The Seasons of Life

A season is just a season, it’s always seasonal; it’s always going to change.

When it’s the depth of winter and the snow is piling up outside you know that it will pass. When it’s 110 degrees in the shade you know that it will also pass in time.

Give it a few months and the season will change.

Gloria Estefan was a gifted singer. Then tragedy struck and left her almost cripple. Nelson Mandela was a gifted and promising lawyer and then found himself in prison.

The great Austrian psychiatrist and author Viktor Frankl knew deep down that his situation of being a prisoner in a concentration camp would one day come to an end.

One of the all-time greats of basketball Michael Jordan was labeled a basketball failure in his youth: he was actually cut from his high school team and as legend has it, it was the impetus for Michael to throw himself 100% in the game. He began his season of change.

What Season Are You In?

Life has a habit of ushering in Winter seasons during which we experience bleak cold periods, where our days are dark and lonely.

The Fall (Autumn) comes our way, and we feel that some parts of our lives drop away like leaves from the trees and growth just seems to stop.

But then there is Springtime when everything we do blossoms when projects and deals suddenly begin to progress when there is something in the air and life couldn’t be more beautiful.

Then Summer rolls in like the beautiful ocean surf, and you can feel the difference in the air. During the Summer we take a break from our busy lives.

The wonderful thing is that no season really lasts forever. The really good news, as one of my great friends, put it, is that we are able to extend the seasons.

You can’t control the actual seasons, but we can extend the enjoyment of a season of your life. Whatever season you are in right now, whatever situation you find yourself in, your current season will pass.

It Too Shall Pass

The wonderful quote, “And this too shall pass” is actually a Persian adage that has been translated into several languages and it’s attributed to the medieval Persian Sufi poets.

You might be in your Summer season right now, harvesting great rewards and enjoying the success of your efforts. But take note that it is all seasonal, so you must begin to store up for your Winter season. You have to make sure you don’t waste it all in the Summer.

When the inevitable Winter enters your world, you will be prepared because you’ve got your stored reserves ready to go. Most people don’t prepare for the unexpected, they don’t have a contingency plan for their own life.

Sometimes the unexpected happens, in our life, businesses and career. If you are in a season of Winter, where everything seems dark and dreary, make sure you look towards Springtime and Summer.

We All Face Different Seasons

If you want to get out of a difficult situation, give yourself time to think, time to plan. A wise friend told me once, ‘If you’re going through a dark tunnel, stay in the train.’ Don’t just jump out of the train when it’s still in the tunnel. Keep holding on and wait until it stops. Wait until you get some light in the tunnel. And remember: there is always a light at the end of the tunnel.

In most parts of the world, farmers plant in the Winter and reap in the Summer or Spring when days are longer and brighter and everything is blooming. The universal law or principle here is that you have to give up something to gain something. You need to have a break with to have a breakthrough.

Something has to die before it lives. A seed dies before it produces any kind of fruit. Darkness comes before a cloud bursts and produces lifesaving rain. And they are all seasons: death comes first before life. We all face seasons in life. Learn to understand that they are just seasons and seasons pass.

As I mentioned earlier, the tide turned for Nelson Mandela. He went from lawyer to prison inmate to President. Gloria Estefan went from music star to almost cripple to a music legend.  Viktor Frankl went from leading psychiatrist to a prisoner and Michael Jordan went from failing to make his high school basketball team, to be the champion of the Chicago Bulls and a legend of the sport.

These were their seasons. Life responds to champions and everyone loves a comeback story. Champions never quit striving to attain their goals and dreams. Eventually, if you hang in there and show up through the seasons of hard times and challenges, you will discover that you will get opportunities to become successful and overcome.

You Can Make a Difference

In his book “You Can Make a Difference”, author, Steadman Graham tells of a photograph of a knocked-around old rowboat stuck on a sandbar in the bay. “It was a pretty sad-looking figure, this boat with its oars sticking up in the air, stuck forever on the sandbar. But the caption on the photograph told a different story one of encouragement and hope for the future. It read: ‘The Tide Always Turns.’”

Right now, you need to decide what season you are in. Then you’ve got to realize that time is on your side because every season passes. Unlike the seasons of the earth, we can help influence our seasons of life. Don’t just wallow in the winter season but prepare and put in the work to make your Spring and Summer fruitful.

Planting for the Future

What is it that you can do now to prepare for the coming season? Concentrate on the future, not the present or the past.

If you are in the good times of Summer or Springtime, what can you do now to prepare for the Winter season? How should you be investing in the future? Should you be making new contacts and expanding your network, should you be enrolling in that course to expand your knowledge and ensure your future? Of course you should. IN fact, stop “shoulding” yourself and take action right now. Write a list of things you can do now to prepare for the inevitable next season of your life.

Whatever season you are in right now, prepare for the next season, don’t get comfortable if it’s a good season, and don’t despair if it’s a bad season.

To your abundance.

David