91 - Thrive in the Seasons of Life - Start with Small Steps

At any age or season of life, there is a purpose, a thing to learn, and an action you should take. Whatever comes your way, learn to thrive.

The Four Seasons

Spring is a time to be young and curious and grow some roots. Learn everything. Question everything. Try things and meet new people.
Summer is the time to branch out and create stronger roots. It is the adulthood of your life. Make choices and make connections. Experiment and plan and decide how your life should go.
Autumn – This is a time to cash out the rewards and growth you achieved in your life. Plan for your next season by planning and setting aside the rewards you gathered.
Winter – It is a time to enjoy and teach. Take all the. Opportunities you gained and prepared for the next adventure or the next thing. Enjoy the roots and branches of your life. You worked hard for them!

Every Season has a Purpose – Keep in mind that each season has a purpose in nature. Trees grow and fruit and drop their leaves because of their purpose. Find the purpose of the season. Find what you need to learn or do or not do. Keeping the purpose in mind will allow you to do what is needed and thrive.

Seasons as a Short Period of Time – Sometimes seasons are discussed as periods of times that are either good for certain goals or activities or bad for them. Is it a season to get a new job or is a season to sit tight and keep still? Know what season you are in. Find the purpose of the season and figure out what you should do or not do. Figure out whom you need to teach about this season and help them thrive.

Challenge

Figure out two different seasons that you’re in, first, figure out not when it comes to age. But when it comes to the mentality you’re having. Are you in spring, where you’re learning summer, where you’re growing autumn when you’re reaping the benefits, or winter when you’re cozy up? Or when you’re cozy and drinking hot cocoa and thinking about and reflecting on your life? Again, it’s not based on the real seasons, it’s based on where you’re at right now. Then try to come up with some minor seasons. Are you in a season of job growth? Are you in a season of job learning? Maybe you just got a new job? Or are you in a season of moving,

