"And all at once, summer collapsed into fall" - Oscar Wilde

There's something about fall that I look forward to every year. I think part of it is the beauty of fall - the leaves changing, the colors, the scent in the air that I always used to describe as the smell of fall nights. As I write this on a cool windy afternoon, I'm enjoying what feels like the end of summer, in a summer dress by a campfire at Nordik nature spa (we all must indulge once in a while especially during end-of-summer holidays). With the mornings and evenings getting colder, the end of a season is drawing near and that means new beginnings for me. It's often spring that's associated with beginnings and change, but since I was young fall has always represented a time for change after the summertime when we tend to be less goal-oriented. It feels like a fresh start.

Last year, I made many changes - observing and becoming more aware of my thoughts and challenging them, growing in my mindfulness practice, letting my creative side flourish some more. Some of this has inspired my blog posts this month. This fall and winter I have many goals in sight to tackle and some of them more about organizing our home, some about personal growth, and some focused on attaining better health and lifestyle habits (I really want to work on improving my sleep routine and building in more space in my day for physical activity).

This summer I tried something new. I found that setting one goal a month and consciously deciding to put everything else "on hold" has been helping me to see progress in one area at a time. I set one big goal for august (beginning to finally decorate our house and put things on the wall after almost 6 years of living here) and I've noticed that I've made more advancements on this goal in a month than I could have over many months if I was trying to tackle other things - that goal always fell low on the list but it was something I really wanted to do. There is never any shortage of things we want to get done but tackling it all at once never helped me see change happen. I had to change my approach.

What will your approach be to making personal changes this fall?