If the holiday season highlights what feels heavy or unsustainable in your work, this episode will help you use seasonal business rhythm to design rest into your business – not as a reward, but as a foundation.
Key moments:
[00:00] Rest vs reality – Why the holiday season can expose what’s feeling heavy or unsustainable
[01:08] Two kinds of seasons – The year’s natural rhythms vs the bigger seasons of life
[02:33] Your current season matters – Aligning your pace with what life is asking of you now
[03:38] Nature is cyclical – Blooming, shedding, hibernating… and why your business should be too
[05:12] Winter energy – Leaning into the slowdown (even when it feels uncomfortable)
[06:26] The fear of rest – Unpicking the pressure to stay busy and “fill the gaps”
[07:07] Slowing down as a diagnostic – What becomes obvious when the noise drops
[08:04] Rest isn’t a reward – Why hustling to “earn it” keeps you stuck
[10:07] Celebrate what counts – Recognising effort, resilience, and how you’ve shown up
[12:41] Don’t become a machine in January – Compassion, incremental action, and the long haul
Resources mentioned:
Join the waitlist for the January workshop introducing the Solopreneur Operating System – intentionalexpert.com
The Solopreneur Operating System
A structural approach to redesigning your business so it works – financially, energetically, and seasonally. If you’re ready for a more intentional way of working, the next step begins here.
Seasonal Business Rhythm
It’s a short one today, but this episode is for you if you’re feeling that tension between needing rest on the one hand and holding the realities of your business on the other. So if this holiday season tends to expose where things feel heavy, misaligned or unsustainable, this conversation is going to offer you a grounded way of understanding what’s really going on. We’ll talk about seasonality, intention, and how rest needs to become part of your business design rather than an afterthought. Foreigning Success the podcast that helps you build a profitable business as an independent expert, one that works for you and your lifestyle. I’m your host, Anna Lundberg, former corporate insider turned business mentor, executive coach and mum of two. Whether you’re a solopreneur, a coach, speaker, consultant, I’m here to guide you in creating a business that gives you freedom, flexibility and the fulfilment you’re looking for, ready to redefine success and build a business that you love. Let’s get started.
Okay, so I’ve been really tapping into this idea of seasons over the past months or years. Even so, I hope if you have been listening to the podcast previously, that this message is beginning to hit home. And it’s something I talk about on LinkedIn and other channels too. This idea of two things really two ways of using seasons. One is the natural seasonality of the year. So of course we have. And I know that by the way, as a quick sidebar, I know that I have some of you listening, so hello to you in the Southern hemisphere. So I very much apologise for being so northern centric. But that’s just my scandi roots and the fact that I have lived all my life in the northern hemisphere.
I’m afraid winter for me is Christmas time, so that’s just my bias. So we have cold winter, November, December, Jan, spring, budding flowers beginning to get lighter, warmer. My first business was actually called Crocus Communications and I did have a really lovely metaphor around the crocus being the first flower to bloom out of the snow and then the summer. One of my favourite seasons definitely. Although I have to say I like the shoulder seasons too. Spring and autumn. In fact, I like all of them, which is an important insight in itself. And then yes, autumn, which again this year has been just the most beautiful season.
So I don’t know if it’s because I’m getting older, but I am appreciating and my mum always used to Say, I love the seasons. And now I’m just like her. I’m really appreciating the different energy that that brings. The longer days, the longer nights, maybe less so, but the cosiness, the fire, the, you know, the fun that having young kids around Christmas brings, being with family and so on. The bulla, as we in Sweden, the buns and things. So that’s one side of the seasonality, the other is the bigger season. Seasons of life, really, and they’re less clearly defined. But, you know, my 20s.
Play hard, work hard. Oh, I put that in the wrong order, but there you go, maybe that is the right order. Work hard, play hard. My early 30s, actually, because I left my job, were some of the most adventurous, exciting, fulfilling years. And that was a season of being single and a digital nomad and travelling and earning money and then not earning so much money and so on. And then the granularity of having children, as those of you who are parents will know, it’s one season to have, you know, to be pregnant, first of all, that’s very exciting, as long as you’re feeling well, and then to have a little baby, two babies, two toddlers, whatever it is, and then kids at school, et cetera, et cetera. So seasonality can give you both a sense of the pace you want to follow and what you want for this season, and give you kind of a cyclical rhythm, because in nature, and there are experts who talk far better about this and are far more anchored in natural rhythms and seasonality and so on, but nature is very much cyclical. It’s standard for all species.
