The Beauty of Autumn and Stories

“Autumn paints in colors that Summer has never seen.”

I like Autumn like no other season, the crisp air, the yellow, orange and red leaves, the smell of damp moss on trees in the forest and most of all the calm feeling of fulfillment. This year Autumn in Sweden has shown exceptionally golden trees and mountain ashes without leaves but covered with red berries. Painted with colors that Summer never sees.

The Autumn could be a time of calm and preparation for Winter, of looking back at what was achieved since Spring and being grateful for the harvest. Just like Stephen King writes about Autumn in one of his books: “It settles in the way an old friend will settle into your favorite chair and take out his pipe and light it and then fill the afternoon with stories of places he has been and things he has done since last he saw you.”

The Benefits of Telling Stories

We would also benefit from settling in, maybe light a fire and tell our stories about what we have done so far. Too often we only have one perspective – forward. That makes us miss out on learnings from the past, of connections to a history we can be proud of. It makes us feel as if we have not done enough and so we continue to hurry to do more and more. If we only take a moment in that armchair, gather our thoughts and listen to each other, we would know that we have achieved much more than we thought possible. We could get relief and rest, find new energy and be able to plan for next Spring in a much more efficient and powerful way, from the core of our being instead of from our misinterpretations of expectations from the surrounding.

The storytelling that we use in the Genuine Contact approach is not about dwelling in the past. It is about honoring the past, learning from it and then move on. Organizations that build in such checkpoints into their annual cycle will probably help their staff be more in balance, happier with their results and thus more efficient. That hour or two spent in storytelling or if we rather want to call it evaluation, will be worthwhile. And it will certainly increase internal communication, connections, and engagement.

“If a year was tucked inside of a clock, then autumn would be the magic hour.”
Victoria Erickson