​As I prepare for retirement in a couple of months, I have received a lot good advice from friends who have already made this transition.  One of my friends warned, “Don’t make lists!”  Another advised against saying “Yes” to anything until I have my feet on the ground.  But the best advice I have received is “Don’t let short-term worries make long-term decisions.”
 
As we move through the seasons of life we are tempted to allow our immediate situation to shape decisions that will stretch far into the next season.  It would be like selling our Summer Clothes in June because we need the money and can get a good price for them and then having to wear Winter clothes through the rest of the Summer season. 
 
For us, context is everything!  We look at our lives in the context of the moment.  We take into account our feelings, our circumstances, our perceptions, and our environment. Seasonal changes bring changes to all of these factors.  By making a winter context decision that will affect the way we will live in the Summer may not be in our best interests.
 
Our mind has a great capacity to remember and look ahead based on past experiences.  It can take into account any anticipated changes in seasons.  Of course, such anticipations are not 100%.  We can be fooled when the expected does not occur.  Therefore, the mind must not only look ahead to the changes of seasons, it also has to allow for bad decisions based on the information we had at the time we made the decision. 
 
Self-care of the mind during times of change in our lives demand that we hold to our future with a rather loose grip. Sometimes we will be fooled.  However, we cannot let short term circumstances determine long-term outcomes.  And when you do, accept the result and move on.

​Decision-making demands that we use our critical thinking skills.  Unfortunately, most of us have not spent much time thinking about thinking.  We assume that if we weigh the options in our head and pick the best choice, then we have thought-out our decision. 
 
But thinking includes a vast array of mental exercises that help us see the problem, frame the question, locate the best sources for information, gather information to answer the question, come up with a tentative solution, try it out in our head, examine the consequences, reframe the question or answer, and then make our decision.  When we have to add the changing seasons to our decisions, most of us would rather crawl back in bed and let someone else figure it out.  (Which, by the way, is a perfectly legitimate strategy if you have someone to make the decision and you are willing to live with their choice.)
 
Our tip for dealing with the mind during times when the changing seasons is called adaptive thinking.
 
Watch Your Assumptions – Do not assume that what worked before will work again.  Do not assume that you understand the problem without stepping back and looking again.  Do not assume that you have a crystal ball for the future. 
 
Allow Time to Inform your Thinking – Unless you have developed a deep capacity for intuition, allow time to shape your thinking.  A great idea in the dark of night can appear to be utter foolishness with the light of day.  The old advice “Sleep on it” holds true.
 
Listen to Others Who Have Walked your Path – Allow others to scout the future for you by sharing their experiences and discoveries.  Adapt your thinking to the terrain they describe. 
 
Select Thinking Skills that are Appropriate to the Situation – Not all thinking skills are useful in every situation.  I do not have room to go into detail.  I encourage you to read the links below and identify your skills and select those that will help you as you face a decision that will reach beyond your immediate moment.
 
Critical thinking when adapted to your present circumstances can allow you to face the future with some sense of assurance.  However, allow yourself the opportunity to be wrong and to learn from your mistakes.  As your life changes, you will be better able to care for a mind that will be better equipped to see and understand the new day that will dawn with the next sunrise.
 

Five Types of Thinking Skills
 
Adaptive Thinking
 
10 Ways to Improve Your Thinking

​The human body is not designed to weather the physical seasons like those creatures in the natural world.  Their bodies have learned to adapt to their climate.  We, however, have relied on making intentional changes in our lives so that we can survive in the extremes of the seasons.  This resilience has enabled humanity to inhabit every square inch of our planet.  The key is resilience.  This same capacity allows us to withstand the challenges to our physical lives as we go through the seasons of our daily living, as well.
 
Resilience can be understood as the ability to bounce, as in bounce back from difficult circumstances.  Our bodies experience stress when we face great changes.  Our immune system is less able to fight off infection.  Our bodies may not work as effectively.  We may have difficulty digesting our food or getting enough rest.  Even when we are in the middle of a “good” season we may not be able to keep up, physically, with the demands that are being placed on us.  As we move through these seasons, we will experience changes in how our bodies respond.
 
There are two primary ways we can enhance our capacity for physical resilience.  The most effective is to be proactive.  As we learn about ourselves and how our bodies react, we can take steps to lessen the effects of the change of the seasons in our life.  If, for example, we know that we will have difficulty getting enough sleep when we are very busy with “Springtime-like living”, we can anticipate this by resting up before the season sets in.  Or, when the “winter-time” appears on our horizon we can take steps to make sure we get things done so that we will not fall behind.  By acting proactively in anticipation of the change in our daily living we can reduce the stress that change may force on us.
 
The second response is to be reactive to the changes wrought by the “seasons of living”.  Either we were unable to see the change coming or we chose not to act in anticipation.  A reactive response will seldom be as effective, but it can help us through.  During a time of great energy and activity, a reactive response would be to step away for a brief respite.  These mini-breaks can help you get through.  Likewise, when we face a long cold season where we have little energy and less desire to do anything, we can find a hobby or some other diversion that we ramp up our doing.  These brief breaks will allow us t, once again, get through.  Do not expect these coping mechanisms to do away with eth effects of the change, but they can make life a bit more bearable.
 
