Have you (like me) cried, ‘Enough Now!’ at the seemingly constant onslaught of hard and heavy things that life has been throwing at you? Then it may be time to change the season in your life.

As the bleakness of winter melts into an ever-hopeful spring, there are some things you need to KNOW, to SENSE, and to DO if you want to make the transition of the metaphorical seasons of your life smoother and more seamless.

In this 200th episode of the Working Women’s Wealth podcast, I’d like to say a GIANT thank you to all of you who have been walking this journey alongside me.

Thank you for joining me for 200 episodes.  I am humbled that people still listen! 

Show Notes

[05.37] Three things you need to know

[08.42] Three things you need to sense

[11.31] Three things you need to do

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Quotes

"In this instant gratification world, I think we've become less sensitive to seasons - the seasons of our life. I think we like to only feel the joy of summer." - Lisa Linfield

"Understand that life has seasons and rhythms, and it doesn't ever stay winter all the time. We need to know that summer is going to come." - Lisa Linfield

"You need to both go with the season, AND drive the change." - Lisa Linfield

"I’m trying to teach my girls that we keep getting up and we keep on trying, that your Best Life is worth it." - Lisa Linfield

Script:

Hello everyone and welcome to THE 200th episode of Working Women’s Wealth!!!

Gosh, who knew this would ever happen!

So I want to say a huge shout out to those of you who have been walking this episode with me.  Thank you so much for your love, support and encouragement along the way.

Reaching my 200th episode in Spring Week has truly been a time of great reflection.  For those of you who listen regularly, you will know that this has been a truly rough 13 months personally for me… well, mostly for my family.  I guess you could say it’s been a winter period of my life.

I was chatting to my brother last week, and was telling him how I see there being three layers in the world in the moment – there’s the corona layer, the weird shit layer, and the normal life ‘shit happens’ layer.  I don’t know about you, but it just all seems to be out of whack at the moment.  Wherever you turn, the world seems higgledy-piggledy.  People are dying – some from Corona, some from weird shit.  Kids are taking strain – a lot from the impacts of Corona, some from weird shit, and then normal life growing up challenges.  Like my daughter who broke her back falling from a horse!  Then got Corona, and is trying to navigate life as a 13 year old starting a new high school.  Businesses are taking strain – some from Corona, some from weird shit.  Families are taking strain.

So, like so many of you, I’m desperate for the green shoots of spring to start bursting through with force!  None of this soft, gentle pastel stuff.  I guess to be fair, I’d really love summer – the brightness, ice-cream, sunshine, laughter and beaches of life.

But it’s spring.  Not summer. 

And yet spring for me is the strongest of all the seasons… The roses grow from short pruned stubs to strong, powerful rose-bushes.  Yet, it’s still deceptively cloaked in that soft, gentle, pastel stuff.  The little shoots and blossoms amaze me – somewhere inside the main tree reads the signposts and decides the conditions are right and sends them forth – so they get blossoming and sprouting, only to be smacked by a freak snow storm or cold patch.  Yet they will keep on going.  Summoning all their strength to bud again and get strong and ready for when summer arrives.  It’s a season of change – transitioning from winter to summer – and its core word is HOPE.

 If we think of the summer we want – brightness, ice-cream, sunshine, laughter and beaches of life, it is always only an outcome.  An outcome of the hard growth of winter, and changing growth of spring.  In winter, like the fruit trees, we are cut back.  But what we and the rest of the world don’t often see is that it is then that the roots of the fruit tree grow thicker and more deeply into the ground.  And without those strong anchors, it can’t grow tall and produce many branches to produce the bountiful fruit of summer.  Magnificent beauty and success requires strong roots – roots that can survive the knocks above the surface… roots that can feed the tree and give it strength to keep going.

In this instant gratification world, I think we have become less sensitive to seasons.  We want only the joy of summer.  We feel, as my daughter says, that ‘life hates us’ when we go through long, or even short winters.  All we want is summer.  And we don’t recognise the needs for transition – for autumn preparing us for winter, or spring preparing us for the great times of summer.

I know for me, every month over the last 13 months, I’ve cried ‘enough now’… I WANT SUMMER PLEASE.  I want an end to things going wrong.  I’ve even downgraded my request from wanting the joy of summer to settle for boring.  I’ve told my friends and family that if I ever tell them that life is boring, they will know that I’ve reached my pinnacle of greatness for this year.  Quiet, calm, boring.

THREE THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW

So, if you’re like me and wanting to move out of winter and to summer, there are three things we need to know

1. Understand that life has seasons and rhythms, it NEVER stays winter all the time.  Know that summer will come.  Humans, unlike the physical seasons, have unspecified, longer times of winter and summer, but it does change, so hold hope for that.  Also, know that a season is never cut and dry.  The expression ‘four seasons in a day’ is one my new home town teaches me about all the time.  But, especially as the seasons transition… These last two weeks we had a heat wave, followed by a snow storm, followed by lovely warm days, and it’s currently been raining for two days.  So goes life.  Just when you think it’s turning, and life is going well, a week of winter may hit.  Don’t give up hope.  Know that the stretches of spring will get longer and longer, and winter will fall behind in the rear view.

