Trusting An Unknown Season

Welcome back. It’s been a really transformative break, and that is what I wanted to double click on for this week’s post.

I think most people have heard the rocks-in-a-jar analogy. Life is the jar, your biggest priorities are the rocks, and the sand and water are all of the normal demands and requirements of life. You put the rocks in first because if you fill the jar with everything else, you may not have room for what matters most.

This is how I tend to live my life. And for a long time, training was a huge rock in my jar.

What this break taught me, though, was something I hadn’t really thought about before: The rocks move. And sometimes that movement requires a redistribution of everything in the jar.

Movement

I started thinking about the rocks less like perfectly shaped objects sitting neatly in place and more like stones on a beach. They are constantly rubbing against one another, smoothing edges and reshaping each other in ways that aren’t always obvious from the outside.

Training was one of the larger rocks in my life, and over time it shaped many of the others around it. It strengthened my discipline, confidence, self-trust, self-respect, resilience, and belief in what I was capable of. Those qualities didn’t stay contained within training. They carried into the rest of my life and began reshaping those areas too.

Eventually, the rocks had changed shape, but they were still sitting where I had originally put them. The jar started to feel off-balance.

Something needed to move.

Redistribution

Life changes. Priorities grow, shrink, arrive, leave, and sometimes need more room than we expected.

For me, training had become such a large rock that I needed to take it out for a while. Doing that gave me enough space to look at everything else more clearly. Some things needed more room. Some had changed shape. Some no longer belonged in the jar at all.

So, figuratively speaking, I took everything out, looked it over, cleared what no longer fit, and repacked the jar around the life I am actually living now.

If you are a plant person, maybe it was like becoming root-bound and needing to be repotted.

The new arrangement has more breathing room. Overall, it feels cleaner and more peaceful.

But the part I didn’t expect was how much I would fight the process.

I was so used to training and the place it held in my life that I kept trying to put that rock right back where it had been. I drafted plan after plan, but none of them felt right. I couldn’t force myself to follow them.

At times, I worried I was losing my edge. Or becoming less of who I used to be. Looking back, I think I was simply trying to rush back to something familiar before allowing the rest of my life enough time to settle into its new shape.

What I really needed was to trust and allow.

Some of the opportunities, growth, and clarity that came from this season would not have had enough room to develop without the pause. But they also would not have been possible without all of the work that came before it.

I needed both.

I needed the season of discipline, structure, building, and pushing. And then I needed the season of space, reflection, and redistribution.

Maybe We Need Off-Seasons Too

Athletes have off-seasons. Kids get summer break. Nature has seasons of growth and rest.

Maybe adults need periods of pause and reflection too. Sometimes life simply needs room to rearrange.

The open space was soooo uncomfortable for me, but it was also exactly what I needed.

So, if you are in your own uncomfortable season, try to give yourself a little space before deciding something has gone wrong. Trust yourself enough to let the season unfold.

Your priorities changing doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve lost your way.

Maybe your rocks are simply moving.

If this post made you think of someone who might need it, feel free to share it with a friend.

And for a short pause you can use anytime, check out the free 3-Minute Breathing Reset under Free Tools & Resources on the YM website.

Free Tools + Resources