Seasons of Life Metaphor for Life and Business

What’s Your Season of Life?

The seasons of life concept relates different times, phases and characteristics of life to the four seasons in nature: spring, summer, fall and winter.

Many people have a favorite season. Do you? And does that season correspond with your current season of life? Have you ever spent time reflecting on the correlations between the seasons of life and the seasons of nature?

There are lessons and learnings to observe there.

One important lesson is that each season has its full measure of a productive life as it relates to seasons. There is as much life and opportunity at each season… it’s just different. Same for you and your life.

A Most Important Life Lesson

One of the most important life lessons to impart relative to aging and our time on this earth, is not to focus on how old you are. Too many people start to feel that it’s all down hill after 50. Rather, focus on how many years you have left to pursue your dreams and do work that matters to you.

I’m 61 as of this writing, and I focus on doing amazing work and creating a fantastic life over these next 40 years. I’ll do the same at each age. So at 80… I’ll be celebrating what’s possible over the next 20 years or so.

Don’t focus on how old you are. Focus on how many years you have left to pursue your dreams and fill your days doing the work that matters to you.
~LeAura Alderson, cofounder – iCreateDaily.com®

Ages of the Seasons of Life

Centenarians are becoming more common. Given modern medicine, holistic health and prevention for good physical, emotional and mental health, it’s not uncommon for people to live to 100 years and beyond.

I plan on living for a vibrantly healthy 100 plus years. For that reason and for simplicity of correlation, I think of the seasons of life as quarter within 100-year life span.

Spring 0-25 – Springing to Life

An excitingly fresh and dynamic time of life where — like nature in springtime — it’s all about newness, freshness and new growth springing forth.

Spring is a time to spring into action, grow and thrive.

Summer 25-50 – Active and Immersed

Summer is the busy-ness of life in full swing. It’s life heated up, with plants and trees all in full growth, summer is a time to tend and continue cultivating the garden of life.

Fall 50-75 – Reaping and Harvesting

Fall is where the colors of your summer busy work show up more vividly and harvesting, preserving and enjoying summer’s bounty continues. But life also begins to slow down and cool down with more crispness and time to take stock of and be grateful for life’s bounty.

Winter 75-100 – Clarity and Wisdom

Clarity and objectivity prevail in winter. While it appears life is diminished, winter is actually a time of rest, reflection, reorientation and a turning inward and tuning into greater alignment with the eternal soul.

Why Are the Seasons of Life Important?

In nature and life, being aware of the seasons is important toward helping us know how to dress and what to plan for in the way of activities, plans and possibilities. Knowing our season of life doesn’t need to restrict us, but it can inform and support us in our aspirations.

Being aware of the different needs of the different ages and seasons is important if we wish to live a well-planned life. Understanding the significance and role of timing is also helpful in having greater empathy and understanding of the emotionalities, mentalities, and proclivities of ourselves and others.

The season of life we’re in can also attract or repel people to us. For instance, if someone is in their summer of life, they may be so busy with their current endeavors that they’re not open and receptive to input from others.

They may be too busy tending their “garden of life” that they’re less involved with family and friends. They’re wired to be proactive and progressive, and may be too busy to be receptive and reflective. However, come fall of life, that often begins to shift.

Awareness of our season of life also helps in knowing which advice to follow. As we’ve written about in another article, giving and receiving advice may be completely different depending on one’s season of life.

In truth, what is the formula of success for one will lead to self destruction of another.
~Jim Rohn, author – The Seasons of Life, 1930-2009

Seasons Within Seasons

The seasons of life can also occur as micro seasons or periods within aspects of our lives. The “seasons” concept can also be applied to business — or skills— growth and development within a season of life. For instance, you may be in the fall of your life, between 50-75 and starting an entirely new career, business venture or learning a new skill or craft.

In that case, while your biological age may be in the fall of life, your reinvention of yourself in this new career places that endeavor in the spring of its life. Your new endeavor in its spring season renews the spring in you within the fall of your life. See? That’s why many baby boomers and seniors feel a sense of excitement, enthusiasm, renewal and reinvention when they reach an age where they’re more free to pursue work they love.

Not only are they energized in that passion pursuit, but they’re also energized by the “spring of life” of their new endeavor. So even if one is in the “winter of life”, aged 75-100, there can be poignantly focused and exciting new projects that keep one connected to the spring of life too.

In fact, the fall and winter of life are ripe for harvesting and implementing the wisdom from experience accrued. It’s a time not to worry about the earlier dramas and struggles that consumed us. Rather, now we have more time to pursue that which compels or interests us.

You need not decline with age. Create. Your creative pursuits will illuminate the winter of your life like moonlight on a snowy landscape, revealing beauty, poignance, elegance and enchantment.
~LeAura Alderson, cofounder – iCreateDaily.com®

A Time to Every Purpose Under Heaven

Turn, Turn, Turn

An all time favorite song written by Pete Seeger from the Ecclesiastes poem in the bible, and performed here by Judy Collins.

Seasons of Life Quotes

Our life as we now live it, is the result of seeds planted at an earlier time.
~Jim Rohn, author – The Seasons of Life, 1930-2009

No matter your season of life, it’s never too late to make daily progress in the direction of your dreams.
~LeAura Alderson, cofounder – iCreateDaily.com®

Old age and aging is a time of great gathering… a time of sifting and a time of reaping the rewards of forgotten and neglected experience.
John O’Donohue, Irish poet, priest, philosopher, 1956-2008

SOURCE: John O’Donohue – on Ageing

Do not blame the problems and challenges of life for your humbling circumstances. Does the seed complain because of the rocks it must grow over, under, around, or through?
~Jim Rohn, author – The Seasons of Life, 1930-2009

Season of Life Poems

I WANT TO AGE LIKE SEA GLASS

I want my hard edges to soften. I want to ride the waves and go with the flow. I want to catch a wave and let it carry me to where I belong. I want to be picked up and held gently by those who delight in my well earned patina and appreciate the changes I went through to achieve that beauty. I want to enjoy the journey and always remember that if you give the ocean something breakable it will turn it into something beautiful.

~Bernadette Noll, teacher, maker, speaker, mother, writer, author, For the full essay, visit Bernadette Noll, I Want to Age Like Sea Glass

BRIGHT NIGHT OF THE SOUL

Winter stars bless earth in diamond landscapes.
Moonlit brilliance… eternal flame of ice and fire.
Bright night of the soul.
~LeAura Alderson, iCreateDaily.com®

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