And I’m making generalisations here. I’m thinking flowers and plants and things. Obviously, there are some that are evergreen and some are deciduous, as I learned at school. But in general, we have these rhythms of blooming, yes, and flourishing, but sadly, those petals then fall and they dry and they crisp up and then the tree branches are bare. And animals, I mean, there’s some, like bears. Bears, another bear, the hibernates, you know, so these sort of cycles of, of course, the. The butterfly being the classic, the. The caterpillar, the cocoon, the unfurling.
I think my friend talks about unfurling on her podcast on the unfurling of wings and nature and so on. So this is a really, I think, important thing to tap into. Of course, women may also have their monthly cycles and there are other things going on. So these aren’t sort of. They’re not just. What’s the word? They’re certainly not a luxury and they’re also not just sort of an add on, but they’re really a core part of how we want to live and work. It’s a design choice really, that supports a sustainable business. So that’s the first thing to say, I guess, about seasonality.
And right now in the micro season we have this wintry season when we’re kind of slowing down anyway. I’m a bit more tired and lethargic and hungry. I’m not running as much as I was in the summer and the spring because I was running at 6 o’ clock in the morning and now it’s pitch black. So. So there’s a sort of slowing down and again snuggling up by the fire and so on and, and I want to kind of lean into that and enjoy it. And yet there is this discomfort of slowing down, both as you just heard me say, in terms of the exercise and in terms of the business, of course, and, and I wanted to make this a really short episode today, given that it’s almost Christmas, but I’m. I’m here, I am babbling away. But it’s an important point that we have this general sense of unease when it comes to rest because we’ve internalised these pressures.
We’ve normalised the idea that we have to be busy all the time, we have to fill the gaps. Not to mention the fact that we are busy all the time because life is lifing and we have long to do lists of bills to be paid and this and that and doctor’s appointments and accounting and so on. It’s not that we’re making up these things, the reality is that they’ll always be there and, and we’ll never get to the end of it. And so we have this pressure that oh my gosh, if we slow down then everything will fall to pieces. Now the good news is most people are slowing down around now. So you know, if you do want to work, if you don’t have children, if you want to do a little bit of creative work or just admin and so on in the, in between days, then then by all means do that. The whole point is to design what works for you. But I would recommend that you do some of that stuff.
Not the day to day normal to do list that you’re always hustling through, but rather things that you don’t usually get round to. So use the opportunity to either do some of the backend admin that you don’t get around to or to do something creative and fun either. Is. Is good. But really the opportunity that comes with slowing down is that it becomes kind of a diagnostic window because when we don’t have all that activity happening, we sort of notice things better. We have an awareness of what’s feeling resistant or demanding or even impossible. And in fact, really, we’ve all had the experience. I’m sure that when we go on just a short holiday at the beginning, we can’t relax.
Or is that just me? And then after a while I’m like, ah, I’m fine, my business is fine. And, you know, I completely let go. So it is just very quickly normalising again, that different way of being. And then it’s quite hard to get back into work. Just like people, you know, taking work off, taking off work for parental leave and then coming back. Those transitions are very tricky. But it’s not to say that it’s, you know, it’s. It’s.
You can learn to adapt, is what I’m trying to say. And as I said in the intro, rest is, is not a reward. We don’t hustle until we earn rest. In that case, we’re never going to earn it, really. And by then we’ll have become so accustomed to hustling that we won’t really enjoy the rest. I tended to not so much now, in fact, not at all. Get migraines from. Not the actual stressful work, but the bit that comes after.
So your body manages to push through to get across a deadline or a big presentation or a really busy travel week or whatever. And it’s afterwards, it’s the weekend, it’s the holidays, when you then crash and burn, unfortunately, which then of course impacts your family and your enjoyment too. So let’s really choose what genuinely matters in the season rather than that usual kind of performing productivity. And when we have that kind of vacuum almost. And I say vacuum and again, I speak to. Of course, the Christmas season is a busy one for all of us and it may not feel like a vacuum in that sense. You’re constantly doing stuff, the magic and the family dramas and everything else. And yet when we kind of aren’t listening to podcasts every minute of the day, and we’re not kind of just racing through our to do list, we don’t have back to back meetings, et cetera.
