Ep. 147 Feeling Behind on Your Goals? The Toxic Productivity Myth

Feeling behind on your goals now the year's more than half gone? 

This episode offers a gentler truth. Carly explores Lughnasadh, the Celtic festival of the first harvest, and what it can teach us about midlife, menopause, and our relationship with time. 

Rather than buying into the cultural pressure to "finish the year strong," she invites a kinder reframe. Some things in us are ripe and ready to gather, while others are still quietly becoming, and that's exactly as it should be. 

Drawing on her own reflections from the past year, what's ripened, what's fallen away, and what's still just a seed, Carly explores patience, discernment, trusting your own timing, and the idea of perimenopause as a "second spring."

If you're curious about this work and are not sure where to start... maybe take a look at the Embodied Strength Profile a next step you can trust.

Thanks for listening to Rooted In Presence

If you’d like to get in touch with a question about today’s episode or find out how I can support you with coaching, here’s how to reach me:
📧 Email: carlykillenpt@gmail.com
📱 Instagram: @carlykillencoach

Do you crave unshakable confidence in your strength from midlife and beyond? Would you love to achieve your goals without sacrificing family time or self-care?

Ready to take your strength to the next level? Start building a stronger body and healthier bones with my Strong Bones Starter Kit; your step-by-step guide to safe and effective strength training at home.
👉 Click here to learn more and access today

🌟 Stay connected and inspired with daily wellness tips on Instagram @carlykillencoach
🌟 For tailored advice or personal queries, email me at carlykillenpt@gmail.com

Thank you for being here, and I look forward to supporting you on your journey to strength, health, and confidence! 💪🦴✨

