Seasons Within Us

We are meant to change and grow.

A flower grows and changes with the season

An area that can cause a lot of stress is a change of some sort —the loss of a job, a relationship, a death in the family. Typically this kind of stress can subside in a few weeks or months, but can last for much longer. If this sounds familiar, don’t lose hope. Things will improve eventually.

Something that can drive our individual stresses up with these kind of changes in life is holding a fixed view of ourselves and the world around us. Some believe that change is always a bad thing and that healing may just be impossible. I don’t agree, but certainly have seen a lot of folks caught in that space of things feeling impossible.

Like a plant we are meant to change through our life cycle. We may have things that “happen to us.” Like storms that shred the garden, life events can affect us in many ways. But when we learn to embrace a mindset that allows for shifts in our self image we will have an easier time.

There is lots of information out there on how to change your self-image, but for me it all boils down to how we think about ourselves and how we think others see us. And because we can change how we think we can ultimately change how we feel about ourselves.

I have been struggling with this more recently myself. Having been in the habit of writing fairly regularly the holiday season came around and I didn’t get to it like I had been. This was not the ultimate problem. The real problem was how I started to think about that pause. What it meant about me as a writer in the world. I started to go down that path of automatic thoughts like “it doesn’t matter anyway.” or “I may have just lost my juice.” I was having the same issue in another part of my life, bread baking. During that period of time all the loaves that I was making were coming out poorly. I started having self defeating thoughts. And then I decided to make a change.

What if I got back to basics. Just took my time with the bread and not rush it. Get back to using the dutch oven which I had set aside for some reason. When I slowed down and looked at where I could make changes. Well things started to turn around. The bread came out!

Why not use the same methods to get back in the writing groove? So I cleaned up the desk a bit. Sat down and wrote something small.And over a few days the self-defeating thoughts began to fade and I started to feel excited again. I had made a conscious decision to make a change in my thinking.

Ebbs and flows come in life. Seasons come and go. We can slow down and take things at a simpler pace for a bit. We don’t have to keep doing or being one thing. We can change our minds, change our trajectory, make new roads. And changing our thinking style almost always changes our stress levels.

Check out this video from Doc Mike Evans on Stress.

Have a great week.