An ancient priest once said,
“Stars rule men, but a wise man rules the stars.”
In the grand scheme of life, we often feel like a small raft caught in the sea of events and circumstances, tossed about by forces beyond our control.
We experience moments of exhilarating highs—the euphoria of a new relationship, the thrill of closing a big deal, hitting a PR in the gym, etc.—only to find ourselves falling into valleys of struggle and doubt.
But what if I told you these ups and downs aren’t random?
What if, like the celestial bodies that once guided ancient sailors, these cycles of life could be understood, predicted, and even harnessed to our advantage?
Imagine for a moment:
- What if you could navigate life’s challenges with the confidence of a seasoned captain steering through calm seas and raging storms?
- What if you could recognize the signs of looming winter in your life and prepare for it, ensuring survival, and growth?
- What if you could spot the first buds of spring—those fleeting opportunities—and seize them with precision and purpose?
The truth is, life isn’t a straight line from point A to point B.
Nor a roller coaster— even it sure feels like it sometimes.
It’s more like the Wheel of Fortune in a tarot deck—constantly turning, bringing both triumphs and trials. A wheel that has been set in motion way before us and that can’t be stopped.
I want to share with you in this Dispatch a slice of my personal philosophy for how to live life.
I’m not perfect.
Not even close.
In all honesty, I’m writing this for myself.
Ready?
Let’s dive in.
Time Flies, But Are We Truly Living?
I’m always amazed by how the older I get, the shorter the years feel.
By the way… do you realize that 2024 is 60% over already?
Weeks are flying by, aren’t they?
Good day, bad day, each morning is another day gone.
While physical time is linear, our human perception of time can appear logarithmic or exponential due to our subjective experiences.
As people age, their perception of time tends to speed up.
This is often described through a logarithmic scale, where the perceived length of a period diminishes with age. One theory suggests this is because each year represents a smaller fraction of a person’s life. For example, a year is 50% of a 2-year-old’s life but only 2% of a 50-year-old’s life, making time seem to pass more quickly for the older person.
Events that are new or significant can also affect the perception of time.
A period filled with new experiences may seem longer in retrospect because of the density of memorable events, aligning with a logarithmic view where the ‘weight’ or perception of each subsequent period decreases unless filled with notable experiences.
Think of the Covid when two full years went by like nothing, right?
It’s as if we’re leaves in a storm, blown about by every gust of wind—a stressful email here, a family emergency there, a birthday party next Friday, a global pandemic thrown in for good measure.
We react, we cope, we survive…
but are we truly living?
The bitter truth is that for many, the average 'modern' life resembles a slow death more than a vibrant existence.
We find ourselves:
- Constantly firefighting: Reacting to problems instead of proactively shaping our lives.
- Feeling victimized: Blaming circumstances, luck, or others for our situation.
- Losing sight of the big picture: Getting so caught up in our daily algorithmic-tailored struggles that we forget what life is about.
- Wishing for a pause: Longing for a break from life’s relentless challenges, only to find new ones waiting around every corner.
While you’re busy wishing for an easier life, time—that non-renewable resource—keeps ticking away.
Days turn into weeks, weeks into months, and before you know it, years have passed. And the haunting question emerges: “What have I done good with my life”?
If you’re in a constant state of reaction, to the good as well as the bad, you’re a victim to life’s event.
But it’s not your fault.
I mean nobody handed us a manual as to how to play this game of life, right?
And Time is a finite resource, isn’t it?
We only get 24 hours each day, and death bounds our journey here.
Let’s get to it.
Understanding and Harnessing Life’s Seasons
Do you know what gave our species the greatest jump in terms of its capacity?
Pattern recognition around seasons. Yes. Seasons.
Up until that time we were all hunters and gatherers.
That’s when humanity transformed.
Communities were able to form, then cities, then countries.
And you know what?
There’s also a pattern of seasons in our individual development as humans.
>0-21 years old: Spring
~21-41: Summer
~42-62: Harvest
~63-83: Winter
~83-103: Spring, if you're lucky.
So there are seasons we have to understand because if we plant in the winter, we’ll get no reward.
Understanding the Four Seasons of Life
There’s a timing to things.
There’s a timing to life.
There’s a timing to history.
You can’t change the seasons until you get your own planet, right?
The cosmos has been set.
The Seasons are set.
Life and Business are like the changing seasons
- Jim Rohn
We must navigate each season adequately.
Here’s how:
1. Winter: Survival and Growth
Just as the Earth experiences the harsh chill of winter every sun revolution, our lives too have seasons of difficulty, scarcity, and challenge.
These are our personal winters—times when it feels like our prayers don’t reach higher than our head when opportunities seem frozen, and when hope disappeared into the darkness of doubt.
