There's a particular morning every year when I step outside in Ouray and the air just feels different. It's still technically summer on the calendar, but the light has changed angle, the aspens up on the mountainside have started their first flush of gold, and there's a crispness in the early hours that wasn't there a week before. It happens fast here, tucked into this box canyon. One day I'm still in sandals, the next I'm digging through the closet for a flannel I forgot I owned. And every year, this shift catches something in me too.

I had a client recently tell me she wants to be brave, not courageous. She'd learned that courage means doing something while afraid, and she's done with fear. She wants to skip right past it.

But here's what I'm learning: alignment doesn't happen in one big shift. It happens in the small stuff. The tiny steps we'd rather skip.

What if this year, instead of rushing past the hard parts, we got curious about them?