Season of Life is a concept I learned from Jim Rohn, and I always pay tribute to his teaching as my first business mentor. Understanding seasons as an integrated and necessary part of our life has helped me on my journey and has allowed me to evolve with a deeper understanding of the teachings that nature offers.
First Considerations
Life and our processes of change are part of the seasons of life, and this analogy is quite suggestive in order to see the normal stages that accompany our personal development in a particular area of life. Thus, we have the seasons of our life as a whole, as well as the seasons related to different stages of life.
Seasons of Life: Winter
We will start with winter because it is your hardening period, the one in which you have to learn how to deal with and especially how to master these winters in your life. The list of winters is full of challenging events for our lives: various physical illnesses, depressions, empty pockets, crises, enemies seeking us, loneliness, pain, disappointments in love…
However, what exists in any winter is the opportunity, the perspective to be better than it is. Strong people will see in winter the period in which they become stronger and wiser. But there is also a large category that only waits for winter to pass, doing nothing. Think about what a wasted time, a time in which you have learned nothing but only wait for better times. Indeed, it may be a good idea not to do certain things, but personal development can be part of this period, regardless of the circumstance. However, you can replace what you don’t want with new resources.
For example: instead of feeling sorry for yourself and saying that you wish you had no more problems, wish to have more talents. Instead of wanting it to be easier for you, wish to become better.
In any winter, there is an opportunity, do not forget that. And the one who truly learns from winters will have the satisfaction of the person who has seen and felt both sides of the barricade. Like the story of the shell that makes pearls, so can we become more beautiful, gems when we know how to heal the pain. Only the suffering shell makes pearls, just like in the case of great artists and masters, we all go through our winters, but if we use winter to produce pearls, that depends on us. Especially if everyone knows that after every winter, spring comes.
Seasons of Life: Spring:
“Either you plant in spring or you beg in autumn.”
Spring is the miracle after the hard times, it’s the period in which you feel that you can breathe relieved because what was harder has passed. But whoever does this loses the entire sowing period associated with spring. Just after hard times, you can see associatively the best of what was – why it was, and if you implement what you learned, you will be on the right track toward results.
It’s the best period not to stay still. In spring, be active, plant, sow, plan intelligently, and open your eyes to how life begins to take shape and make sense around you. You are about to open up like a flower, provided you do not succumb to the temptation to waste this period or fall into total asthenia for the whole season.
Seasons of Life: Summer
Summer is an interesting season in which new lessons to be learned emerge. After you have sown, all the beetles, pests, invaders, thieves, and those who want to take what you have carefully planted in the spring start to appear. Thus, summer becomes the season of protection and realization that everything you have done can be lost if you are not careful, and thus you may end up in autumn with things stolen, taken, destroyed, or robbed.
Just as your harvest requires water and attention, so do your own dreams and plans need continuity and protection. Here we can also add social, family, political, and spiritual values… All of these need care and protection.
So be careful in the summer not to lose the fruits of your labor. Anything that grows, anything that has value, or becomes valuable naturally attracts all sorts of “vampires”. Keeping this in mind, cherish everything you have done and don’t spend too much time daydreaming at the beach, otherwise, you might have a grasshopper autumn.
Seasons of Life: Autumn
The season of maturity and responsibility.
No matter how your autumn turns out, it reflects the fruits of your labor from spring and summer. The biggest responsibility comes from taking ownership of your harvest, whether it meets your expectations or not. When you look around in autumn, you will know exactly how much you have dedicated to your cause and how much you have succeeded in reaping from what you have set out to do.
Autumn can be extremely enchanting and fulfilling for some, and a miserable, unproductive season for others. However, regardless of the outcome, taking responsibility for it as the result of our planning, actions, and attention will open the door to true human maturity.
If you start looking for excuses and reasons that have nothing to do with you in this season, it means that the seasons have passed you by.
If you blame everyone, from politicians to your neighbor for your unsatisfactory harvest, it means that the rest of the seasons make no sense, and you have nothing to say about the harvest you receive.
If you let the pests eat your harvest, it means that you have not taken enough care of your crops.
Until you take responsibility for your actions and your life, expect others to always be in control. And then you can complain about something that you didn’t even contribute to.
Autumn shows you exactly how things stand, but strong people are not discouraged by one or two autumns without a harvest. They take ownership of what they have done, learn from it, and do everything possible to make the next autumn a fruitful one.
Seasons of Maturity
Once upon a time, there was a man who had four sons.
He wanted his sons to learn not to judge things too quickly. So he sent each one on a quest to go and see a tree that was at a considerable distance, but one by one, in each season. The first son went in winter, the second in spring, the third in summer, and the fourth in autumn.
After they had all finished their rounds, the father called them together and asked them to describe what they had seen.
The first son said, “The tree was ugly, twisted, and bent.”
The second said, “No, it was covered with green buds and full of promises.”
The third said, “It was full of flowers, smelled so sweet, and looked so beautiful that I think it was the most graceful thing I’ve ever seen.”
The last son, disapproving of them all, said, “It was full of fruit, full of life and fulfillment.”
The father then explained to the boys that they were all right because each one had seen only one season in the life of that tree. He added that you cannot judge a tree or a person by only one season and that the essence of who they really are, the pleasure, joy, and love that come from life, can only be measured at the end when all seasons have had their time.
“If you give up in winter, you will miss the promises of spring, the beauty of summer, and the fulfillment of autumn.”
~ Cristina Imre – Transformational Keynote Speaker | Executive Coach | Business Strategist | Serial Entrepreneur