Lean Quote: Fall is Here, Time to Let Go, and Renew

On Fridays I will post a Lean related Quote. Throughout our lifetimes many people touch our lives and leave us with words of wisdom. These can both be a source of new learning and also a point to pause and reflect upon lessons we have learned. Within Lean active learning is an important aspect on this journey because without learning we can not improve.

"Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall."   —  F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Fall season shows us that everything in life is fluid and changing and in order to move forward, we need to embrace the change. As the days get colder, the nights longer and the leaves on trees fewer, nature welcomes this new phase of its own existence.

When we see that despairing look of naked trees and dull skies, it may feel like everything is dying and this change is not for the better. Yet, without the fall, there would be no spring nor summer, and nature embraces this temporary death to reborn again in spring.

This is what we should do too. Not every change is positive, and a rare one goes smoothly. A period of transition almost always involves pain and crisis. But only when we learn to accept a new phase in our life, we realize that every change is for the better.

If it is a negative one, then it aims to shake our values and views, which will later be proven vital for our self-growth.

The Fall season also demonstrates that it is crucial to let go the things that belong to the past. Trees lose their leaves, and it is both sad and beautiful, painful and necessary, morbid and inevitable. Every fall, nature goes through this melancholic transition and says goodbye to the cheerful summer version of itself. Yet, it lets it go without regrets and welcomes the change.

This is an important life lesson for us to remember. If we don’t let things go and dwell on the past, our personal growth stops and we eventually find ourselves stuck in life.