Rightsizing

A relieving way to think of capacity

A couple of years ago, my friend Erica recommended a podcast that quickly became one of my favorites.

Asia Suler, who you can now find her on the ‘stack. Is that something? Is that a cool little abbreviation? I’ll let you decide. Anyways, Asia Suler recently released a podcast episode about the topic of rightsizing. And it felt like soothing balm.

In it, she talks about the ideas of editing our lives - clutter, belongings, “stuff” but then takes it deeper, as she always does, and talked about how “rightsizing” is the pathway for our most authentic and creative self to emerge.

It helped me understand the urge I have had for the last year or so, to (somewhat aggressively) prune my life. Chopping and snipping branches here and there. Some were dead and crispy. Some still bore fruit, but had just become too heavy. Some weren’t even from my own tree, but somehow I was still watering them, and sending them the vital nutrients I needed for, well, myself.

I struggle with guilt about my pruning. I have felt shame before about the “rightsizing” of my life and my schedule, and my attention resulting in many “no thank yous” and how those do in fact impact others around me.

And yet, the need to edit, and to rightsize is compelling and irresistible.

I want my life to feel potent.

I want my time to feel like mine.

I want to do less out of obligation. No more “half-assed.” Only “full-assed” efforts.¹

What wold it look like to distill my life further? To let it become as potent as I’d like for it to be? I think it will require continued movements towards rightsizing.

The timing of this all is quite spectacular. Many of my clients are moving through the same work. Examining their lives and deciding what must be pruned. And for what reasons. They are making hard choices to renegotiate relationships. To say “no” to what they’ve always said “yes” to. To trust in themselves and the process of growth, that with that new and opened up space, something new will grow.

We must prune in order to thrive.

We must prune to make sure that the nutrients are going where they need to go.

A couple of years ago, during one of our trademark Colorado heavy storms, we lost many branches on our established pines. They did their best, but they couldn’t keep all their branches from snapping under the weight. I wrote about my conversation with them here. And I must say, that essay is a great companion to this one.

One of the branches that was snapped, I insisted on keeping as long as possible. It’s a big branch that I hung a hummingbird feeder from. I worried that if we cut it closer to the trunk like the tree experts, and our neighbor suggested, that I wouldn’t have a place for my feeder. But I stopped hanging hummingbird feeders last year. I wasn’t keeping up on cleaning them and refilling them properly, and it didn’t feel fair to attract the little loves for them only to find a sticky mess that could harm them. The branch that was once in service to the birds had retired, but I’ve been trying not to let it.

What remains, is the big branch I insisted on leaving long. And now that branch, a “giving” branch as I thought of it, needs to be rightsized. Michael will love learning in real time with you all as he reads this about our newest house project. (Michael, I love you, my dad will help us.)

There are more metaphorical branches I have had to cut too. Like I mentioned, there are things that are genuinely helpful to others that I have had to stop doing. Not because I don’t care. Quite the opposite. Because I care that what I do, and how I do it is with my whole heart - my trunk - and that I can’t do the things anymore that aren’t direct offshoots of that.

This turkey, rightsizing her own life in our yard.

I know I’m mixing metaphors here. Are we talking about rightsizing, or pruning trees? Both. My right size, is to have dead and no longer sustainable branches cut.

That may mean I do less. That may mean I offer less. That may mean I say “yes” to less. But this will mean that that my yeses are real, whole-assed yeses.

Asia Suler talks about physical environment as needing to be right sized, and then mentions social circles too. She talks about how once we get “right sized” in these ways, our creativity and most aligned offering to the world is able to happen. We begin to have the right amount of room energetically to be who we are truly are.

I have to say, that I think I may have done this unintentionally. Early this Spring, it became clear to me that a long running podcast I co-hosted was no longer a branch I could sustain. It had great listenership, and benefited many people - myself and my cohost included. But it was an undeniable realization once I felt that branch requiring nutrients I could no longer give. I shed my newsletter around that same time and simplified to stay here on Substack instead. I closed down “new client consults” on my schedule for a while and decided I would need to be really discerning about adding any new clients to my practice. I wanted to make sure I could offer my existing folks the best of me. I had to make sure I could give nutrients to what I really wanted to grow.

I released ideas of many of my workshops and trainings and offerings - including “Reiki for Helpers” and “Self Care for Therapists” and “Writing Your Life.” And maybe I’ll offer those one day, but as I read them now, I realize I was trying to create workshops with the titles of the things I actually needed to be giving myself. Yikes.

What happened when I started to rightsize, and to choose a few things to do very well, is that I learned what I’m supposed to be doing, and with whom. This is a work in progress, certainly, but the clarity gained by abandoning the “more the merrier” concept has floored me.

All this pruning and rightsizing landed me at the most potent realization I have had professionally in a long time.

“I am here to help sensitive people thrive in a sharp world.”

My whole body softens when I read that simple sentence. A lot of what I do is indirectly in service of this mission- but I’m working on making it more explicit, more distilled, and more organized. I’m sure that will unfold naturally now that I’ve set my internal navigation towards it, and I think that gentle direction is part of the rightsizing for me.

Here’s the first beautiful thing to come out of this rightsizing and pruning. The first thing to grow where I pruned some room.

This Fall, I’m offering The Way of the Tender. An 8-week, therapist-led experiential course for highly sensitive women, healers, helpers, empaths, and those who are tender hearted and tending others.

It’s going to cover everything I wish I’d had to support my own sensitivity, and it’s built with sensitivity and tenderness at the center.

I’m keeping it small, and spaces are starting to fill. But there is no urgency here. There is no pressure. If the timing isn’t right for you, a future cohort might be. If this sounds like the next right step, you can learn more below, or go straight to the interest form.

Until I meet you here next, I invite you to consider a few questions about rightsizing:

Is there somewhere in your life that feels too big right now? Too vast, full, or complicated?

What is there to prune?

Is there somewhere in your life you’ve outgrown? That feels cramped o otherwise too small?

Where can you expand?

Where have you already been rightsizing in your life, and what do you notice about its impact?

A final reminder from the season: Summer Solstice has arrived. We are tilted furthest towards the sun. May you feel its warmth, and may you bask in its nourishment of your growth. And may you be ever reminded that the extra light we have is very well used on rest and play.

1. I love the term “half assed” because it signals to me that there is a “full assed” way to do something. Maybe even a “3/4 assed way” and that just tickles me.