When you stop filling every gap with doing, that can be very, very interesting in terms of what emerges or what emerges and that clarity that we often crave can arrive in those quiet moments. So we’re not completing, you know, unfortunately, or the reality is we won’t have hit all our goals this year, we won’t have finished all of our projects. And that’s the same in micro moments each day. We need to be comfortable with setting the boundary, choosing kind of okay, the day is complete now, and that’s okay, even though there are more things to do. So if you’re now wrapping up or if you’re, you know, already have and you’re feeling, ugh, you’ve just squeezed this podcast in just as one more thing to feel like you’re doing some work. Just allow yourself to let go, put the phone down and recognise the achievements of this year. And that means sort of end goals of, let’s say, income and launches and books you’ve written, etc. Etc.
But almost as important, if not more important, how you’ve shown up, the efforts you’ve put in, you’ve kept going even when you weren’t getting the results and when you were doubting yourself and even when people ghosted you and things were difficult and, and you doubted yourself and so on. That is something to be really celebrated. So not that you need my permission, but I want you to feel that you have permission to take this time completely off and also to take the time to reflect, to journal, maybe do some of those check ins reviews and things you haven’t had time to do. It’s completely up to you how you use the time. But if possible, really allow that, allow this gap, allow the vacuum, allow kind of the, yeah, the, the absence, the. Again, I’m reluctant to use the word emptiness because it’s full of other things, but allow that time away from your business to speak and diagnose what’s now feeling easier. You might get different perspective, just like if you, you know, go for a run or have a shower. I often get ideas for the business and so on.
More so than just staring at my computer or having a pen and paper and forcing myself to think of something. So all that’s left for me to say really is enjoy. Put those, you know, success scripts aside that we have to keep being busy. Oh, I didn’t get that done and I can get a head start on next year. No, we’ve got a week or so left of this year. Yes, I always say, you know, get a head start on next year and so we can hit the ground running. But that was weeks ago. That was months ago.
Now we’re talking days. So now please just enjoy the mince pies, the saffrons buhle, the mulled wine, glue, vine, whatever it is that you enjoy over Christmas, enjoy the friendships and used to be going through Radio Times, the magazine we had here in the UK with me circling all the TV programmes I wanted to watch. Those years are long gone, sadly, because it’s just all on demand. In my day, we used to look forward to like Greece would be shown on a weekend, you know, Boxing Day, TV and so on. But whatever the joy looks like for you now, the, the Christmas lights that you’re going to see, of course it’s about giving as much as receiving. I really wish you a lovely, lovely Christmas. For those of you who celebrate, I’ll pop in that caveat, of course. And I hope you, you reflect a little on the seasonality, the cycles of nature and allowing yourself to rest and then come back with a different kind of energy and final, not to be sort of doom saying, but, but this year I do remember quite a few people saying, oh, you know, the first few weeks of January were really hard.
I was ill. This happened, that happened. So please don’t now also set yourself up for, for that in January. Don’t think, oh, when I start on the 4th of January, I’m going to be a machine. I’m going to launch this, I’m going to create that and this, that and the other and sell this. Give yourself some compassion. Again, we’re talking days and weeks here, okay? We’re in this for the long haul and so, yes, new energy for the new year. And also let’s be compassionate with ourselves and focus on that incremental gain, consistent action over time and focusing on the long haul. We’ve got 12 fresh new months, plenty of time. So let’s enjoy this little break. In the meantime, I’ll see you for one final episode next week that you may or may not listen to over the break. If you are working or not working or you’ll be able to catch up in the new year. And in the meantime, wishing you a lovely Christmas.
If this conversation has resonated with you and you’d like to explore a more intentional, more human first way of building your business, then you can join the waitlist at intentionalexpert.com – it’s where you’ll find the next steps for creating a business that supports your energy, your rhythm and the life you actually want to live. That’s intentionalexpert.com.
