Between Jim Rohn’s The Seasons of Life and Neil Howe and William Strauss The Fourth Turning, my view on life has completely changed. The idea – life is not linear, it’s cyclical. That life works in distinct seasons rather than by age. This concept emphasizes the importance of embracing the natural rhythms and phases of life, that each season serves a purpose in the overall journey of your personal evolution. These seasons—Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter— each have their own set of opportunities, challenges, and experiences. This understanding of life allows you to alter your expectations and decision-making process, embracing the seasonal nature of life.
Spring: Planting the Seeds of Greatness
For a gardener, spring is all about ensuring a fertile ground for the planting of seeds. Getting ready for the harvest in the coming seasons. It’s a timing game. You’re uncertain if the seed will prosper, but despite the uncertainty you embrace both possibilities.
Spring is the season of learning, growth, and laying the foundation for future success. It’s where you plant the seeds of your goals and aspirations and allow them to take form.
Think of the fertile ground as your mind and the compost you feed the soil, your beliefs. What are the consistent beliefs you feed your mind? When starting something new are you full of doubts or optimism? Do you have the patience to wait for the seed to grow? Or are you Sowing one seed, feeling disappointed it hasn’t done anything, then neglecting that seed and sowing another one thinking that one will grow faster?
How To Create Your Spring Season?
Think about a time when you started something new. A new job, career path, moved to a different city, finally started that side hustle that you swear is the next million-dollar idea. Or perhaps it was when a new relationship started to take its shape. What mindset did you bring to your Spring season? The problem occurs when we are in Spring but our expectations want us to be in Summer.
Your Spring season is for you to:
- Set attainable goals. Get help in this area if you need to, you set yourself up for failure when you set unrealistic goals.
- Laying the foundation. This means creating good habits for you to achieve your goals.
- Acquiring knowledge and skills to attain those goals. If you want something new, you need new skills.
- Nurturing your aspirations. Keeping a tight grip on your mental attitude. It’s hard to achieve your goals when you don’t nurture them with optimism, enthusiasm, or a sense of possibility.
Summer: Nurturing Your Growth
Summer is the season of growth, abundance, and the beginning stages of seeing the fruits of your labor. It’s the time when the seeds you planted in Spring begin to bear fruit. Where you can see your Spring efforts yield tangible results. While it’s exciting to see the seeds you once planted bear fruit. Don’t mistake the fruit for being ripe.
Summer is the season for long weekend getaways, and Summer Fridays in the office. Summer can feel like it’s time to take a break and enjoy the weather outside. While it is important to take time to celebrate your victories, don’t mistake the fruit for being ripe just because you see it. This season is when you double down on your diligence in cultivating your goals, continue your focus, and lean into determination to keep going instead of giving up.
How To Create Your Summer Season?
Think of the last time you were in peak performance, where you could see your hard work and dedication begin to pay off. Seizing opportunities, overcoming obstacles, and seeing the beginning stages of your achievements.
Your Summer season is for you to:
- Capitalize on opportunities. Be open to hard work when it’s presented.
- Harness your strengths and remember those habits you built in Spring, this is their time to shine.
- Continue to pursue your goals with determination while enjoying the feeling of accomplishment.
Autumn: Reaping the Harvest and Embracing Change
Autumn has two phases. First, Harvest time. Enjoying the fruits of your labor. Where the seeds you sowed come into full maturity. Where you are in full control. Even if there are setbacks, you’ve built the habits and learned the knowledge to deploy when challenges arise. This is when your resilience is in full force. Where abundance feels like second nature and gratitude is your natural operating system.
The second half of this season is a time when things begin to slow down. It’s about transition and transformation. Unwinding typically happens in this season. Which naturally can cause some uncertainty. You’ve reaped the rewards of your efforts and begin to reflect on the journey that brought you to this very moment. It’s the time to accept and embrace the lessons of impermanence.
Before leaving my previous career, I had finally gotten to a place in my career where I felt good about what I was doing, I was confident and things felt easy. Which gave me the time to reflect. Through that reflection, I realized I was ready to move on from that 16-year-old’s dream. I was ready to try something different. At times it felt like a hard pill to swallow. I had put my blood, sweat, and tears into that career and at the turn of a decision, I would be going back to square one all over again. Embracing the lessons of impermanence.
How To Create Your Autumn Season?
When was a time of reflection and introspection, where you paused to appreciate how far you’ve come and everything that’s going well in your life? A time when you were able to let go of what no longer served you and openly embraced change?
Your Autumn season is for you to:
- Celebrate and have gratitude. This season is all about the good times, giving yourself permission to look up and enjoy the views. Embodying gratitude for all the hard work you put in.
- Assessing progress. Is there more to grow into? This is the introspection and consolidation part of the season. Be completely honest with yourself if you want to continue down this journey or begin a new season.
- Letting go. If you want to live a well-balanced life, having multiple mountains to climb in life is vital. This may be a moment of reflection, letting go, and re-assessing for a new venture.
- Preparation for the next phase of your journey. If this looks like a new career shift or living in a different country, take time to prepare for what’s ahead. Set yourself up for the next season.
Winter: Rest, Renewal, and Inner Reflection
The Winter season is about rest and hibernation, as things slow down it’s time to reconnect to the different parts of your inner world. Winter can feel frustrating. It may appear that nothing is on the horizon, the landscape feeling barren from all the snow, but beneath the surface, growth and transformation are occurring.
It can be easy to fall into the trap of thinking rest to mean stopping. Even when we sleep, we are hardly resting. While we sleep, our body regenerates itself for the day to come. Our subconscious sorts through the previous day’s events allowing some of your experiences to die with the past and others to grow.
How To Create Your Winter Season?
When was the last time you were in winter? Maybe it’s now. Facing adversity or trying to navigate through a transitional period in your life. This is the season to discover your reservoir of strength, push the boundaries of your resilience, and tap into that inner wisdom you’ve created through the last 3 seasons. It’s always darkest before dawn, ready to begin the next chapter of your journey.
Your Winter season is for you to:
- Recharge your batteries. Rest, renew, rejuvenate. Take time to slow down and reflect.
- Do a lessons learned. What did the past 3 seasons teach you? What insights and wisdom can you pass on to others from your experiences?
- Envision new possibilities for the future. This is my favorite part of winter. Dreaming about a new future. Take your time here to imagine all the possibilities that have opened up for you now that you have gone through the previous 3 seasons.
Last Thoughts
While seasons don’t have a time limit or frame, they are predictable. The more you pay attention to what season you’re in, the more you can prepare for the season to come. By understanding the natural cycles and stages of your life, you can learn to be more strategic about your decision-making and the goals you want to set out for. Ensuring that you make the right decisions at the right time, based on what season of life you are in. And most of all, I hope by knowing what season you are in, you can give yourself more grace and less frustration as you grow through each season.