What Season Are You In?
Learning to be season-wise.
If our eyes are open, we can learn to pay attention.
Take a moment to zoom out from your daily-to-daily activities, and you see where you are in the unfoldings of your life.
What would you call this season that you are in?
Maybe a new chapter is opening up from a blossoming of love, marriage, a birth of your first child, or moving to a new country.
Maybe you are maturing and new realisations are smacking you in the face.
Maybe you are experiencing ambiguous loss of a parent who is struck by a dilapidating illness.
Or maybe you are a a significant crossroad, ready to make a big change.
Every season has its needs.
If we open our eyes and pay attention to the signs of our times, we can answer the call of the season no matter how "self-improved" we may be.
It is not just what you want from life, but what is life asking out of you.
(In here, I talked about four different seasons that I was in).
15 Paradoxes
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.
Ecclesiastes (3:1)
Here are 15 ways to think about the needs of this particular time in your life, especially if you are making significant changes and transitions.
A. Well-Being (Self)
Is this time to tend to the self, or a time to forget about yourself?
Is this a time to be in the present, or a time to think of the future?
Is this a time to look within, or a time to look outside of yourself?
Is this a time for solitude, or a time to be in community?
Is this a time to say yes, or a time to say no to things?
B. Well-Belonging (Relationships)
Is this a time for full acceptance, or a time for change?
Is this a time to approach, or a time to retreat?
Is this a time to fight for autonomy, or a time to belong?
Is this a time to give care, or a time to receive care?
Is this a time to grieve, or a time to love?
C. Well-Doing (What we engage in)
Is this a time to focus on quality, or a time to create quantity?
Is this a time to stress, or a time to recover?
Is this a time for stillness, or a time for movement?
Is this a time to have more inputs, or a time to create outputs?
Is this a time to gain control, or a time to learn the art of surrender?
To help with these questions, I’ve created a personalised questionnaire for you. Feel free to use it.
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One-Year-Old
Today is the first year anniversary of my sixth book, Crossing Between Worlds.
Derek Sivers was very kind to write an advance praise for CBW:
Deep and beautiful… what a soothing book for hard times.
I did everything I could to flesh out each of the 15 areas listed above.
I hope you will pick up a copy. (The ebook and audiobook comes with the paperback at no extra charge).
Thanks,
Daryl
Crossing Between Worlds is available in all good bookstores. You can also buy direct if you wish to support my work. Big thanks.
Daryl Chow Ph.D. is the author of The First Kiss, co-author of Better Results, and The Write to Recovery, Creating Impact, The Field Guide to Better Results, and the latest book, Crossing Between Worlds.
If you are a helping professional, you might like my other Substack, Frontiers of Psychotherapist Development (FPD).
Highly recommend the book as an aid for exploring seasons - I return to it often. It is like a compass.