Why a Seasonal Reset is Crucial to your Success in Life, Leadership & Business

Taking the time to reset with the season is crucial to your life and Leadership success.

This allows you to reconnect to your bigger purpose, vision, goals and dreams. Plus it provides you a structure and strategic planning time quarterly for you to stay focused on the bigger picture.

Without this strategic view, you can easily get lost in your day-to-day to-do list, caught in details and transactional needs and forget what's really important!

It's like checking your internal life, leadership and business GPS to see if you're still on track to where you want to go or NOT.

Checking in will then re-inspire you, help you to see what obstacles might be in your way and address anything that may not be going as planned. By doing this regularly, you make massive progress, overcome obstacles more quickly and become more productive all with more and fun!

The Power of Intention & Strategic Perspective

The difference that taking time to RESET every season where you reflect, align, and set intentions, is the difference between…

• Intentional vs Reactive
• Empowered vs Dis-empowered
• Having Direction and Clarity vs Being Lost and Overwhelmed
• Achieving your Goals vs Being Disappointed and Stuck

Why Does Strategic Thinking Matter?

I'd like to share with you a little story from a few years ago when I was taking executive training at the University of British Columbia.

One of the CEOs at the time from the Royal Bank of Canada provided a presentation to us on leadership and strategy. He shared that he would fire any leader who didn't spend time on strategic thinking and planning on a weekly basis!

At first I thought this was overkill but then I began to understand how strategy is a crucial function and role of every leader whether a CEO, vice president, director, manager or an entrepreneur.

As I did some research into this little deeper, I was surprised to find an article in Forbes on the Top 3 Strengths of a True Leader, mentioned that fewer than 10% of of leaders demonstrated any kind of strategic thinking in their job! 

Don't let this be you!

Busy or Just Not Aligned?

A personal story to share the power of taking this time to reflect… and re-align.

Before I started doing this strategic seasonal RESET consistently, I found myself so taken over by my workload that I barely had time to check in with my team because I felt like “I had so much to do, there wasn’t any time to monitor, mentor and motivate my staff!”

But I realized was that wasn’t actually true.

Sure there was tons to do! But there always is. It’s more of a mindset and alignment game than anything else. Because when your mindset and alignment is clear and strong, the rest just falls into place!

I found that when I committed to checking in with each of my staff every morning and at the beginning of every afternoon (before checking any emails or doing any of my own work!) then, I could peacefully focus on my own work for the rest of the day, knowing they had what they needed and we were all focused, aligned and productive.

OUTCOME: While this is just one small example, this shift came from taking the time to sit down and reflect regularly as part of my Seasonal RESET.

By looking at what was going well, what was important to me (both personally and in my professional roles), I could see where I needed to shift and adapt to better meet my goals.

In this example, my goal was to have a thriving workplace where my team was strong, motivated and productive with support from me to help them be independent and knowledgeable with strong communication skills to keep me informed of anything I needed to know, progress of projects and day-to-day issues that came up between our twice daily check-ins.

This shift made an incredible difference in my impact as a leader, our output as a team and my overall stress, time and energy from how I approached my day.

I wouldn’t have come up with this, without taking the time to shift into a strategic perspective, reflect and realign with my bigger purpose, goals and dreams.

How Does Doing a Seasonal RESET Make Such a Difference?

My clients have found that using the RESET process has been almost like magic! I see it as tapping into the subconscious and unconscious levels of your brain.

Working with intention and these powerful parts of your brain is like planting seeds in your brain or giving GPS coordinates to your invisible driver of your subconscious who will take you where you want to go! It's time to use this secret ally to your benefit.

A quote that I love is:

For a sailor with no Direction, no wind is favorable.

Without direction, you end up working harder than you need to, struggling to manage without perspective, you get stuck making poor decisions in business and in life, and the stress that this causes can create incredible pressure on your career/business, health, wealth, mindset, relationships and overall life and work satisfaction.

Your teams, business and organizations suffer because you are in survive mode without being able to see where you're trying to go or how you're supposed to get there.

When should you do a SEASONAL RESET?

Short answer? As often as possible!

1. Every Season Change: I use this process every time the season changes and encourage my clients to do the same. Taking this time every season to check in, realign and reset my intentions, goals and actions for the next 90 days has allowed me to make massive progress in my leadership roles, career and business even with large workloads. I've also made incredible transformations in my personal life using the same strategy and approach.

2. On a yearly basis: I use a larger and on the New Year's and at my birthday in March since that also feels like the beginning of a new year and new chapter in my life.

3. Then on a monthly and weekly basis, I do a smaller version for the month and the week. By tuning into my priorities and goals for that month/season that have been broken down by month then into weekly goals and daily goals!

4. And my daily actions build from the bigger picture goals and areas of focus for that season (vs doing whatever is the biggest crisis, most pressing email or other people’s agendas).

This may sound like a ton of extra work when you're already swamped by your to-do list... But taking the time is totally worth it!

Imagine sailing around the world without any map to take you where you want to go.

It would be very unlikely for you to expect you would get where you want to go at all. Other than crashing up onto the shore of a beach somewhere or more likely getting lost at sea.

But when you use this RESET approach to align, assess where you are to set goals, plans and intentions for where you want to go, then you can end up sailing around the world with ease going with the flows of the current to support your massive progress and allowing the wind in your sails to easily steer around difficulties while enjoying the scenery along the way.

My SEASONAL RESET Process

I would love to show you how to apply this reset process in your life, leadership role and business. Because this can be so transformational I've actually created a 5-day online RESET challenge for leaders so that you can actually try on this approach and get a taste of how it can make a massive a difference in your life.

The next live round of this challenge is starting on 21 October 2019 to align with the changing of the seasons from Summer to fall and the solstice as we transition to the shorter days of autumn.

For those of you on the other side of the planet this is actually your spring and so I'm excited to share this RESET with you as well because regardless of what season we’re moving into, taking the time to RESET will make a difference for you as well.

You can sign up for the next round of the Seasonal RESET Challenge starting on Monday, 21 October here and I look forward to seeing each other online then!

I'm excited to show you how simple this process can be and what a massive difference it will make in your leadership, in your business and in your personal life!

See you then, Sarah

PS - You can sign up for the next Seasonal RESET Challenge HERE. See you then!