Cultivation Mindset: Steal My 7-Step Process to Reaping Rewards This Autumn

Autumn officially arrives next month for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere. As we transition, we start to look forward to the changing colors and cooler temperatures. Summer travels are coming to an end as the seasons change. Kids are going back to school. You can start to feel a sense of transition in the air. We aren’t ready to hibernate. We aren’t ready to re-plant or re-seed…but we are ready to reap the rewards of our invested energy from the last six months.

How do the changing seasons help you plan?

As the first of three harvest festivals in the Wheel of the Year celebrations, I look to August as a time for us to start planning for Autumn, with an eye toward Winter. It is time to harvest what we have been planting and growing since Spring. In business and life, for those of us who are not gardeners or farmers, we can of course think of this as a metaphor…what can I harvest from my hard work? What can I bring to fruition from all the energy, time, and maybe even money that I have been expending?

If you are a professional services provider, whether you work for yourself or a firm, maybe you are ready to complete a project (or begin a project that you have been planning for), close a deal that you have been working hard on, or finish a professional development class.

It doesn’t have to be only about work. What you harvest can also refer to your personal projects (e.g. arts & crafts), your relationship goals, and your health, to give a few examples. Autumn is a time to stockpile and reap the rewards of all our efforts, recognize and express gratitude for our accomplishments, and feel confident heading into the winter months to recharge our intentions for the new year.

“A bountiful harvest is the reward for a season of hard work.”

~ said by many folks since forever

Transforming your effort into meaningful bounty

How do you convert recent efforts into bounty? Here is my 7-step process for how to harvest what you have been working towards over Summer:

One: Take stock of what you have after the Spring and Summer efforts.

• What projects or relationships are in motion?
• Where have you been putting your time and energy?

Two: Decide what you want to focus on for the next few months.

• This can be challenging because we need to pick our “big rocks” and not focus on the “little rocks” so much. Ask yourself, what area of your life do you want to focus on the most? Some examples are health, relationships, or business and career. Maybe there are a few areas you want to improve. Pick the most important one or two and then finetune your goals within those larger “buckets.”

Three: Visualize yourself at the finish line – start to design your life by designing your mind.

• This is a hypnotherapy power move. Always visualize yourself being successful. The more detailed you can get the better. Be sure to focus on how you want to feel at the end of the project, having reaped your bounty.
• Spend time most days visualizing yourself in three months having completed the project or achieved the goal.
• If you are one of my clients or you have attended one of my free workshops, then you have self-hypnosis tools to help accelerate and supercharge this step by using the power of your subconscious mind.

Four: Start to plan and strategize how you can turn your effort into bounty over the next three months.

• Come up with a strategy to achieve your goal and then break it down into a step-by-step plan.
• Constantly check in with yourself to make sure the plan is doable and that you are moving forward. If not, time to go back to step 2 and re-assess what is the best area and project to focus on.
• Another option is to look at your plan and break down each step into smaller steps. Sometimes when the steps of a plan are too big, we feel overwhelmed… break it down until it feels doable and you stop procrastinating.

Five: Act on your new plan.

• Time to bring your transformation or project into its final steps. If you are working on a larger project, what is a realistic piece that can be wrapped up in the next three months? Similar to the last suggestion, think of your large project as a sequence of smaller projects. Some examples might be:
• If you are trying to lose weight – don’t look at the big picture of needing to release 50 pounds, think of it as losing 10 pounds in the next 3 months and then maintaining that for a couple of weeks before going at it again.
• If you are working on a large project at work, how can you break it down into smaller sub-projects in your head?
• You don’t need to go straight to the finish line without a reward or a break. When you start to see a project as phases and steps, you start to see how your energy levels can ebb and flow in a more manageable way.

Six: Reap the reward and celebrate!

• Did you launch a new product, project or system? Did you meet the first part of a health goal? Are your relationships stronger and more fulfilling? Measure and document your wins!
• Time to celebrate! Think of ways to celebrate the small wins that don’t jeopardize your progress and then schedule the celebration and share your success with others.

Seven: Relax!

• It is important to not only work at a healthy pace but to relax at the end of a large project or milestone. This is one area that frustrates me about how employees are expected to jump from one project to the next without any recalibration time.
• Give yourself time to relax after a big project or deadline – you deserve it! Sometimes it can be as simple as lunch out with a friend, an afternoon of organizing your desk so you don’t feel so stressed and overwhelmed, getting some sleep, going for a walk in nature…the possibilities are endless.
• Remember to do something for yourself before moving on to the next phase.
• Remember that relaxation is a rebellious act! Take care of yourself because no one else will, especially not your boss.

Download a copy of my 7-Step Cheat Sheet

Personally, I think steps 3 and 7 are the most important…and both can be used at the same time as all the other steps. In fact, while you are visualizing your success and relaxing you will be leveraging the power of your mind to help you do all the other things. Why not give it a try?

Did you find this 7-step process helpful?  Did you like or hate this blog post? Let me know by sending me an email at hello[at]hypnomel.com.

If you think this would help a friend, please forward it to anyone you think might be interested.

Mel Sharpe

Hypnotherapist & Coach

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