You must learn to survive the winters. They come right after falls.
You must learn to survive the nights. They come right after days.
You must learn to survive the difficulties. They come right after opportunities.
You must learn to survive the recessions. They come right after progressions.
Like clockwork, winter is coming.
The Winter Mindset: Thriving, Not Just Surviving
Embrace the Challenge: Remember, some winters are long, and some are short. Some are brutal, others mild. But all winters eventually pass. That is key.
You understand by now that you can’t escape winters. Your task isn’t to wish for easier winters but to develop the strength, wisdom, and resilience to thrive in any condition.
Surviving your economic, social, personal, heart, and health winters will build tremendous self-esteem and confidence.
That’s one of the gifts of challenges.
The Ant Philosophy: Let’s take a lesson from one of nature’s tiniest but most hard-working creatures—the ant.
Here’s what we can learn:
- Never quit: When faced with an obstacle, ants don’t give up. They find another way. Always.
- Think long-term: Ants prepare for winter all summer long. They’re not deceived by the momentary comfort of the summers.
- Stay positive, but prepare for challenges: Ants work hard and work together, expecting good results but ready for difficulties.
Skill Building: Winter is your opportunity to sharpen your axe.
When the outer world is harsh, turn inward. Learn new skills, deepen your knowledge, find great books, and strengthen your mind and body.
Remember: Don’t wish it was easier, wish you were better.
Carl Jung says “Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”
Winters are often distraction-poor making them the right moment for diving deep.
The Power of Perspective: In the depths of winter, keep summer in your heart.
When it’s night, think of the dawn that’s coming. This isn’t positive thinking—it’s strategic optimism that keeps you moving forward when everything seems dark.
There’s no such thing as a double night.
In winter, think summer.
Day follows night.
Always.
Practical Steps for Weathering Your Winter
When life gets tough, focus on the fundamentals.
Audit Your Resources: What skills, relationships, and assets do you have that can help you through this season? Often, we have more resources than we realize.
Note that energy and time are finite resources. You want to protect your sanity at all costs, even more so during your winters.
Set Micro-Goals: Big goals can feel overwhelming in winter.
Break them down into small, daily actions that move you forward, no matter how incrementally.
Do less stuff.
Say NO more than YES.
Apply the 80/20 rule to your life.
Beware of human’s Twaddle Tendency.
Cultivate Resilience Rituals: Develop daily practices that build your mental and emotional strength.
This could be meditation, journaling, exercise, or learning something new every day.
Seek Wisdom: Whatever the nature of your challenge, you can be almost certain someone has been there before.
Learn from those who’ve weathered similar storms.
Read biographies, seek mentors, join communities, and surround yourself with supporting brothers/sisters.
Practice Gratitude: Even in the harshest winter, there are things to be grateful for. Even if it’s ‘only’ to be alive.
Daily gratitude rewires your brain to spot opportunities and solutions.
Every day, I make a mental list of the 3 things I’m grateful for.
So remember, the harshest winters often precede the most abundant springs.
By mastering the winter season of your life, you're not just building up resilience—you're also preparing for spectacular growth.
2. Spring: Seizing Opportunities
In our lives, springs are moments when we must learn how to take advantage of opportunities.
They always come right after winter the same way day follows night: opportunity follows difficulties. Always.
But here’s the catch: Unlike nature’s predictable cycles, our personal springs can be fleeting and unexpected.
There are opportunities, but no guarantee of a harvest.
Recognize these moments and act decisively.
Action must be taken.
The Spring Mindset: Ready, Set, Grow!
Heightened Awareness: Spring doesn’t announce itself with fanfare.
It often arrives in subtle shifts—a slight improvement in circumstances, a chance encounter, or a sudden insight.
Train yourself to spot these signs of spring in your life.
Urgency of Action: Remember, spring is a limited-time offer.
As Jim Rohn wisely said, “You must take advantage quickly because there’s only a few.”
Those periods of your life are called ‘windows of opportunity’ for a reason.
You have to get good at planting in the spring or begging in the fall.
Embrace Imperfection: Spring is messy.
It’s mud and rain alongside new growth. Don’t wait for perfect conditions to act. In life, as in nature, perfection is the enemy of progress.
Cultivate Optimism: Spring is nature’s reminder that after every winter comes new life.
Let this natural optimism infuse your body, your actions and outlook.
Go from inward to outward.
You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it come true. You may have to work for it, however.
— Richard Bach
Practical Steps for Maximizing Your Spring
Create Your Spring: Don’t wait for an opportunity to knock—build the door. Set a 90-day goal and treat it as your personal spring.
Complete a course on a new skill.
Start a challenge to gain 10 pounds of lean muscle.
Begin a daily meditation practice.
