yet, don’t worry about it. But if you have systems that do work for you, depending on your season, I wanna talk about how you can adjust them. Can I change the time, the intensity, or the volume? It’s not like I have to quit it completely, but maybe you just need a tweak. So let’s look at a couple examples. I’m in a growth season, right? I have my rhythms going, I’m like, I gotta get stuff done.

So maybe my work, I need three work blocks per week. I gotta carve them out, I gotta leave the house, I gotta get them done. So there we go. Well, I need to simplify. So this simplification is that intensity. I’m gonna simplify my meal systems to make it easy. And then here’s my volume. I need to schedule some recovery in for me. This is having intensity intentionally. Saying this is what I’m going to be intentional about.

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in my growth and this is what I’m going to pick to support myself. Say I am in a recovery season. I might be like, you know what, my business is gonna go on maintenance for right now. I’m gonna do the basics that have to happen and that is about it. In my home, I’m going to lower my expectations about how much and what gets done. In my personal life, I’m gonna give myself extra sleep and fewer social obligations. This is intentional protection.

So see how I’m identifying that I’m in the recovery season and I’m making rhythms that support. I’m not standing still, I’m choosing what fits best. When you’re designing the seasonal rhythm that you’re making, ask yourself these three questions. What must happen? And like really must, you know, don’t must because you think, but like for real, what will support me and what can actually flex?

So inside your workbook, there’s questions and reflections, and I want you to do this rhythm reset for where you’re currently at now and come back to this when you need it. Right now, what is your season? Growth, maintenance, transition, or recovery. And how will you honor it? You will increase what, maintain what, and decrease what. And I want you to go through and really think how you can honor it. Print it out, put it out there, repeat it for yourself. This is how you will find alignment. It is seasonal planning and creating rhythms to support you. So head into your workbook.

really think this through and what we’re gonna do is take this into these next couple lessons in the next section to actually craft those systems that you need. But I really want you to understand and fully grasp this concept of my seasons so that you can give yourself grace and be a little kinder to yourself when maybe you don’t hit and check everything off because you’re planning for the inappropriate rhythm.