By accepting responsibility for our physical wellness in good times and bad, we can act, either proactively or reactively, and continue to enjoy good, if not great, physical health.

Pay attention to your body.  This may obvious, but many of our illnesses occur because we do not “pay attention.”  We refuse to admit that we have a “cold” coming on.  We believe that we are magically immune because an illness is not convenient at the moment.  Or, we disregard the symptoms and push ourselves into illness.  The first tip for Physical Self-care when experiencing changes in life’s seasons, is to recognize and listen your body.  It will tell you what you need to do.
 
Give yourself permission to accept your physical limitations. Once again, this may seem obvious, but most people over estimate their physical stamina.  We will push and push until our body says stop.  In physical training, we are taught to push our muscles to just beneath to point of being stretched or torn.  We gain speed by gradually increasing our distances.  Few people run a 26.2-mile marathon as their first race.  We train up our stamina.  This will only succeed if we are able to accept our physical limitations and, by paying attention to our body, stop short of destructive behaviors.
 
Learn to read the seasons.  As I suggested last week, be aware of the season and adjust your physical activities and expectations accordingly.  Claim the gift of the season and reduce the effects of the challenges of the season.  When illness leads you into a winter moment, allow yourself to rest with only brief break of activity.  When you are feeling the warmth of a Summer Sun “shining in your life, take advantage of it and push yourself a bit more, recognizing that brief breaks will still be necessary.  Read the seasons and live accordingly.
 
The Road to Resilience

​It is a cliché to think of our lives as seasons.  To poets, childhood is seen as Spring, Adulthood as Summer, etc.  But, the problem with a cliché is that it tends to cut off any further exploration of an idea.  I believe there is more that we can discover from this analogy of seasons of life when we expand it to seeing our lives as a series of life seasons.  We experience more than one springtime of life as well as many winters.  For the next few weeks we will be exploring ways to care for ourselves as these seasons come upon us.
 
Like all experiences, the various seasons of life offer us both opportunities and challenges.  Whenever we feel life is beginning to blossom into a new time of growth, we can discover the joys of seeing the new emerge and the challenge of having to live with unknowns that lay in the not yet.  In the Summers of our lives we can celebrate the abundance of light and vitality that it brings, but we must also endure storms that grow out of so much energy in and around us.  When the Autumns begin to appear, we can bask in the beauty of a world at harvest but we must also deal with the knowledge that dying is part of life.  Finally, when the Winters surround us, we have the opportunity to rest from our labors while dealing with the chill that comes from the dying that has now become a reality.  Each season offers us both opportunity and challenge. 
 
Over a lifetime, we will have the opportunity to grow through each season, learning how to accept the gifts they bring and live with he challenges they present.  In the process, we discover resilience and the calm that grows out of the confidence of knowing that one season follows another.  I invite you to consider your own life as a series of seasons through which you grow and become better equipped to take care of yourself no matter the circumstances.
 

​The first step in learning from something is to show up for class.  When we are truants from our lives, we spend our days reacting without thinking, dealing with stuff without considering our situation.  When a great opportunity arrives but we are in a winter moment, feeling down and powerless, we may simply ignore the opportunity.  Likewise, when a great challenge arrives during a Summer when things are supposed to be relatively easy, resentment may lead us into anger and perhaps even despair.   However, if we can “know the times and seasons” in our lives, we will be better equipped to respond to the opportunities and challenges they bring.  In that spirit, I offer these signs of the seasons of life.
 
Spring – There is a general hopefulness about life and enough energy to act on that hope.  We may feel great change in our lives but it has the feel of development rather than decay.  We may tire easily but can generally find the endurance to press on because we know things will improve.
 
Summer – There is a general sense of satisfaction with our lives.  Our lives are going as hoped except for the occasional storm that may set us back temporarily.  We draw energy from the light that surrounds us and find it relatively easy to focus on the good in our lives.
 
Fall – In the Autumn we begin to reap the bounty of the life we have lived.  We may feel that our lives have been productive and worthwhile.  However, our joy is tinged with the knowledge that the reaping is only temporary.  Once again, we feel great change taking place but it has begun to feel more like decay than development.  Our hope may begin to dim as we look ahead into the growing darkness.
 
Winter – With the stillness of Winter comes a time to step back and reflect on all that has occurred.  It is a time to live off the harvest of that which you have sown in life.  It may be a time of deep satisfaction as well as deep regret.  However, in the darkness of these winter reflections lay the seeds of a new Spring that will emerge when the time has come.  A winter hope exists, a hope that offers a light of its own in the winter darkness.

The Seasons of Transformation
 
Adapting to the Seasons of Life
 
A Reflection – To Everything there is a Season