How Do You Navigate Through Your Life Seasons

Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it – by Charles R. Swindoll

Right now in Canada there is a season of beautiful colors. Fall here is quite a picturesque. Seems like someone took different paints and brush to fill the nature with beautiful fall colors! Mercury now is going south gradually and you feel cool breeze in the air. Winter will soon knock the door.

Winter is almost always harsh here. Freezing temperature, snow falls, and series of short days together without sun light just makes anyone depressed. After that spring alleviates mood and everyone eagerly wait to welcome sunny summer and they plan for lot of outdoor activities and vacations. The cycle keeps going on year after year.

All life on planet goes through these seasons. There are sunny summers, rainy monsoons, falling leaves in colorful autumn, chilly winters, and blooming springs. Still, it’s easy to find some people who will not be happy about the current season at any given point of time of the year. Some like winters, some hate snow fall. Regardless your personal likes and dislikes the nature has its own way to operate and makes sure we experience every season every year.

Similarly, our life also goes through various ups, downs and upgradations throughout the course of time. Before 5 or 10 years you had these imaginations for having more peace, more progress, more prosperity, and more fun in life. Although you must have experienced through all these years that life is neither a bed of roses nor a path of thrones. You always have to expect the unexpected things, people and circumstances in your life.

What does that mean? Are changing seasons bad? Is winter bad and summer good? Is monsoon boring and blooming spring is pleasant? It depends on what you like and/or what you need. If you like skiing you will eagerly wait for winter, and if you enjoy skateboard you will always want summer to be here.

In various seasons sometimes disturbances happens in the global environment. Many tsunamis, earth quakes and other natural calamities keep changing the shape of global environment. Similarly, successes, failures and other turbulences in life also keeps changing the shape of our thinking and behavioral pattern.

We need to have this clarity in life that everything will not go as per our plan. People, things and circumstances do change over the period of time, may be for good or may be for the worst. However, only the change will be constant. In this highly unpredictable life, it’s indeed important that we give a thought to our reactions to this change. Change that may not be always pleasant, wanted or the best. How do we want to behave or think differently in the demanding times so that we do not just get dragged by the adversity or challenge, and should be able to hold our spirit high in all the time, in all circumstances! Being proactive and not reactive helps us to build our alternate coping mechanism to deal with this.

How do we navigate through the various life seasons and other turbulences is an interesting thing to pay attention to.

When we go through our parts of ups and downs in life, based on our own wants and needs, many of us choose one or many of the bellow mentioned responses to react.

1. We Complain: We complain and think that this is not fair with us. It’s not right what has been served to us by nature.
2. We Become Angry: Despite putting all efforts sometime thing don’t turn out the expected way, and we get upset and feel angry about it.
3. We Suffer: When we are not able to handle it more or simply if we’re not prepared to welcome challenges, we would refer them as struggles and start experiencing the suffering. We sometime cry our heart out with the pain.
4. We Question: Ultimately we always end up asking one question “Why Me?” Most people ask this without exception. They always think they don’t deserve what they have received, and so they question that very change.
5. We Resist and Try to Change: We all resist changes and try to change the unwanted things or situations to our favourable ones. We never like to accept the unwanted things.

These are our natural reactions to things and situations that we do not want in our life. But this also shows that we do not have any depth in our thinking, living, experiencing and interpreting life and nature as a whole. To be a thoughtless reactive person is the most convenient option but the most damaging one ever. It doesn’t help us anyway.

How about changing the course of action next time and try something different so that we always can stay positive. I agree that it’s hard to maintain positivity all the time, but if we know the formula of positivity, we will always have an option to select positive reactions over negative ones.

Whenever something goes wrong and you need to maintain your positive attitude, you need three practices, which are essentially the three ingredients of positivity.

• Gratitude: Gratitude is the antidote of suffering. When you are experiencing suffering or pain for your loss, your focus is on what you have lost. Instead, focus on what you have and be grateful for the same during that time. If you are grateful, there is no suffering, and if you are suffering, then there is no gratitude can take place in your heart and mind. Gratitude and Suffering both cannot exist at the same time. So next time when you feel pain for your loss think of what you still have to be grateful for.

• Hope: It’s amazing how a little tomorrow can make up for a whole lot of yesterday. Be hopeful and stay hopeful for betterment, no matter what. You must always try to do better things, be better with yourself and others; you must always put better efforts to make your situations better.

• Discipline: Always work for your betterment with utmost self-imposed discipline. The discipline is nothing but just a self-remembering, no force or fight is necessary. A disciplined mind is always self-motivated and always leads to happiness.

As seasons on this planet has its own course, life too has its own course in which it just flows. It’s not feasible for nature to not let it rain just because you are praying for it, there may be others who might just wishing for the quite opposite. Instead, always keep yourself equipped with umbrella or raincoat, and you are good to go.

Being focused in action and not in result makes it easier to deal with adversity and challenges effectively and gracefully. Also it’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters. And having courage to act instead of reacting is even better.

Let’s enjoy all the colors of life and live in harmony with the nature while navigating through various life seasons!

Have fun!
Bharat Jhala

(Image Credit: Matthew Wiebe)

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