Alignment: A Seasonal Reflection

What does it actually mean to live in alignment?

It's a phrase I hear often—in counselling spaces, wellness communities, spiritual teachings, the chiropractor’s office, and increasingly in everyday conversation.

I want to feel more aligned.

This doesn't feel aligned anymore.

I'm trying to live in alignment with who I am.

But what exactly are we aligning ourselves with?

Lately, I've been thinking about alignment as less of a destination and more of an ongoing relationship with ourselves.

Alignment & Values

From my perspective as a counsellor, one of the most practical ways we can understand alignment is through our values.

Our values are the qualities and principles that matter deeply to us: connection, creativity, family, freedom, compassion, integrity, adventure, service, spirituality, stability—or countless others.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), for example, places considerable emphasis on identifying our values and taking actions that move us toward them. 

Rather than waiting until we feel completely certain, healed, confident, or ready, we can ask:

What matters to me most in this moment, and what choice moves me in that direction?

In that sense, alignment becomes something surprisingly practical.

It lives in the decisions we make every day.

And importantly, I am learning that an aligned decision doesn't always feel comfortable.

There is often a liminal space between recognising that something needs to change and becoming settled in whatever comes next. Even when we've chosen the change ourselves—even when we know it reflects our values—we may still encounter uncertainty, grief, discomfort, or the unfamiliar.

I notice nature offering this reminder everywhere right now.

As August gives way to September, the shift isn't particularly subtle. After weeks of heat, cooler mornings arrive - and even though I welcome the cooler mornings but they still take some time for me to adjust. Storms roll through…and they are beautiful and majestic, but I can’t help but worry slightly of the damage they can do. I love autumn, and I welcome this shift, but it still requires a period of adjustment.

Perhaps our own life transitions aren't so different.

We can be ready for a new season of life and still need time to acclimatise.

So I can’t help but wonder lately, that maybe alignment isn't the absence of discomfort or uncertainty. Maybe it's learning to recognize when something is changing—and allowing ourselves the time and space to reorient as it does.

Sometimes living according to our values asks us to disappoint someone. To leave something familiar. To establish a boundary. To take a risk. To admit that something which once fit us no longer does.

Discomfort doesn't necessarily mean we're moving in the wrong direction.

Often, discomfort accompanies change - even positive change.

Alignment Is Not a Destination

In some spiritual and New Age spaces, alignment can sound almost like a destination—as though eventually we'll arrive at the perfectly aligned version of our lives, where everything flows effortlessly and uncertainty disappears.

I'm not sure I believe that's how it works.

I think we're always moving toward alignment while simultaneously being given opportunities to embody the present moment - which in itself can be a way of practicing alignment.

And what feels aligned may change; and that's okay. Change doesn't make us inauthentic. Authenticity doesn't require us to remain consistent with every version of ourselves we've ever been. As we grow, learn, and move through different seasons of life, our priorities may shift—and the way we express our values may shift with them.

Astrology has offered me an interesting way of understanding this.  I think of our essential nature as something relatively enduring, while the way that nature is expressed changes through different planetary cycles, transits, and seasons of life. The essence remains, but its expression evolves.

Often, living authentically means making room for change - making room to evolve.

Nature changes.

Our circumstances change.

Our relationships change.

Our priorities change.

The seasons change.

Something that represented our values beautifully five years ago may no longer fit the person we've become.

I am learning that “staying in alignment” can require periodic reorientation.

Not because we've lost our way, but because we're alive.

Returning to Ourselves

Of course, knowing our values isn't always easy.

We live within families, cultures, workplaces, communities, and relationships that carry their own ideas about what a meaningful life should look like.

Sometimes the voice of obligation becomes so familiar that it's difficult to distinguish:

What do I actually want?

from What have I learned that I should want?

This is where practices of reflection can become valuable.

Mindfulness, meditation, gratitude practices, reflective journaling, time in nature, therapy, contemplative practices—and many other approaches—can create enough quiet for us to become curious about our own inner landscape and tune into how that landscape might be changing.

Not because there's a perfectly formed "authentic self" hidden somewhere that we need to uncover.

But because self-knowledge is something we continually cultivate.

We begin noticing what brings us alive.

What consistently drains us.

What we keep returning to.

What matters enough that we're willing to experience some discomfort in order to protect it.

Reorientation

September has brought me to reflect on all of these questions.

We're standing between seasons—not quite summer anymore, but not fully autumn either. Nature itself seems to be recalibrating.

And if Mother Nature is so unapologetically recalibrating - I feel like I can give myself permission to as well; realising that alignment doesn't require knowing exactly where we're going.

Sometimes it requires total surrender to the process and and giving ourselves just a moment to notice when our internal compass is asking us to adjust course.

And perhaps that is the invitation of this season:

Not to have everything figured out.

Not to dramatically reinvent ourselves.

But to pause long enough to tune inward and ask:

What matters to me now?

Does the way I'm living reflect what I say matters to me?

The answers don't necessarily need to be different than they were five years ago—or even five months ago. Sometimes reflection calls us toward change. Other times, it affirms that the path we're already walking still feels true.

Perhaps alignment is simply giving ourselves enough space to ask these questions honestly, and enough permission to trust the answers—whether they call us toward change, or toward a deeper commitment to what is already here.

I’m beginning to wonder whether alignment is about arrival at all.

Maybe, at the heart of it, is the ongoing practice of tuning inward, noticing where and who we are, and choosing—again and again—to live from what matters most in that moment. 

Wishing you peace, until we meet again

-Tamara