Links

Transcript

Hello, everybody. Welcome to the podcast. Have you ever wondered how life is like the seasons of the year? Not only when it comes to our age, but when it comes to how to react to certain things that are going on. That’s what we’ll talk about today. All the trees are losing their leaves and not one of them is worried. Donald Miller. I’ve been introduced to this concept about seasons of life. And sometimes people mean it to say that when you’re in your spring of life, that means you’re young and summer is adulthood. And then autumn would be middle age as you’re starting to think towards retirement. And then winter is in your older age. And it tends to be derogatory a bit. And the movie line and Winter is about Henry II and it’s a stark time, his reign was not everything it should have been, his kids are grown and plotting to overthrow his rule. This is a stark view of a king at the end. It’s sad and it tries to bring that idea of winter into it. But that’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about the fact that every season, whether they’re about age or they’re about certain time points, is an opportunity for us to grow, do better, and have new adventures. This is about optimism and finding our path, regardless of where we’re at or what’s happening around us. I came across this topic, I think, because it’s talked about more often in Christian families that they’ll say something like, “Well, I was going to go look for another job, but now the economy isn’t doing very well. It’s not the right season.” So they’re not even talking about it in terms of age. They’re talking about it in more of, “You plant when it’s time to plant, and you reap when it’s time to reap. You plow when it’s time to plow. Do the thing that is the best thing that you can do right at this moment.” And I think that’s so valuable to how we do things in life, particularly when we’re having a little bit of turmoil in our economics, when there’s some bad statistics when it comes to the economy, when there’s time of war and other things that we have to look at the seasons of our life to determine what it is we need to do. So we’re going to break it down a little bit both ways of looking at it. And so the first one to look at it is, like I said, when it comes to age. Spring is when we are young, the grass is coming up, everything is new and green. That’s our childhood. We observe and learn everything that we can. We take in everything that we can take in. Springtime is when we have to take advantage of new things, new learning, new ideas. we’re talking about being a young person or we talk about the springtime of our life right now. Maybe we took on a new job, maybe we just started retiring, or maybe we just got out of college. It is the springtime of our life and it’s time for us to grow and learn and listen and find out new things. Then the summer is what they say is when you’re starting to put down roots, when you’re starting to grow. If you were a tree, you would start to branch out a little bit and you’re establishing yourself. You’ve learned a lot, you’ve listened a lot, and now you’re starting to make some decisions. If it’s in terms of your life, that might mean that you have picked a job, a career, bought a house, or at least picked a town to live in, and now it’s time to take what you’ve learned and start to grow them into the decisions that you’ve made. It’s time to reach out a little bit. Again, if you’re a tree, you’re putting those branches out and trying to grab new experiences. It’s time to experiment. You know, even in times of life, if this were talking about age, a lot of people will travel the world at this point because they have few obligations and a lot of time so they can get more travel done. It’s times to maybe start a small business or try something new that will make your life much more full. Whether again you’re talking about age of summer, your beginning of your adulthood, or you’re talking about a time in your life when maybe you decided to move to a new town and you just put down a deposit on a house and you decided that it’s time to start branching out just like a tree. Autumn tends to be the harvest. If we’re talking about age groups, we’re talking about when we’re starting to reap the benefits of the career we put down, the the family we put together, maybe our kids are starting to grow and leave the house. We got our house exactly how we wanted it. You know, maybe initially we bought a starter house, but now we’re in a house or a town we really like. And all that experience, all the things that you learned, all that experimentation and stretching and growing branches you did in your adulthood, now it’s the time to make those pay off. Maybe you started a business and it didn’t go very well. Maybe now that you know better, you know what you like, that’s the time where you really are going to grow in the autumn, and that’s really when you’re going to take advantage of all the branching you did in your adulthood and do what they say is to sharpen the ax, that’s autumn. It’s also a point where you’re going to put your eyeball on the next phase. you’re gonna try to make sure that in the next phase, you’re set to go. Whether that’s money for retirement, a plan for retirement, or keeping yourself healthy so that when you do retire, or at least slow down a little bit when it comes to work, you can have the healthiest, most financially successful opportunities in your next phase in life. The idea here is that you’re gonna do things when you can, as you grow older, that might change a little bit. So you need to think about what it is you’re harvesting in the autumn of your life, or if it comes down to a time period, maybe you have reached a reward in your career. You’ve been promoted, you’ve been given a different opportunity. And now through all your experiences, you have some expertise in that area. I feel like even in my own career, I’ve reached this point where I’m really good at some things. I think that I can go to a customer now that I’ve learned everything I could, I tried experiments, I’ve reached out, I educated myself, I became a master of knowledge in these things, now I’m reaping the benefits by going out to my customer sites and helping them learn what it is they need to do in order to use our software better. I feel like I’m in that autumn phase of my career where I’m really reaping all the benefits of everything I did up to this point. And then winter, again, sometimes people think of it as a difficulty or look at it as a hardship. But to be honest with you, I don’t think we should because what else do we do in wintertime? It is a time where we hunker. We watch the snowflakes fall. We enjoy the quieter downtime. we rest a little bit and we find new hobbies and new activities to do that aren’t so based on being outside, stretching, growing, branching out. And so we shouldn’t judge our lives based on whether or not we’re in winter. This is how we can spend our time. And what we can do is teach the next generation, the summers and the springs and the autumn, all the lessons we learned to help them do better too. So don’t think of winter time, whether again, we’re talking about older age, or we’re talking about a career that maybe is coming to a close, or retirement, or something that you are counting on that’s just not producing the way you thought it should. And this is your time to take a step back, think about what’s going on, reflect on what’s happening, and maybe even just enjoy your time a little bit. That’s winter. It shouldn’t be the negative thing that everyone sometimes refers to it. I think the nice thing about seasons is that we have to realize, just like when I walk out in the trees in every season, everything has a purpose at that moment. Whether it’s spring, the tree is trying to grow new leaves. Whether it’s summer, the tree is soaking in the water and bringing everything together. And then comes the fruiting, where it’s gonna produce the fruit and is gonna produce the benefit that it has as a purpose for that tree. A pear tree is meant to grow pears and a plum tree is meant to grow plums. And what is your tree meant to grow? And then think that at this particular season, what is my purpose? What is the reason that I’m here? And what will be the next season if I do this successfully? And try to think of it more like that. I think that sometimes when we get into these more judgmental views of the seasons of our lives, it’s sad almost, you know, that we think that winter is a time where it’s all kind of coming to a slow end. This is a time when you’re ready to make your next leap, when you’re plotting your next move, when you’re relaxing and resting up so that you have your best energy. That’s wintertime. For springtime, it’s a time to take opportunities, Grab