What the Trees Know

Thursday. And the first leaves are starting to turn now — just the eager ones, the maples that always go early — which gives me my favorite annual occasion to talk about what the trees know.

Here’s what a tree does in fall: it lets go of what it can’t sustain through the coming season. Not sadly. Not as failure. As strategy. The leaves were never meant to be permanent — they did their job all summer, and now the tree releases them so it can survive the winter and grow new ones in spring. The letting go is the plan.

And here’s the Thursday connection: your Hidden Win Inventory should occasionally include what you’ve released. The commitment you finally stepped back from. The grudge you set down. The standard that was never yours to begin with. We count what we’ve built — we should also count what we’ve had the wisdom to drop.

What have you let go of this year? That’s a win. The trees would agree.

The letting go is the plan. Count what you’ve released among your wins — the trees would agree.

What’s something you let go of this year that turned out to be the right call?