One of the most important lessons I learned from Jim Rohn was about the seasons of life. In what is, for many, described as the most important season of the year: Winter… I decided to examine the seasons of life from my own NLP perspective.

Basically the theory goes that just like the seasons of our world change, so too does the seasons of our life. We all have summers, where everything seems to go well.. we do what we want to do and despite the odd threat and challenge, we enjoy things as we are being successful. Next comes autumn when the hard times begin to appear. We can see the threat occurring and sometimes we don’t choose to think about it. What we’ve harvested in good times now begins to be threatened and challenge comes our way.

Then we face winter. Winter is truly the ‘season of discontent’. It is when the tough times roll in. It’s when we are neck deep in it. It is when we are fighting for our lives, fighting for our businesses, fighting for our relationships. It’s when we lose our jobs, lose our partners, lose our friends. When we are forced to deal with illness, relationships breaking up, death, lack of money, bills stacking up, overwhelming worries. The winter is our tough times.

Eventually comes the spring. The spring presents us with new opportunities, a new start. It gives us a chance to rebuild things, to plant the seeds of success. We get to begin things again and there is much hope, opportunity and good fortune available to us. Now during each season, any of the other seasons can make a brief appearance so we have to be able to handle all of them.

No matter how well life goes, these seasons still occur. In your summer, it’s essential that you do two things: (i) Enjoy it as much as possible (ii) Be aware that things must change and you must be prepared if they do. In your autumn, you must become more aware of what is coming and prepare for it.

In your winter, you must realise that no matter what you are experiencing then and there that “This too will pass” and you must be patient in knowing that there will be good times ahead. You must focus on what you can learn for future winters from this one and how this winter is making you a better person. In your spring, you must take full advantage of the opportunities that appear to you and focus on ensuring that this helps you not only in the short term but in the long term as well

NLP allows you to accomplish these actions. You have the ability to change the way you think and feel in any area of life. When you can use this metaphor of seasons of life, it helps you understand the challenges that you face in a new way. You see, most people go through really hard times and really great times. There are not just successful people and unsuccessful people. The people I have seen and helped have ranged from millionaires to those living on the street. What I have found is that money is not correlated with happiness.
Sure, money will provide you with a better standard of life but you can be just as miserable with €10 million euros as you can with €100 euros. You see, they say money brings freedom… but what kind of freedom does a person have when they have the responsibility to having to make more and more money every day? They say money brings security, but I know many rich people who are very aware of all they have and all they have to lose. The poor are a lot less concerned. They have security. How can you be insecure with nothing to lose?

The key to dealing with the seasons to life if to make sure that you can be happy with less. If you can be as happy with little money as you can with lots, if you can be as happy with little prestige as you can with lots, if you can be as happy with nothing than you can with everything then the seasons of life will affect you but you will survive them better than you could dream.

You see, over the years, I’ve met many people in the field of NLP and most of them I found knew what to do but never actually do it. I’m sure out of everyone reading this article probably about 95% of you don’t use NLP regularly to make yourself happier, more focused, more motivated. You have the skills but why don’t you use them. I don’t know. I used to be one myself. How often do we have to hear about something before we do it? We do a Practitioner and Master Practitioner course that has life changing results for us and then, what… we sit at home afterwards and are happier yes, but we don’t take the next step and use it to make things even better. Some claim NLP is the way to go and we don’t use it and others claim it’s not for them and don’t use it.

Change the way you feel now. Think of something that makes you feel wonderful and create a powerful state. Make the images clearer and more vivid, turn up the sounds, spin the feelings. DO IT. Stop the negative internal dialogue with the mantra “Shut the hell up?” over and over again (or the uncensored version for those of you on one of our courses!!!). DO IT. Become aware of the way people respond to you. Become aware of your buttons and theirs and decide to focus on what’s useful.

My life has been as hard as anyone’s. Many people I have seen feel embarrassed that what to them is a big deal is nothing to others, but the point is everything is relative. Depression, Anxiety, Grief, Addiction, Illness: they are all as bad as each other when they devastate your life. I have never had it perfect and like I go through hard times and make mistakes, I get through them a better person and do some things brilliantly.

The key is like the Dalai Lama says “Bad things of course happen to me but I just don’t dwell on them”. Although our lives can be hard, the tough times always end and the spring always follows. So, from this, begin to look back over your NLP toolkit and the articles over the last year and USE THE IDEAS. Success requires action. Not talking about it, not making excuses about why something won’t help but ACTION. Take it and it will lead you to where you need to go. That way you’ll take the seasons of life in your stride and you’ll help make next year the best year of your life.