Honoring the cycles in your life – navigating & supporting your journey
In previous posts I’ve covered a number of different cycles we experience in life. (You can read the first three posts in this series here, here, and here.)
Our lives are filled with so many different cycles – from that are more apparent to those that seem so all encompassing you forget there was ever a before or there will be an after. Since these cycles are a natural (and unavoidable) part of life, let’s focus on ways to both honor them and support yourself in your journey through them.
I’ll be talking about cycles in general in this post, so if you’re looking for more specific information on the types of cycles you might be experiencing, go back to the first three posts in this series!
Recognizing the cycle
Some cycle are easy to recognize. Cycles like your menstrual cycle have physical indicators which call out where you are in the process. The natural world also has physical manifestations which help us recognize the cycle of the seasons.
For other cycles which take place over a much longer time period or have no physical markers, you need to tap into your inner wisdom and listen to find out where you are.
You are here
Set a timer for 30 seconds. Close your eyes, take a few deep breaths. Turn your focus inward, listen to your body.
- What are you feeling, both physically and emotionally.
- What are the thoughts spinning through your mind.
Life doesn’t come with a “you are here” sticker on the map, you need to listen to your inner wisdom in order to navigate through the cycles in your life.
If you feel uncomfortable turning inward or struggle to hear your inner wisdom speaking to you, try journaling. By putting pen or pencil to paper, you might be able to let your inner wisdom come through.
It’s important to not only write, but also read what you’ve written.
If you have a journaling practice, read back through the last month of entries – do you see themes, does a cycle become apparent you didn’t realize you were experiencing?
Now that you’ve got an idea of where you are, you can find a way to move through whatever you’re experiencing with as much ease and grace as possible.
You’ll need to find ease in the discomfort
Knowing where you are is only part of the challenge. It’s also important you’re able to find comfort in the discomfort as you navigate through the cycles in your life.
Imagine you’re on a moped heading across town. The maximum speed your vehicle can achieve is 35 mph. For a while, you’re cruising along, enjoying the view as you head through neighborhoods with beautiful gardens and interesting buildings.
Then you get into a part of town which is a little less pretty. And the ride becomes less enjoyable. You want to move through this part of town much quicker – you try to rearrange your body weight, shifting to become more aerodynamic. With a heavy hand on the accelerator, you manage to push the moped up to 40 mph.
But it starts to make a whining noise, you don’t want to slow down, you just want to get out of this part of town, it’s uncomfortable for you here. So you keep a tight grip on the accelerator, pushing the moped to its limits to get a little more speed.
The whining noise increases, and suddenly, the moped starts losing speed. It comes to a stop in the exact part of town you were trying to get out of.
And there’s nothing you can do to make it start up again. Now you’re stuck until you can fix your moped before continuing on your way. You’re stranded in the part of town that makes you uncomfortable and unable to continue on to the exciting destination you were headed for.
Now what if I told you the moped was actually you and the town represented one of the many cycles of life we move through.
Sometimes life is hard, sometimes the lessons we need to learn are uncomfortable. But when we try to rush or push through them to get back to a comfortable place we can end up stuck in the uncomfortable place. It’s only when we recognize and honor these experiences that we’re able to move on and stop repeating the same unlearned lessons over and over.
In Love Warrior, Glennon Doyle puts it beautifully: “Perhaps pain was not a hot potato after all, but a traveling professor. Maybe instead of slamming the door on pain, I needed to throw open the door wide and say, come in. Sit down with me. And don’t leave until you’ve taught me what I need to know.”
Learning to honor the cycle
I can’t remember where I first heard the reference to life as a spiral staircase, but this powerful image has stuck with me.
As you climb the staircase, you continue to return to the same vantage points over and over. But if you learned your lessons on the previous floor, you’re now up a level, learning new lessons, while continuing around the spiral.
Honoring each step in the cycle as you move through life allows you to keep moving forward, climbing up the staircase. You’re changed by your experiences and you’ve learn new things about the world and yourself.
As you move around the staircase, you see the same view out the windows, but with a different perspective as you climb higher.
And this is the goal in life – to continue to learn and grow – to continue to find new ways to be our very best selves.
Supporting yourself through the cycles
It’s critically important that you take the time to live in each stage of the cycle, recognizing and honoring it. By giving each step of your process respect, you are able to learn the lessons it is there to teach you and move forward, continuing to climb the staircase.
Again, Glennon Doyle writes beautifully in Love Warrior: “Finally, I was being quiet and still enough to hear the truth: You are not supposed to be happy all the time. Life hurts and it’s hard. Not because you’re doing it wrong, but because it hurts for everybody. Don’t avoid the pain. You need it. It’s meant for you. Be still with it, let it come, let it go, let it leave you with the fuel you’ll burn to get your work done on this earth.”
If you find yourself struggling to sit with the uncomfortable feelings here are a few ways you can support yourself:
- Yoga in its many forms – find a practice that resonates with you;
- Meditation;
- Pranayama (breathwork);
- Mindfulness techniques;
- Going for a walk and/or spending time in nature; and
- Journaling
Pick a tool that helps you connect to your inner wisdom and allows you to learn from your experiences.
If this is all totally new to you, you can get started with any of the breath techniques on my site (find them by searching the site for the word “Breathe”).
Key factors in supporting yourself through any cycle
Find a balance between self-work and self-care. Check out my post discussing the differences between self-care and self-work.
You’ll need both – self-work to help you learn and grow, and self-care to help you recharge and replenish your energy – as you support yourself through cycles. It’s important to make sure you’re getting an appropriate balance between these two based on your needs.
Finally, allow each stage to move at the pace that’s right for you to fully absorb the lessons provided. This will be different for every person and every cycle (and even for every part of every cycle), but by tapping into your own inner wisdom, you can navigate through your cycles without pushing your moped to a breakdown.
If you struggle to connect with – and follow – your inner wisdom, check out my Intuition 101 course and learn how to do just that.
Be present in each stage of the cycle, knowing you won’t be there forever
I want to leave you with a story that has stuck with me from my yoga teacher training.
A man went to his teacher and said – “I’m having so much trouble finding quiet in my meditation”. The teacher said, “be patient it will change”. Many months later, the man went back to the teacher and said – “it’s wonderful, I’m able to quiet my mind for hours now”. The teacher smiled and again said, “be patient, it will change”.
Everything in life is a cycle, if you find yourself somewhere uncomfortable, be patient, listen to your inner wisdom, learn the lessons that cycle is presenting to you, and it will change. If you find yourself in a comfortable place, make sure you enjoy and celebrate it, honor how wonderful it is, because it too will change.
Hoping you find the ease in the discomfort as you move through your cycles with grace.
[…] the cycles in your life. The 1st, 2nd posts in this series cover other types cycles, and the 4th post discusses how to honor those cycles to bring more ease into your […]