Honor the Seasons of Your Life:

Allow What No Longer Serves You to Fall Away

STOP Denying Your True Nature

Last week, I wrote a post about how we can bring more hygge into our lives if we welcome the fall season, give ourselves the gift of time to participate in the season’s festivities, and create comfort as a deliberate practice in our daily lives.

Today, I would like to talk about the importance of honoring all the Seasons of our Life.

When I speak of “the Seasons of our Life,” there are many different ways that we could think about it.

Today, let’s delineate the seasons based on the main milestones we all reach, from childhood to adulthood.

In childhood, we slowly begin to discover who we are, what kind of career path we want to take, and we go through our education. That might mean we go to college, get a Bachelors, a Masters, or a higher-level degree. Then, we enter the workforce and push to make something of our chosen professional lives.

If we’re lucky, we find a strong sense of capital P “Purpose” in that.

Other times, our world might turn upside down. Our Purpose might change. We might discover that a particular career path isn’t right for us. Or maybe it was right for us at one point in time, but now things have shifted and what once served us doesn’t serve us anymore.

Echoing what I said in my last post, it’s important to realize that that change, that shift, and, yes, that falling away is natural.

We are NOT Machines!

We are not made of steel, built to work in only one direction.

We are not Fortune 500 companies that absolutely must deliver to meet a Quarterly forecast.

We are not on some endless production line, though we often describe ourselves as mere “cogs in a wheel.”

No!

We have a natural ebb and flow.

We are miracles of biology.

We are one with Nature.

We were once tiny acorns.

Now, we are great and mighty oaks.

We must honor our Nature, as living, breathing, human beings

Just as the great oak allows its once resplendent leaves to change color and fall away, as we enter the fall Season of our Lives, we, too, can soften and allow what no longer serves us to change and even fall away, if that is what’s right for us, if that rings true to us at this point in time.

We are allowed to listen to the Nature within us.

We are not required to force ourselves to be what we’re not.

We needn’t push for Summer when the leaves have fallen or the icy cold has begun to set in.

We must give ourselves permission to honor the Season we’re in, in our lives.

In a way that is unique to us.

Not based on what others wish us to be.

Not based on what others wish to do.

But, what is right for us, based on our own individual Nature.

This is True, but Not Necessarily Easy.

As we pass through the Seasons and allow ourselves the grace to change, release, and grow, we may come to experience some sadness — for what once was.

But there’s beauty in it, as well.

When we discover that a purpose of ours has changed, the positive description of that is growth.

We have to let go of what is stale. We have to prune away what doesn’t work to make room for new growth and rejuvenation.

This fall, give yourself the gift of time, to reflect on what no longer serves you.

Is now the right time, to let it go?

Imagine it falling, like leaves gently falling down to the forest floor.

There’s room on your mighty oak now.

What’s the new, beautiful branch that you intend to grow?

The Mighty Oak in Me Honors & Respects the Mighty Oak in Each of You,

Marisa