Welcome to The Motherhood Blog!  I’m your coach Michelle Grosser, and I’m so excited you’re here with us today. 

I wanted to teach a bit on the seasonal model of life today.  When we’re in it, it can be hard to see the seasons and cyclical nature of them. Everything has a season. When we honor and recognize the seasonal model of our makeup, we can move through each season with more purpose and grace.

So when we become more aware of the seasons, and the particular season we’re in, instead of trying to just make it pass quickly if it’s not pleasant, we know what to do in each season to make the most of it.  To experience it fully. To learn the lesson of each season so we can gracefully move to the next season feeling complete and empowered. 

When we’re living in resistance to the season we’re in, it will feel like it lasts forever.  The resistance isn’t allowing us to learn the lessons God’s intending for us to learn in that season.  BUT, if we can embrace every season – embrace and even appreciate the low seasons and look for the lessons and the growth that is supposed to come from that season – I think you’ll find you’re able to flow through season with a different rhythm.  

Because every season has an empowered or disempowered version.  So, in each season, we can either be a victim to that season. Or we can be present and embrace it and take it head on. 

1. SPRING

You might be in a season of Spring in your life if you find that you’re of high energy, that there is a sense of clarity around your vision.  This season requires a lot of action to implement and build momentum on the vision.  This is a season of creating – of doing.  It’s about putting what you’ve learned in other seasons into practice. 

In Spring you often feel optimistic about the future.  You’re a little lighter on your feet.  It’s an exciting time because you’re seeing things happen.  You’re engaged in Spring.  You’re passionate in Spring.  You’re probably feeling bold and brave in a Spring season too.  You know you’re entering new territory and navigating unchartered waters, but your in a mental space where you’re ready for it.  You’re ready to learn. You can quickly pivot and adjust.  You’re in a space of mastery.  

What’s the purpose of Spring? Every season has a purpose, right? So in Spring, you want to be building momentum in your vision and developing the skills you need to thrive in whatever it is you’re working toward.  Maybe it’s something new at work. Perhaps it’s something new in parenting.  Maybe it’s a new hobby or project.  This is the season to sure things up, to make the uncertain, certain.  

It’s a huge season of growth.  It IS Spring after all, right?  This is the season where you’re planting and sowing and working hard at becoming who you need to be, so you have the skills and the capacity to carry out that vision.

Now, like anything else, each season can have its pitfalls or dangers.  So if you’re in a season that feels like Spring, you’re probably going to be facing some fears.  Growth, stretching, and living beyond our comfort zone – that’s the bread and butter of Spring – and that can also be scary. 

This is the season I find myself in right now.  There is so much I’m learning.  I’m literally transitioning from lawyer to podcaster.  And while I’m still practicing law and coaching quite a bit, this whole world of podcasting and social media and email lists and everything that goes along with an online business, is so new to me.  I’ve spent years creating the vision, but now is the time to make it happen and there is such a learning curve.  I’ve been a lawyer for over a decade. So much of it is routine, and I have all the systems and structures in place. While I might still get the butterflies going to court here and there, for the most part I’ve done it before.  But not so with podcasting – it’s all new!  

We just started video recording the podcast episodes so we can start a YouTube channel. Our first one went up a couple days ago and guys I literally don’t know how to edit video yet, so there’s like a nasty coughing fit at the end – and we went ahead and published it unedited.  Because I’m in a season of growth. I know that done is better than perfect.  In this season I’m getting more comfortable with the messy.  My mission won’t ever come to pass if I’m constantly tweaking, modifying, editing – all that will come in time, but right now I can’t let what I don’t know hold me back. I need to make progress.  

So yeah, it’s scary.  Do you know what dangers are popping up in my Spring?  Fear of failure.  Insecurity.  Not knowing if I’m good enough to succeed in this new world.  Big time imposter syndrome.  Wondering if I’m actually bringing any value to you guys.  There’s days I want to quit and just go back to being a lawyer because that’s really comfortable for me.  There’s so much doing in the Spring that it can also be a time of burnout – so if you’re in a Spring now, or when you are in a Spring (because that season will come), we’ve got to be careful of burning out. 

