Each September, I find myself hesitating at the thought of the new term ahead  – longing for the return of Summer, reluctant to get back to the familiar turns of the days and weeks.

There is something about the mid-Summer months that feels different; routines are cast by the wayside, there’s a certain degree of topsy-turviness to life.  All is a riot of colour and bloom in the height of warmth and light.

And when September and the cooler months come along, it can feel a little flat.

The return to old routine…

But things are not the same.

Because we are different.  The same, but different.

Whatever our experience of this Summer, the past few months, even days, even minutes, becomes a part of who we are.

Each of our reactions, inactions, interactions effect us deeply, become part of our consciousness and what we take forward with us.

We might well feel the same, the routines soon feel familiar and the hazy days of misrule of the Summer soon feel like long, long ago.

But fear not. They are not gone.

They are a part of us, things to be cherished for the things we have enjoyed; lessons to be cherished for what we have learned.  The big, the small, the joyful, the disappointing, the heart-breaking.  All of it experience.

And so it will go on.

Once we find ourselves back in the routine of daily life, it can be easy to overlook the subtleties and differences in the everyday.   We as humans are so deeply adaptable, it is almost a human condition to take things for granted.

Including the fact that we have these tools – yoga included – of awakening to living a more conscious life and finding the path to true happiness.

I listened to a TED talk recently that proposed to reverse the formula for happiness and success, suggesting that it is not SUCCESS that makes us happy, but HAPPINESS that makes us successful.

Doesn’t this make perfect sense?

How we process our experiences, how we process our experience of the world – as positive or negative – has a direct impact on our productivity.   The more positively we view our place in the world, the more inclined we are to think bigger, reach higher, believe in our potential.  The more successful we might become and the more successful we understand ourselves to be.

And luckily, the tools of yoga are perfectly designed to enable this mind-shift:

• Practicing gratitude makes us more aware of the rich abundance of our lives
• Meditation helps us to unplug from the frenzied pace of life and learn focus
• Exercise teaches our body that our behaviour matters
• Practicing kindness: Random acts of kindness to others create ripples of positivity beyond ourselves.

These simple practices retrain our brains to look for the positive first, and to scan the world around us to see positive, rather than negative.

Things might look the same; same body, same routine, and yet things are constantly evolving on the inside.  We can choose how we evolve.  We can choose subtle shifts to live more positively and become more awake.

We are the same, but different.