Finding Strong Ground: A Back-to-School Reset

Back-to-school season is a natural transition point — a reminder to pause, like a canal lock filling before a boat can move to the next water level. Use this reset to ask which of your routines are serving you on purpose, and which are just running on autopilot.

Summertime

As a kid, I used to visit my great-grandma’s cabin up in Canada, right next to Chaffey’s Lock on the Rideau Canal, between Indian Lake and Opinicon Lake in Rideau Lakes, Ontario. We’d watch the boats go up and down on long summer days while the fish nibbled our toes. What struck me most as a kid was that it took time for the lock to fill or drain in order to safely move a boat from one water level to another. You couldn’t rush it. The system just needed what it needed.

I recently finished Brené Brown’s latest book, Strong Ground, and she talks a lot about the lock metaphor —  and processes she describes as “locking in and locking through”.

“Locking In: This is how we gear up, focus, and spend our cognitive energy to get tough things done at work.

So when school started back up for my kiddos, it felt a bit rocky at first and like I needed to lock in. New grades and teachers. New activities. Restarting old sports, trying new ones. Homework routines rebooting — all on top of maintaining ongoing projects at work, some new volunteer commitments, and just holding the status quo together.

But it reminded me that back-to-school time can also be the perfect time to lock through and pause during the transition period where everything — kids, schedules, routines, expectations — has to shift from one water level to another. For all my working parents out there: these transitions take time to equilibrate. I choose to believe that’s not a flaw in the system. It’s the system working the way it’s supposed to– it’s the great reminder to pause and re-evaluate.

The Pause

The lock-through process has me thinking more intentionally about the things I’ve always done “a certain way,” or that perhaps evolved without ever really being examined — and asking myself: is this serving the purpose as intended? Is there a different way? … Perhaps a more useful, practical, or easier way?

Sometimes we do hard things intentionally — lift weights, push through a hard workout, take the harder right over the easier wrong. But sometimes we’re doing something the hard way just because that’s how we’ve always done it, and we’ve never given it much thought. That’s not toughness. That’s just unexamined autopilot.

Back to Strong Ground: “When we don’t make the time for the lock-through process—when we fail to take the time to transition and level up or down with our new environment—we can quickly find ourselves questioning why, just hours ago, when work seemed overwhelming, we were longing to be in the very place that we now find ourselves trying to escape.” She describes how skipping that lock-through process, rushing past the transition instead of letting it run its course, can leave you disoriented — questioning why you once longed for the very place you’re now trying to escape.

Another idea from it has stuck with me: the paradox of being “tough and tender.” Real strength, she argues, isn’t about gritting through everything the same way every time — it’s about knowing when to stay locked-in, and when to lock-through and let something go. It’s a stance, not a posture you hold rigidly no matter what’s in front of you.

“If you can’t lock through after being locked in and getting shit done, your lock-in power is compromised and will degrade over time.”

Brené Brown, Dare to Lead podcast

Anything that treats the human spirit as one or the other, she said, is only telling half the story.

The Pivot

This got me thinking about COVID — and how it was such a huge disruptor, on so many levels I won’t get into here — but there were a ton of tough-and-tender moments in it. It forced us to lock in but also to re-examine the status quo and question the way we were doing things, both inside and outside the hospital. It forced us to ask why. And to ask if there was a different way?!

Grocery shopping became online delivery. In-person meetings became Zoom and work-from-home options. Doctor visits became telehealth. We redesigned entire systems almost overnight — not because we wanted to, but because we had to.

And it also reminded us why social connection and real, in-person meetups matter. Not everything that got disrupted needed to stay disrupted. Some of it, we brought back on purpose, because it earned its place.

That’s the tough-and-tender paradox in action: question everything, but don’t tear it all down. Keep what’s genuinely serving you. Redesign what isn’t. Lock in, and lock through.

As school gets back in session — which is an annual built-in disruption point — remember, it can serve as a transition point and time to “lock through,” just the same way that lock on the Rideau Canal did.  I’m using this time to reset. I’m asking myself if there are things I’m doing right now that aren’t actually serving me and looking for alternatives.

Your Back-to-School Reset: Next Steps

Name the “always done it this way” habits. Walk through your week and flag anything you do purely out of routine — not because you’ve ever actually decided it’s the best way. Your morning routine. Meal prep. Drop-off logistics. How you handle homework help. The stuff that’s been running on autopilot since who-knows-when.

Ask the disruption question. For each one: if I had to rebuild this from scratch today, would I do it this way? If the honest answer is no, that’s your signal. Not a five-alarm emergency — just a nudge to pay attention.

Borrow from your own COVID playbook. The system proved it could redesign grocery shopping, meetings, and healthcare delivery. We have the muscle for this. What’s one system at home you could redesign — not because you have to, but because you now know you can?

Keep what earned its place back. Not everything COVID changed was worth keeping — in-person connection mattered enough to bring back. Same applies here. Some of your “old ways” are old because they work. This isn’t disruption for its own sake. It’s the tough-and-tender paradox: hold onto what’s real, let go of what’s just habit.

Pick one thing, not ten. This isn’t a full life overhaul in month one of school. Choose a single habit or system to examine this week. Small, deliberate change compounds — that’s how you find your strong ground without burning down the whole house to get there.

Back-to-school doesn’t have to mean back to autopilot. It can be the reset point you didn’t know you needed — a chance to ask, deliberately, what’s actually serving you (and your children!) this season and what’s just leftover habit wearing the costume of necessity.

What’s one thing on your list right now that’s been running on autopilot? I’d love to hear it, email me.

P.S. If this kind of intentional audit is something you want support working through, this is exactly the territory the ALIGN Method’s Audit stage was built for. Sign up for a free call.

FAQ

What does it mean to “lock in and lock through”?

It’s a concept from Brené Brown’s book Strong Ground, describing the paradox of toughness — knowing when to stay locked into a hard task, and when to lock through and let it go so you can transition into your next environment or role.

Why does back-to-school season feel so overwhelming for working moms?

If you feel overwhelmed, you aren’t alone! Buried in partial relief, there’s often some overwhelm for all of us. Back-to-school brings a cluster of transitions at once — new schedules, activities, and routines — on top of existing work and home responsibilities. Without a deliberate pause to re-evaluate, habits and commitments can really stack up. 

What is the ALIGN Method’s Audit stage?

The Audit stage is the first step of the ALIGN Method, where you examine where your time and energy are actually going before deciding what to keep, change, or let go of.