Here’s a few things we want to focus on in Spring.  First, we want to really focus on growing our skill sets.  This is a time for training.  Its a time to develop new skills.  It’s a time to put your head down, get rid of the distractions, and create!  It’s a time to network – to make connections you can use to expand your visions.  As you can imagine, it’s a time to really flex that discipline muscle.  It’s a time for good habits, and functional routines that serve you well and allow you to operate at peak performance level.  It’s working those muscles and getting them ready to withstand whatever comes your way next – preparing for the obstacles that will arise and building that resilience.  Spring is a really exciting time, and it’s a time of a lot of work and growth. 

2. SUMMER

Summer is still pretty high energy, but not as high as Spring.  It’s not as frantic.  You’re not going as hard.  You’re not growing as quickly.  Summer is when you’re in a really good flow.  You’re in the zone and your vision is coming to life and you can take your foot off the gas pedal a little bit and enjoy that vision being actualized.  Because it follows Spring, it follows so much building. Once the thing is built, you might actually feel a bit of a disconnect in Summer because it’s kind of the end of the building season. It can leave you with a sense of “is that all there is?”

So what’s the purpose of Summer?  Well the purpose of Summer is to enjoy the fruit of your labor.  It’s to see what you’ve been working on so hard come to reality, and to sit back and bask in it a bit. It’s a time to pat yourself on the back.  Give yourself a high five and recognize what you’ve created. 

You can kinda imagine, based on the purpose of Summer, what some of the dangers of this season might be.  So if you find yourself in a Summer season, you want to be careful about developing a sense of arrogance.  You want to be careful of not assuming that Summer is going to last forever, because it won’t. You want to make sure that you’re not becoming complacent.  You’ve learned the things, and your hard work in whatever area has produced fruit – it’s paid off. But in Summer, we can’t lose the drive that made that thing successful in the first place.  

In Summer, we might also find ourselves missing the energy and the pace of Spring, so we might be longing to go back to it.  But we can’t go back to a season.  It’s a cycle. So all we can do is wait for it to come back around again. We also don’t want to miss out on the purpose of summer, fall, and winter as we await Spring. If you’re in a Summer, take a pause before you jump into your next big thing. Try not to innovate again too early.  Let the seasons play out, because, there are things you’ll need to do in the coming seasons to best prepare for the next Spring. And then finally, in a Summer season, you want to watch out if you find you’re basking a little too much in your success. You don’t want yourself to be ruled by arrogance in this season.  You don’t want to slip into a place in Summer where you find that your identity is tied to the spoils of summer – approval, money, power, recognition, success, who you’re rubbing elbows with, all your followers, etc.

So what should you be focusing on to get the most out of Summer?  You should be focusing on taking inventories and evaluating.  This is the time to assess what’s working and to do more of it. It is time to enjoy and celebrate. Taking the time to acknowledge and celebrate is so vital to continued success because it’s motivating and encouraging.  Summer is also a time to invest.  It’s the season where we are those squirrels hiding away nuts and food for the seasons of fall and winter to come.  So Summer’s about carefully stewarding your resources. 

It’s also about emotionally preparing yourself for the next season, building that resilience. Because you know fall and winter are coming and you want to be best prepared. You want to be in good health.  It’s also about evaluating and deepening your values. Maybe this is time to do some internal evaluations and assessments too.  What are my values?  How do I want to live life?  Who do I want to surround myself with?  What mindsets do I need to cultivate?  Summer is also about completion.  It’s about closing the loops, and finishing what you started.  It’s about bringing that vision to completion and starting to contemplate a new vision. 

3. FALL

So if you find yourself in a mid-low energy season of life, you might be in a Fall.  This is the end of a chapter.  It feels like things are really slowing down. You might even feel kinda stale or stuck in this season.  The things that used to fire you up and really get you going are kinda not doing it for you anymore.  Your interests are changing and those things feel meaningless now.  You might be clinging on to that last bit of Summer glow and really resisting the end of Summer, so maybe you even feel an anxiety about the season of Winter that you can sense is coming. 

So what’s the purpose of Fall?  The purpose of Fall is to evolve.  It’s to grow into that next iteration of yourself that requires more depth and opening and alignment and truth.  It’s a season of reflection and maturation.