Revive intimacy with date nights or getaways.
Launch a marketing campaign to increase leads by 30%.
Streamline your business ops with automation.
Plant the seeds.
Plant Abundantly: In spring, farmers don’t plant one seed and hope for the best. They plant many, knowing not all will flourish.
Apply this to your life: pursue multiple leads, projects, and relationships.
Do your part, nature and the cosmos will do the rest, in due time.
Commit to Growth: Just as a farmer wouldn’t go bowling during planting season, recognize when it’s time to focus intensely on growth.
This means saying no to all distractions and doubling down on what matters.
The Hormozis call this their "No Season" when they refuse all social invitations to stay focused.
Leverage Past Winters: When you become aware of these cycles in your own life, you can start using the skills and wisdom gained during your winters.
These are your fertilizers for spring growth.
That’s how life gets better.
Build Your Spring Team: Surround yourself with “farmers” who support your growth. This could be mentors, accountability partners, or like-minded peers.
Explain to your friends and family how important this season is for you.
Manage expectation.
Make them understand.
They’ll support you.
The Spring Paradox: Urgency and Patience
Here’s where spring gets tricky: While it demands urgent action, it also requires patience. You must act quickly to plant your seeds but then have the patience to nurture them consistently, often without immediate visible results.
Remember, in life as in nature, there’s no guarantee of harvest.
But this uncertainty is precisely what makes spring so meaningful. Could you win if you couldn’t lose? It doesn’t seem like it.
It’s a season of active co-creation with life itself.
Experience is not what happens to a man;
it is what a man does with what happens to him.
- Aldous Huxley
2. Summer: Nurture and Protect
Summer represents the period when our efforts begin to bear fruit, but also when we must be vigilant and protect what we’ve cultivated.
Jim Rohn wisely observed, “You have to protect your crops all summer.”
In other words, you got to take care of what you started.
The Summer Mindset: Nurture and Defend
Balanced Action: What you started needs nourishment and protection.
That relationship you started, that business you launched, that training you kickstarted needs to grow as much as possible.
You want to nurture like a mother and defend like a father. The female and male polarities are both required. In our bodies, Red cells nourish like a mother and White cells fight like a father.
-
Nourishment (Yin Energy)
- Provide resources for growth (time, energy, learning)
- Offer encouragement and support to yourself and others
- Create an environment conducive to development
- Listen to the needs of your ‘crops’ (projects, relationships, health)
-
Protection (Yang Energy)
- Set boundaries to shield your progress from external disruptions
- Develop resilience against setbacks
- Actively combat ‘weeds’ (bad habits, negative influences)
- Make tough decisions to eliminate what doesn’t serve your growth
Vigilance: Summer is when threats to your progress become most apparent. Weeds sprout, and pests arrive.
In life, distractions, setbacks, and challenges will inevitably arise.
You can count on it.
Beware of the thief on the street after your purse. Also, be aware of the thief in your mind that’s after your promise.
In summer, stay alert.
In summer, think winter.
Consistent Effort: Unlike the urgency of spring, summer requires steady, consistent effort. It’s the season of showing up day after day, tending to your ‘garden’ even when immediate results aren’t visible.
It’s perseverance in the gym, in routines, in perfecting our business offer, in meeting new prospects, in making the sale, etc.
Be advised:
All unattended endeavours during summer will perish during winter.
Practical Steps for a Fruitful Summer
Establish Routines: When motivation is low, we fall to the best of our systems. Set routines that keep you healthy and productive.
Schedule regular workout sessions in your calendar, use workout apps that plan routines for you, or join class-based fitness programs where the schedule is set.
Set up automatic payments for regular bills and use budgeting apps to track spending and savings goals. Consider automated investment platforms for routine savings and investments.
Regular Assessment: Schedule time to step back and assess your ‘garden’. What’s working? What needs more attention? Weekly, monthly quarterly and yearly reviews are great.
Schedule them ahead in your calendar.
Vision is planned 30 years out,
Critical Goals are planned 12 months out,
Key milestones and initiatives are planned 30 days out,
Daily actions are planned 7-14 days out.
Diversify Your Efforts: Just as a garden benefits from biodiversity, your life benefits from nurturing various areas. Don’t neglect all areas of life while focusing on another.
Don’t neglect your business because you’ve found a new girlfriend.
Don’t neglect your health because your job is too demanding.
Don’t neglect your relationships because you ‘don’t have time’.
Your values will help you decide what to nurture and what to cut out.
Practice Mindful Thinning: Sometimes, for the overall health of your garden, you need to cut away what’s not working.
Be willing to let go of projects, habits, or even relationships that drain more than they nourish.
Complexity costs energy.
A simpler life gives you mental space for your definitive purpose.