2. Recognise that spring always comes in between winter and summer.  It’s a transition season that gets you ready to blossom, bear fruit and flowers.  But it’s a season that takes a lot of energy to grow, to change, and to push through to the sunshine and fruit of summer… there will be days when you sometimes feeling the bleakness of winter, but know that below the surface you have grown, changed and strengthened.. and that strength is what will get you through this transition to enjoy the sunshine of summer.

3. You have to both go with the season, AND drive the change.

Now, that last one, driving the change, feels difficult to me… as it feels like so much of the last 13 months has been external curveballs that life has thrown at me… and every time I put the effort in to drive the change, another one hits.  Like I think it’s time for spring… only to be hurtled back into winter.  So it feels easier just to stop trying.  To get caught in the trap of saying – It’s Winter… I should just give up!

But that’s not life, and it’s definitely not living our Best Life.  And as I’m trying to teach my girls that we keep getting up and keep trying, that your Best Life is worth it, I need to do that too!

THREE THINGS YOU NEED TO SENSE

So how do you know when it is time to change seasons and shift gears?  Well, there are three things you need to ‘sense’

1. That still small voice in you, your instinct, your gut, will prompt you.  As I mentioned in my book, I’m an analyst, and thrive on fact and spreadsheet.  But I have learnt, again, that it’s all about the AND… that our instinct is so powerful.  It’s the cornerstone of the 5 signposts to your Best Life, and one we should get better at ACTING on, not just listening.  We know deep in our soul what the right thing to do is.  We just need to stop making excuses.  In this recent winter period, I knew deep in my soul, my number one job was to love and support my family.  Not work, nothing but that.  And so I did it.  I also know, deep in my soul, that I need to now get myself together and pick up the pace back to ‘normal’.

2. We all have our ‘go tos’ in life, the things we turn to when winter of the soul hits – sugar, hibernating, alcohol, partying, Netflix.  Those times when surviving takes these Short Term Hits of Happiness.  I’ve allowed that and not been brutally judgemental of myself… but I also know my body is now taking strain, and needs me to focus on restoring health, getting back into routines that take effort, but benefit me so much.  It was fine for the season, but now I need to find the energy to push myself back towards the sky… otherwise the hole to dig yourself out of just keeps getting bigger and bigger.  You will sense that actually, what was behaviour that was helpful through a tough time, is now becoming an escape, a way to hide.

3. The last thing is that you will sense the synchronicity.  Being open to synchronicity is one of the big tools I’m learning.  Joining the dots between the millions of little signposts that come into our life and point to the new season, the new path.  Things that tell you it’s time to get back on track.  It’s time to push through, to change, to keep going on life’s path. 

THREE THINGS YOU NEED TO DO

And then lastly, there are three things you need to do

1. Choose just ONE thing to implement that you know will take you down the right path. Something small, that you can do, but powerful. If it’s growing your business, commit to making 3 sales calls a day.  If it’s exercising, commit to going for a walk twice a week.  If it’s finding a new job, commit to applying for one job a week.  If it’s eating healthy, commit to cutting out one thing every day. 

2. Commit to do that consistently from now until the end of the year.  There are just 16 weeks left in 2021.  So that’s all you need to do.  Consistency over time trumps chaotic whirlwinds any time.

3. Develop a mantra for that one thing.  Mantra’s are short, and bit size.  “I can do hard things” is one of my favourite mantra’s.  “I can be healthy” is another one.

As I reflect on my 200th episode, I go back to the beginning.  To why I started my podcast.  My goal is to teach a million women about money.  Not to be rich.  To be wealthy – to have the money they need invested over time to generate the income they need to be free.  Free from bosses they hate, free from husbands or partners or family members that treat them badly, and free to – free to do work that they’re passionate about, free to find their purpose, free to spend their time how they choose.

You could definitely say that I started motivated and as an energetic whirlwind.  I used to build videos, write blog posts, and regularly go on social media.  My mantra at the time was “come lisa… you can do this! It’s hard now, but you can learn it”.

But I knew that it would get tough to consistently do the whirlwind of activity when the reality of 3 kids and a day job kicked in… so I did make only ONE commitment.  That no matter what happens, I would do a podcast episode every week.  Many times, that’s easy… when I’m full of energy, have great guests coming my way, and it’s a summer season in work and life.

But over the last 13 months, it’s been difficult.  And I’ve had to rely on sheer commitment and my amazing editor to get me showing up each week.

But it’s my Bare Minimum.  A secret tool I use in each area of my life to make sure that I keep life moving forward.  One thing that is consistently done each week, no matter what.  One thing that I put in place an accountability partner to make sure that I do it – for my podcast that’s my listeners and my editor.

So, if there’s something you’re wanting to shift, some change you’re needing to make to get you on track for a summer in your life…

1. Know that life has seasons that are never clean cut – and that winter overlaps spring.

2. Listen to your intuition, that small voice that’s telling you it’s time now to stop hibernating and start shifting into gear

3. Pick one thing, just one, that can be a cornerstone habit to develop for the next 16 weeks to the end of the year.  One thing that, when done consistently, over a very long time, will change your life.  And if you can, get an accountability partner to help you stick to it.

Thank you for joining me for 200 episodes.  I am humbled that people still listen! 

And Thank you to Victoria de la Harpe – my editor, producer, and absolute ROCK who supports me all the time with love, gentleness, and the encouragement I need to keep going even through life’s toughest weeks.  She is my accountability partner, and the safest pair of hands ever.  Tori, I couldn’t have done it without you!