them, go, act, move. It’s the Mel Robbins, five, four, three, two, one, go. It’s the time that we are supposed to be soaking in everything that we could and taking advantage of it. And then the summertime is when we’re going to grow and nourish and feed our business and feed our careers and feed our family and really start branching out in everything we do. And then that fall is where you start taking the right actions to harvest what you’re supposed to harvest. So I really don’t want anyone to think about any of these as being a negative time. The seasons are really meant to be a place where you know what next thing to do. But let’s take it down and break it down into a little bit of a smaller piece, maybe not just the four seasons. Let’s talk about seasons in another term, because I think that a lot of times when Christian families talk about seasons or other people talk about seasons, they’re meaning it on a more minuscule scale. They’re just meaning that it’s the right time to do something. Is this the right time to have a family? That’s a season. It’s a season of my family. Is it the right time for me to get a new job? That’s a season of reaching out and getting a new job. So you don’t even have to think about seasons as it comes to these four major blocks of time. Instead, think about them in smaller bits and think about them as a chance for you to do something. You know, I think that a lot of times people had plans and then the pandemic came along. Okay, this isn’t the season for me to get a new job. This is a season for me to buy a house or maybe to have a family. Or I was thinking maybe it’s a season to get a dog. Smaller, tinier seasons. You take a look at what’s going on around you and figure out what’s the best thing to do at this moment. Right now, we’re having economic troubles, but there are a lot of jobs out there that are struggling to find people to fill them. So maybe this is not the season to buy a house. Maybe this is a season to get a new job. It just changed over the last few months. But I want you to think at any given moment, what season am I in? What is the best opportunity I have right now to really change my life. There was that old song and it came from a Bible passage called Ecclesiastes 3, 1 through 11, where it talked about a time to plant and a time to pluck what is planted, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to break down and a time to build up, a time to weep and a time to laugh, time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to cast away stones or gather stones. So you can see even in this passage, it’s not talking about the major seasons, it’s talking about finding out what it is this particular point in time is meant for us to do. Keep in mind a few things about seasons is that first of all, seasons change. If you’re looking at the four seasons, they might be bigger gaps of time. Again, time for learning or reaping or quiet, reflection, those might be bigger pieces of time. But if you’re talking about a season to buy a house or a season to get a job, those windows open and close. Sometimes, like I said right now, where there’s a lot of people who are hiring, what an amazing season it is to go look for a new job. But if the job market ends up tightening, that would end the season for looking for a job and it would be a harder time to find a new job. So you have to plan around the season. No, for good or ill, it won’t last forever. So if you’re having a bad season, this is a tough time. Maybe you’ve lost someone close to you. It’s not gonna last forever. But if it’s a good time to get a new job or a fantastic time to buy a new house, that won’t last forever either. So when you think about those seasons, think about the actions you should take now. We have to take the right actions in the season. We don’t want to plow when it’s time to harvest and we don’t want to harvest when it’s time to throw seeds in the ground. We want to do the right activity at the right time. Make sure that you’re always learning about yourself or what’s going on around you in every season. There is no point in your life or no thing that is happening where you can’t learn about what’s going on. And always keep an eye out about what the next season might be. If you think that the next season might be a chance for you to change towns, buy a dog, get a house, whatever that is, be prepared and start planning for that next season. You know, if you think that the next season is going to bring a new house for you, go to the bank, figure out what you can spend, figure out what you would like to do, but be prepared for the next season that you have. And also think about it too, that there are things for you to learn in every season, but sometimes there’s things for you to teach in every season too. As you start going along in your adulthood, you’ve seen these things happen before. You’ve seen good economic times, bad economic times. You’ve seen times when the job market was stretched or times when the job market was full of jobs. You get prepared because you get that experience about knowing what comes next when. So you can take your lessons and not only use them in your own life for that season to come along, but share it with someone else who maybe never saw that season. Different seasons will give you amazing memories, trips, photography. Maybe it’s a season of travel. Maybe it’s a season of family. And you’re going to have so many memories based on the season that you’re in. And I think it’s important always to embrace the lessons that you have, learn something out of it, but then really enjoy it. See different seasons in your life as a gift. I know sometimes it’s hard because difficult seasons make it hard to realize the lessons, make it hard to see the good in it. But even in the pandemic, I took the opportunity of the seasons to try to improve some things in my life that just weren’t getting done because I was alone more often, I had more time on my hands, most of the activities I got done came to a close, but I got a lot of things done in my house. I started a podcast and so I took the opportunity of the pandemic season to try to expand on the good things in my life even though it wasn’t a good thing at all. My best advice to you is to figure out what season you’re in. Whether you’re talking about the big four, spring, summer, autumn, or winter, or you’re talking about the minuscule seasons. Figure out what season you’re in, figure out what season you might be in next, and then try to plan appropriately. Start being that tree in either growing branches or producing fruit or preparing for the winter, but do the next right thing when it comes to being that tree in whatever season you’re in. So my challenge to you is just that. Figure out two different seasons that you’re in. First of all, figure out not when it comes into age, but when it comes into the mentality you’re having. Are you in spring where you’re learning, summer where you’re growing, autumn when you’re reaping the benefits, or winter or when you’re cozy and drinking hot cocoa and thinking about and reflecting about your life. Again, it’s not based on the real seasons, it’s based on where you’re at right now. Then try to come up with some minor seasons. Are you in a season of job growth? Are you in a season of job learning? Maybe you just got a new job. Or are you in a season of moving? Try to figure out just some little seasons that you’re in and write a few things down that will help make those individual seasons better. And now our fun entertainment advice of the week comes from Richard III, played by Shakespeare. (audience applauding) – Now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious summer by this son of York. (audience laughing) All the clouds that lowered upon our house in the deep bosom of the ocean, buried. Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths. (audience applauding) Our bruised arms hung up for monuments. – See, there goes that analogy again. It was the winter of our discontent. We were in winter, it was terrible. but now it’s been made summer by the son of York, who was Prince Edward. This is one of the top two or three speeches in all of Shakespeare. And it was said sarcastically probably because Richard didn’t think Edward was the right prince to be the king. But you see, even in the great literatures of the world, the theme of seasons is important. All right, everyone, thanks so much for listening. I appreciate it. If you have anything to say to me, you can email me at jill@smallstepspod.com. Please remember to send a review that helps other people find this podcast. And I hope to have a podcasting empire someday. So it’ll help if you remember to write a review and tell your friends that they can thrive in whatever season they’re in by taking small steps. (upbeat music) you [fart]