Healthy Relationships gives energy.
Unhealthy Relationships consume energy.
In the heat of summer, when distractions are abundant and maintenance feels dull, your values become your compass.
Regularly revisit and reaffirm your core values:
Political valuesSocial valuesCommunity valuesFamily valuesMarriage valuesFriendship valuesBusiness valuesOther values...
Use your values and principles to guide your decisions on what to nurture and what to cut out of your life.
Prepare for Storms: Use summer and the ‘good’ times to build resilience and have contingency plans for when challenges come.
You want to build a roof over your head before the rain starts pouring.
In summer, think winter.
The Paradox of Good and Evil
Remember, as you nurture the good in your life, you’ll inevitably encounter opposition. If you turn on the light in a dark room, the darkness is gone… but not very far. It’s waiting for its chance to move back in.
Light and darkness are at odd.
So are liberty and tyranny.
So are health and illness.
So are order and chaos.
There’s a contest about who’s going to occupy territory.
Would there be good without evil, you might ask. Well, I’m not sure but it seems like it takes contrast to make an adventure. Duality is not just embedded in the fabric of reality, it’s one of the concepts that allows our human experience.
This opposition isn’t just external.
Sometimes we sabotage our own best interests. Our body says “I need a banana,” but we send it a “Coca-Cola”. Which side are we on?
In summer, we must become aware of these internal conflicts and consciously choose GOOD.
So remember: “All good will be attacked.”
3. Fall: Reaping the Harvest
The fall is the culmination of the cycle.
In nature, it’s a time of abundance, completion, and preparation for the cycle to begin anew, starting with winter.
In our lives, after planting during our window of opportunity, exercising patience, protecting and nourishing; After doing the work of the summer…
In due time, comes the harvest. The period when we reap the rewards of our efforts, reflect on our journey and ready ourselves for the next cycle of growth.
The Fall Mindset: Gratitude, Assessment, and Preparation
Maturity: Fall is the season to appreciate the fruits of your labour.
Learn how to reap in the fall without apology if you do well, and without complaint if you don’t.
That’s maturity.
Objective Assessment: This is the time for honest evaluation.
What worked well? What didn’t?
The fall season invites us to learn from both our successes and our setbacks.
At this point, there’s no point in complaining.
Take full responsibility.
Forward Thinking: Even as you reap your harvest, keep an eye on the future.
Now you know that the wheel of fortune will turn.
You know a new cycle will begin.
A new winter is coming.
This calls for a wise use of all your resources.
Fall is the perfect time to start planning for the next cycle of seasons in your life.
Practical Steps for a Fulfilling Fall
Conduct a Seasonal Review: Set aside time for a comprehensive review of your year so far.
What were your wins? Your challenges? What lessons can you carry forward?
As Dr John Demartini says:
Did I do everything I could with everything I’ve been given?
We don’t question what’s possible for us, and unless we push the boundaries, we’ll never know what we might be capable of.
Practice Mindful Gratitude: Keep a gratitude journal, focusing specifically on the fruits of your labour. This practice reinforces the connection between effort and outcome.
Gratitude for the blessings of life awakens a deep sense of worthiness, belonging, and knowing that you have a special and meaningful mission to fulfill.
The emotion of gratitude is extremely potent.
Preserve Your Harvest: Just as we preserve fall fruits for winter, consider how you can “preserve” your gains. You can’t blow it all up. Live it all up.
It’s all about the wise use of your resources.
This might mean consolidating knowledge from a completed project, reinvesting profits, not slacking on diet after years of effort, or strengthening relationships.
We don’t always get what we want, but sometimes what is happening is for the best. The sooner you can accept it as a reality, the sooner you can adapt to it.
- Naval Ravikant
Embracing the Cycle of Life
The subject of the seasons is so vital, so important, and such a great illustration of almost every life situation you can think of.
What happens, happens. It’s the same for everyone.
But what people do is different.
Remember the words of Jim Rohn: You cannot change the seasons, but you can change yourself.
Your Next Steps
- Identify Your Current Season:
Take a moment to reflect on where you are in life right now.
Which season best describes your current situation?
- Create Your Seasonal Action Plan:
Based on your current season, choose and apply the right mindset and strategy over the next 30 days.
- Start a Seasons Journal:
Cycles repeat.
Take note.
The challenges, opportunities, and lessons of each phase.
This will become an invaluable resource as you navigate future cycles.
- Share Your Insights:
Your personal development is amplified when shared.
Discuss these ideas with a friend, family member, or mentor.
Teaching others will reinforce your understanding.
- Set a Cyclical Review:
Mark your calendar for a quarterly “seasonal review.”
Use this time to assess your progress, adjust your strategies, and plan for the upcoming season.