Transcript

Carly 0:46

Hello, and welcome back to Rooted in Presence. I'm Carly, your curious midlife guide and founder of Still Space Hull, and we are now in episode 147. So we've just passed the festival of Lugnasad, and if that word is new to you, don't worry, you're in good company. it's an old seasonal festival, sometimes called Lammas, and it marks the very first of the harvests, beginning of the gathering in, and it sits roughly halfway between midsummer and the autumn equinox. And what I love about it is what it actually re- represents because it's a very particular moment in the turning of the year. We're just past the peak of the light, the height of summer. The very first crops are ready, and some of them are, and the first rain, the first fruits, so there is something to celebrate and something to gather in, and yet so much is still ripening. The, the orchards aren't done. The fields aren't finished. There's a real harvest beginning, and there is a great deal still quietly becoming all at the same time. And this year I noticed there might be another message for us too, so I thought I'd bring it here because I think this particular moment in the season has something gentle but also really important to say to us, so especially to those of us in midlife. So if you're still with me, let's get going So let's talk a bit about what we usually hear in our general culture, Western civilization. we're at roughly the same point in the calendar year too. We're past that halfway mark of the year, and there's a particular story our culture likes to tell us, especially in the health, wellness, fitness side of things. And I'm sure you've heard it too, and it kind of sounds something like, "Well, the year's more than half gone. What have you actually achieved? Look at those goals you set in January. You've got, what, four, five months left of the year. You better knuckle down, finish the year strong." Does that sound familiar? Well, I don't know about you, but that story's already got me exhausted before I've even done anything. And to me, I believe that is quite a toxic productivity energy, the sense that time is a resource you're perpetually wasting, that any moment not spent achieving is a moment lost, and that you are behind, always, always somehow behind. And the season tells a completely different story when we look at it from the perspective of the, our older ways, the It, in the way that Lughnasadh is approached, the season doesn't suddenly panic that it's August. The orchard isn't cross with itself that the apples aren't quite ready yet. there's no shame in the field that the wheat took until now. I know this year some of it's been ready early. But the season simply gathers what's ready and lets the rest keep ripening all at once. Celebration and patience working together, and this is a time to gather the team as well, the community. This work isn't done alone. And I think this brings some kind of relief around this. I think there's relief available to us in all of that, if we let ourselves have it. I mean, what if you're not behind at all? What if some things have gently ripened this year that you haven't even paused to notice? And some things might simply still be becoming exactly as they're meant to in their own time So, let's make this a bit more real because I've been doing exactly this reflection myself, and it feels only fair to share my own harvest rather than talk about it in a way that might feel abstract to our modern-day lives. So it's particularly poignant, Luna said for me, because it's almost exactly a year since I moved into my Still Space Hull Studio. It was the middle of August last year when I arrived, so I'm arriving at my first full turn of the year in this space, and that is absolutely a moment for reflection. I've been sitting with what has ripened, what's fallen away, and what's still just a seed in the ground, not quite ready to show itself. So let's name what I actually did out loud. What's ripened well for me? Well, I'm coming to the end of my breathwork teacher training, and I'm preparing to take on my very first breathwork apprentices. And when I sit with that, I realize it represents more than two years of dedicated work in breathwork specifically. Years of study and practice and my own inner work now genuinely starting to culminate, bringing breath alongside my strength work and my menopause work, all of it under one roof in the studio. It feels like a lot is coming together. A lot is ripening and still ripening. I'll never stop learning. But it does feel important to say it's not quite ready to harvest yet, and that's okay. In fact, I think that's exactly right. This is a first harvest, not the whole harvest. Now, what's fallen away for me? Well, I had an idea when I first started for an early morning strength circle. I had a really nice setup, and I was... would have loved to deliver it, but it hasn't come off. And the more honest version of that isn't just that it didn't work. I actually didn't even release it out into the world, 'cause I noticed my own rhythm had changed. Early mornings, at the moment, are just not mine to do. And I wasn't even sure if that was permanent change or just a transitional phase because, yeah, I've been navigating some big life changes, perimenopause, recovering from burnouts, moving house, and things like that. They all genuinely needed recovering from. So rather than force something into being, just because it was something I used to be able to do, because before all of that, I gave myself space instead. I chose not to plant that particular crop this season. And I want to be really clear, I don't believe that is a failure. That's discernment. There's a real difference between a thing that failed and a thing that you wisely choose not to force. And let's think about what is just a seed for me. Well, I've been running some quiet spaces from Still Space Hull, which are beginning to draw a little interest. It's very early days. The shoots are tender, but something's stirring. The interest has felt really nourishing so far. My breathworks, they're established now, but they've still got some tending to do as well. Some more warming, some more gathering. There are seeds in the ground a- also that simply haven't shown themselves yet, and I don't need to dig them up to check on them. I don't know if you've ever done that. I had some sunflower seeds that I planted, and I was tempted to dig them up to see what was going on. They have not grown at all. So there we go. There's something else that hasn't worked this year. But underneath all of that, I can feel this long rest cycle starting to complete for me. I'm noticing more energy returning, a bit of appetite for new things beginning to stir again, which when you've been through burnout, is not a small thing. It's its own kind of harvest in and of itself So this brings me to what I think is probably at the heart of today. Some things, genuinely all things, all things ripen in their own time. They can't be rushed, and you know this really if you've ever had a green tomato on your windowsill. You know that being impatient with it does absolutely nothing. It doesn't ripen faster because you're cross with it. It doesn't respond to a stern talking to or a tighter deadline. It ripens when the conditions are right, and when enough time has passed, and not one moment before. And if you try to force it, if you get impatient and eat it green, or fuss at it, or cut it open to check, you don't get a ripe tomato any sooner. You just lose the tomato, and probably end up with a bit of a bitter taste in your mouth as well. so much of what we try to force in ourselves is exactly like this. We have some capacity, some project, some kind of healing, some new version of ourselves that's really on its way, but still ripening. And instead of trusting that, we can often get impatient. I hear this all of the time from many people. And then we decide we're behind. We try and force the harvest before it's ready, and it rarely gives us what we hope for. Usually probably costs us the very thing we've been waiting for, and given the many conversations I've had this week about people wanting the scales to budge, that is one example. But my whole approach to this work, and my own life these days, is really about learning the difference between what's genuinely ready to be gathered in and can be acted on now, and what's still ripening and still needs time, and the right conditions that still need to be formed, and what has fallen away can be released without shame. That is the heart of discernment, I think. It's one of the kindest skills we can develop. This is where compassion is rooted because it's not laziness and it's not giving up. It's just working with the season you're actually in, rather than the one you think you should be in So I love to offer you some reflection for yourself if you wish to engage with this. So not as a, another productivity audit. It's, maybe the opposite of that. But an opportunity for you to gather in and to review your year so far. So you might sit with these with a cup of tea or turn them over on a walk. So here are three questions for you. First one, what has quietly ripened for you this year that you haven't actually paused to notice? Now, these don't need to be big, obvious wins, but they might be. But they could be quite subtle wins, subtle changes, the ways that you feel steadier or braver or clearer than you felt in January, the things that have grown so gradually you might have missed them. So maybe let yourself actually notice and count them Second one, what has fallen away this year? And this is an important part. Can you let it be a season that just didn't take rather than a personal failure? A crop you didn't plant or one that just wasn't meant for this year rather than proof that there's something wrong with you. And finally, third question, what is still just a seed? What is ripening in you right now that simply isn't ready, and what would it feel like to trust that if you stop digging it up to check might actually start to grow? Maybe you can let it have the time it actually needs And before we draw to a close, I want to offer you one last thought because I think this whole idea reaches much further than a single year. Because it's true of our whole lives too. We're taught to think of life as one single season of ripening. We rise up to some peak in our youth, and then it's a long, slow decline afterwards. Anyone that says it's downhill after 30, you know what I'm talking about. But that's really not how it works, and it's certainly not how the natural world works. There are many harvests in a life, many seasons of ripening, gathering, resting, and beginning again. And this feels especially true of midlife and of menopause And there's a beautiful idea drawn from traditional Chinese medicine, which I've spoken to quite a while back. It names menopause not as an ending, but as a second spring, a second beginning, a whole new season of growth and ripening with its own fruits, ones that simply couldn't have been available to us in the first spring of our younger years. I'm navigating my own perimenopause as I say this, and I can really feel the truth of that. So- certain things are only just ripening in me now that past versions of myself would not have been able to hold. But all of those past versions of me were doing that work all along to bring me to this particular season, and oh, there is honestly so much more still to come that I haven't even considered yet. And for me, that's exciting. And previously, that would have induced a lot of anxiety, but now I find it rather wonderful So, as we sit here with this first harvest, just past the peak of the light with the first fruits ready and so much still ripening, I'd love to leave you with this season's own small message. You are not behind. Some things in you are ready to be gathered and celebrated right now. But some things are still becoming exactly as they should be. Maybe some things have fallen away, but that's okay. Gather what's ready, just trust what's ripening, and release what's gone, and let there be so much more still to come that you don't even know about yet. So if you would like some company on this kind of gentle, seasonal self-honoring work where we use breathwork, strength, and, well, simply space to reflect and land, that's exactly what I hold at Still Space Hull. You'll find everything you need to know at at stillspacehull.com and the coaching side carlykillen.com with all the details in the show notes. So until next time, may you meet yourself with compassion, walk with presence, and remember you already have everything you need