Check-In With Yourself: What Do You Want to Do This Spring?
A story and a list of prompts to get you on your way
Welcome! I’m Dr. Jillian, a physician leader, mom, and coach who is on a mission to help overwhelmed professionals live less stressed, more satisfying lives. If the full post doesn’t show up in your e-mail, come over to the webpage or Substack App to see the whole thing. Subscribe here to get future posts straight to your inbox:
Last weekend, I ate dinner on the floor of the bathroom with my family.
About 10 minutes prior, I had been finishing cooking dinner when the rain began to pour. Within minutes, heavy wind began to batter the rain against our house, and an eerie green crept over the sky in spite of the dark clouds.
“It looks like tornado weather,” I said to my husband, “I hope we don’t lose power.”
Shortly after, the lights went out. I carried on cooking on the gas stovetop, grateful that dinner was almost ready.
Moments later, our cell phones began to scream: TAKE IMMEDIATE COVER. TORNADOES SPOTTED IN YOUR AREA.
“I’m hungry!” my toddler declared, blessedly oblivious to the ensuing chaos.
Fortunately, dinner was ready. As my husband ushered my son into the bathroom (the only room in the house without windows), I snatched the pasta out of the boiling water with a pair of tongs, tossing the hot noodles haphazardly with butter and pasta water as I hustled to safety.
The tornado sirens began to blare as the wind and water raged against our house.
Once we were safely in the bathroom, we hunkered down on the floor with our plates and began to eat.
Our son ate joyfully, seemingly amazed and unfazed by the “adventure” we were having. My husband and I cast nervous glances at each other over our plates, unsure what was happening in the chaos outside but grateful that our house remained intact.
Eventually, the storm moved on.
We moved back out of the bathroom and set about doing what we had to do: lighting candles, packing a few items on ice in the cooler, playing in the candlelight, and then getting our son ready for bed. We muddled through the night as best we could in spite of the chill that set in. And in the morning, we got ourselves off to our respective locations after fumbling through the darkness.
When I returned home to a house with power that later that day, I set about cleaning out the fridge, getting rid of what was spoiled and thinking about what I needed to do next. I was grateful that we fared as well as we did and ready to move on.
As I was doing my quarterly check-in practice a few days later, it dawned on me that the first quarter of my year (and the aftermath of my grief) was very similar to my storm experience.
I was surprised by the storm and the loss of my father. they came out of nowhere. Although we know in our heads that anything is possible at any moment, it’s shocking when it happens to us out of the blue. We can make the experience a little easier on ourselves by having some emergency supplies (or an advanced directive) on hand.
After my dad died, I was unable to focus on anything other than what I (and my family) needed right in that moment. I had no energy or ability to think about anything else, and I often felt like I was functioning on autopilot.
That went on for a period of time until I was able to get some space. This was like the wind dying down and the sirens going quiet. The storm was still blowing, but I was out of imminent danger. I no longer felt so raw, and I was able to expand my focus a bit.
Now, almost four months after my dad’s death, I am just starting to feel like I have some of my power restored. I’m not functioning at 100% but I have a lot more energy than I did while the storm was raging.
It was this energy that allowed me space to schedule a check-in with myself.
At the beginning of this year, I set an intention by choosing a word of the year: Tend. I chose it with the belief that the coming year would be incredibly difficult, and that has turned out to be true so far.
Now that I have a bit more energy and some space from the rawness of my grief, I have begun to consider how tending will look in the coming months. Thanks to my own check-in process and a wonderful offering from
, I have a few answers.No matter how you are feeling in your own life, I highly recommend setting aside some time to check-in with yourself. This practice can allow you to face the coming months with intention rather than with overwhelm.
Here are some questions to get you started:
How did the first months of the year go for you?
What is a win you are celebrating?
What didn’t go so well?
What would you like to bring with you into the next 3 months?
What would you like to let go of?
What are 1-3 goals for the next three months, and why are these important to you?
Defining why you want something makes it more likely that you will follow through.
What is one action you can take in the next week to get you on your way?
As a reminder, don’t “should” on yourself during this process.
The purpose of a check-in is not to judge yourself for not accomplishing what you wanted to accomplish last quarter. It’s to take stock of where you are at now and where you would like to go.
Be kind to yourself as you go along.
And, if you need some cheering on, I’d love to hear what your plans are for the coming months in the comments so that I can send you some positive vibes.
We are all just doing the best we can, and sometimes that means eating dinner in the bathroom.
Omg that must've been a scary moment. Glad you're all safe.
Some good prompts in here to make me think. We're not going into spring but autumn, so for me this is a time of slowing down. The important thing for me is to be ok with that slowing down, to accept that this is what my body needs to do even if the world around me wants to keep going at the same speed.