We all know how it feels to be thrown into the middle of one of Life’s harsh winters. To to be thrust a little too forcefully into a situation we never would have chosen for ourselves. One that beats us down, breaks us open, and otherwise shatters our deep sense of order.
In these darker moments, we often rush to smooth over the sharp edges of our circumstances. We struggle to rearrange the pieces of our world, even as they fall down around us. We scramble to get more, do more, be more, believing the trivial trinkets we seek will deliver us an invincible summer of the soul.
But there’s a problem: As soon as we acquire whatever it is we desire, we unconsciously move the goal post. No matter what we do, what we buy or what we achieve, summer is still somehow always on the other side of an ever-evolving obstacle. We are never content.
That’s because real transformation is an inside-out job. Which means it’s often only through the act of changing our inner space that we can ever hope to impact our outer world. It’s through the practice of tethering ourselves to something deeper and more lasting than our circumstances that we discover just how little our circumstances really matter. It’s through the process of changing our thoughts that we end up changing our world.
And when we do this hard work– when we allow these inevitable winters come and go without letting them rock us to our core– an interesting thing happens: We rob the winter of its power. We stop fearing the changing of the seasons.
And we actually start to believe the very thing that has always been true, even when we were too afraid to see it: what happens to us, really does happen for us.