The dangers of Fall are getting stuck in the mundane, getting stuck in the same old same.  Another danger of Fall can be a sense of entitlement from what you did in Spring and Summer.  So if you’re not careful,  you can find yourself in Fall feeling like you actually deserve to be somewhere else.  And that can spur on some pretty sad pity parties. Fall can also leave you feeling disjointed and split because your ego wants to be back in Spring and Summer, right?  Like those seasons really stroked your ego and gave you a lot of confidence, but that’s not what your soul needs.  When you’re in Fall, your soul is craving Winter.   It’s craving a different pace.  It’s craving some slowness and some rest.  So those contending parts of you can feel uneasy. 

So, what should you focus on in Fall?  Well, you should be focusing on tying up loose ends. Taking an inventory – what needs to be done to close up this chapter in integrity? You should be planning and preparing for Winter – setting yourself up to have time, space and resources necessary to take a look inward.  

This is also a time to re-wire your thinking.  In Spring and Summer you were so results oriented.  What am I creating?  What am I doing? They were seasons of action and progress and great recognition for your work.  So as you’re in Fall and getting ready for Winter, you want to be reducing your reliance and those dopamine boosts you’ve grown accustomed to.  And you want to start exploring new possibilities and coming up with a plan about how you’re going to spend the Winter season. 

4. WINTER

If you’re finding yourself in a season of low energy, it’s probable that you’re in Winter. Winter is the end of a chapter.  So, you might find yourself feeling lost, feeling depressed, or even hopeless.  There’s not as much action and things going on around you in Winter, but there’s a whole lot going on INSIDE you in a Winter season, and you don’t want to miss it. It’s a powerful season of realignment.  It’s a time of surrender.  It’s a time of letting go.  It’s a time of changing your perception of who you were or who you are.  It’s a time of letting go of what was easy, what was comfortable.  Winter is all for the sake of who you’re becoming. 

So the purpose of Winter is this re-discovery. Rediscovering who you are.  Rediscovering what matters to you.  And the reason you’re doing all of this rediscovery is so you can build, so you can build a new and compelling vision for the next chapter of your life that really fits into who you are.

The dangers of Winter are really just wanting to get through it too quickly.  It’s uncomfortable to just be.  To really look inward.  To face some things in and about ourselves that are holding us back from becoming.  That’s tough.  So of course our inclination is to try to rush through it.  But that’s not honoring the season.  And it’s also not allowing the purpose of the season to be fulfilled. So we can fall into a practice in Winter of just kind of waiting for it to end, without doing any of the work Winter is designed for us to do.  We can find ourselves seeking distractions in Winter to make it pass – addictions, poor habits, sloppy routines. Maybe we start forgetting our values or just ignoring them.  And then this slippery slope spiral can make us feel guilty for underachieving, or for what we perceive to be a lack of results. 

So what should we be focusing on in Winter to get the most out of it? What should we be doing so it doesn’t feel like a waste because we’re not seeing those results we’re used to?  Well, most bluntly, Winter is a time to face the facts.  It’s the time to face the truth.  What are your shortcomings?  What are your inadequacies?  Where do you need to grow most?  Winter is a time for taking responsibility and integrating the lessons you realized in Fall.  So Winter, while challenging, is actually a quite beautiful season because it’s really all about becoming more of you.  It’s aligning yourself with your top values.  It’s analyzing what you really want out of life.  It’s making some tough decisions about what’s actually important to you.   It’s about allowing yourself to be inspired again – maybe this time with something new.  So Winter is about following your joy.  If you’re in Winter, you want to use this time to deeply connect with yourself so you can start creating your next vision, and then in Winter, you can align that vision with your values, so you’re ready to jump into Spring and bring that vision to life when the season comes. 

I think this is all so fascinating.  And also, really encouraging because there’s so much purpose in each season.  There’s so much beauty in each season.  And we don’t know how long each season is going to last.  That’s not our job – it’s not within our control.  Our job is to learn the lesson that’s placed in each season so we’re ready when it’s time to move on to the next.  After you’ve read this post, I’d really love to hear from you.  I’d love for you to do an assessment of where you’re at, and some introspection about whether your focus in the season is where it should be.  Are you just trying to get through it, are you just riding the wave of it, or are you using the season you’re in purposefully?  Reach out to me – let me know where you’re at and what you’ve discovered about the season you’re in.  You can always shoot me an email at hello@michellegrosser.com,  or you can send me a DM on IG @themotherhood.podcast.  It would make my day to hear from you!