My Seasonal Philosophy In A Quad-Venn
Seasons and Cycles are all around us, let’s use them to our advantage for a better life!
I like to think of myself as woo-adjacent.
I can go down rabbit holes about tarot or human design, devour Celtic myths and stories, and revel in a good sound healing or breath work session. I love a witchy chat. If you met me in person you wouldn't be able to tell.
I personally love those things. I also understand that for the vast majority of us, accessing the benefits of slow and seasonal living from a non-denominational point of view is a better starting place. I want to invite you into understanding the benefits as it relates to your life in the modern world without the need to embrace the whole woo-shebang.
That can certainly come later if you desire.
For now, I want to share with you two four-circle Venn diagrams that show my work around why we get busy and how to slow down. The four-circle Venn shows that this works in a cycle with transition points and cross overs that impact each other. I’ve used the names of the seasons to mirror the ‘energy’ of each. Side on, these would look like a spiral.
Reconnecting to the wisdom of the cycles is about sloughing off the conditioning of the patriarchy and extractive capitalism. It’s about recognising that we can’t live in an eternal summer forever, which is what the focus of constant growth really is. There are 3 other seasons that we can benefit from.
We’re not lazy for needing rest.
The Four Seasons of Busy
‘Busy’ is a stand in for that feeling that you’re not in control of your time or that life is somehow getting away from you at an ever increasing speed. You might call it the rat race or keeping up with the Joneses. Maybe it’s climbing the corporate ladder. Whatever you call it, it’s the way we’ve been conditioned to live through marketing, movies and the over-culture in general. The status quo.
This way of life has us disconnected and left behind. In this cycle, it doesn’t matter how many productivity hacks you try, it will never be enough. Something will have to be neglected because you’ve missed the boat.
Many of us come to a point in our lives when our usual coping strategies don’t cut it any more. The ‘what if’ questions just get louder.
This is where many of my coaching clients are when they find me.
In the four seasons of busy, the cycles are working you without you even realising it. You’re literally going around in circles, chasing your tail and never quite catching up. You’re not really sure where you end and where other peoples thoughts and expectations about your life begin. It’s all a blur.
Do you recognise yourself in a particular phase of this cycle?
The Four Seasons of Slow
This is where it gets good.
When you become aware that you’re on the cycle of busy, you can choose to work with this cyclical process to slow down over time. In the four seasons of slow, you can see that there’s an ‘antidote’ for each season.
In this way, you don’t have to burn out or burn down your whole life just to get some peace. You can take your time, moving from one focus to another as you feel your cup filling back up.
The tricky news is, this is not a one and done thing. You can’t rest for one night or one Winter and think that you’ll be healed. That is capitalist thinking. In the slow philosophy, we don’t rest to be productive or to serve others. We rest because we deserve and need it to thrive.
I believe that’s where we can come together as a community, well rested and ready to serve. That’s why taking time to rest isn’t a selfish thing even though we do it for ourselves.
You have a lifetime of training on how to be busy. So you will regularly find yourself back to your old habits and patterns and wonder how did that happen again?! You’ll have to consciously choose to come back to the seasons of slow time and time again.
That is the way of life. It shows you the lessons you need to know until you learn them. Another example of a cycle in action! It does get easier over time though and you won’t be starting from the same baseline every time.
This is also about more than rest. If capitalism is an attempt to live in an eternal summer, slow is not just an opposite attempt to live in an eternal winter. This is about seeing the beauty in the fact we have four distinct phases to work with and use to our benefit.
We are meant to change.
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