[00:00:37] Vesna: Welcome to the Peak Revival Podcast. My name is Vesna. Today I'm gonna talk about the founders' Winter when life pauses your growth season. what I mean by that is not the seasons. I am going to reflect to the seasons, but I'm talking about the time in your life where you're not growing, you're not expanding, but you are consolidating, and it's a wintering process. So it could be as a business owner, as a founder, as a working mom, as a stay at home mom.
[00:01:01] But I am gonna speak to founders in this episode.
[00:01:04] We are so accustomed to pushing through, I'll be the first one to put my hand up and say that this is me. I have found a way to push through and it's always kind of worked for me. And I think in this culture that we have, it's productivity and output over anything else, and I think we've lost some of the.
[00:01:23] Timeless understandings and looking at nature and you know, traditional practices and the way that we lived, I think we've lost that and how that was really helpful to sustain our growth over time. Not in one year, but over time and, you know, maintain our health and longevity. So a founder's winter, what is it?
[00:01:44] It's a season of involuntary stillness it's when life demands that you stop producing and you start restoring. Now, you may find what it feels like is that you don't have your drive, you don't have your motivation, you don't have your spark, you don't, there's nothing [00:02:00] pushing you to do the work. And you may have pulled right back or stopped completely, and you're wondering what is going on?
[00:02:06] you may find yourself in a wintering moment.
[00:02:08] So there are common triggers for wintering now. I'm gonna share my story because it can look a lot like depression, but it's not. So the common triggers for wintering is if you've had a health breakdown, okay, you've had an illness, significant illness, and your body just cannot push any longer, whether you've had grief or heartbreak, okay?
[00:02:27] In life, you're showing you what truly matters, but in that moment, you don't have any more capacity to keep doing what you were doing. It can be burnout or loss of meaning in your work and life. So there's a period of time where it's so self-reflective that you go into a wintering because you cannot make sense to continue on the path that you're on.
[00:02:47] And any kind of major life transition, maybe menopause, maybe aging parents, maybe divorce a change of direction, something that has triggered this moment of wintering for you you know, it's rocked kind of your daily routine and it's forced you to kind of go into this state of self-renewal.
[00:03:04] So just to reflect on my story, over the past 12 months, I've had quite a big 12 months. I have had loss, I've had heartbreak, and then I had illness or this accident where I broke my ankle and I had a significant amount of pain for the last few months. But it wasn't until up until my ankle break that I really started.
[00:03:22] To go into my wintering phase, and this is why I'm talking about this episode, right? Because I think it's really important that we acknowledge this time because when I started looking into it, I was like, ah, this really makes sense for where I'm at and I'm gonna share my journey. But up until the ankle break, I was able to push through everything.
[00:03:39] For me, I've identified with my drive and it's so energizing and inspiring for me that I can, whatever happens in my life, you know, I acknowledge and go through those emotions, but I can also push myself through and, uh, kind of come up again into a growth phase. But I found that after my ankle break, not [00:04:00] initially, but as I got through it, I just found that my drive was completely gone.
[00:04:05] I knew that my business needed me, but I just had this I don't care factor, which is usually really unusual for me. And that was kind of alarming, but also not right, there's, there's something about this wintering phase that. Doesn't raise a lot of serious, urgent alarm bells, even though it probably should have.
[00:04:24] Right. And to me, it felt like there was nothing urgent. Nothing really mattered. I was just in this bubble. Right. And I had, my thoughts were trying to scare me, right? Say, oh my gosh, your business, you're gonna lose your business. It's gonna go downhill. You're letting your team down. It's gonna be a nightmare.
[00:04:39] What are you doing? You've lost your momentum. You've gotta pick things up. Now you've still got time. Like I had all these crazy thoughts, right? But they didn't really push me into any kind of action whatsoever. I would really sit on the couch thinking those sorts and be like, yep, that's all true. But I got nothing.
[00:04:58] I had absolutely nothing. And so I, it's really a weird space. I've never found myself in this space before. I I wouldn't look at it as burnout. ‘ cause I've been through burnout, which is a real kind of fatigue. It's a different situation. But this is really, I wasn't tired. I was in a space of self-renewal.
[00:05:14] Yes. But in a weird space, right. Where a self-reflective space. And my friends were like, oh, maybe it's depression. And I was like, oh, it's definitely not depression. I'm in a weird bubble. That's what I kept saying. I'm in a bubble right now and I'm gonna try not to resist it because. You know when this accident happened, I did resist where I was at and that was just creating more pain and distress for me.
[00:05:37] there was something about this next phase, this wintering phase that where I just kind of was like, I'm just gonna allow what happens, wants to happen here, because I really have no drive to push through. I was thinking in my head as like a winter, and then I was reading this book, which I'll go into, A woman wrote a book called Wintering to really talk about this exact thing that people go through, which I think we've forgotten.
[00:05:57] When you look at nature, nature has a winter. And [00:06:00] it's never seen as a failure. Winter is a necessary part of preparation for the year, for a fruitful year, right? The soil isn't barren, but it's regenerating nutrients. So nothing in nature bloom's, 24 7, 365 days a year, right? So winter is nature's strategy for a fruitful year but also longevity.
[00:06:20] it looks like everything's quiet in wintertime, you see the trees. There's not a, not a leaf on there, there's nothing and, but everything's.
[00:06:27] The ground, the seeds are germinating. The, the root systems are working. The ecosystem's resetting itself. We can't see it, but it's happening. Right. And the same is happening for us. Like you look at in nature where they do overgrowing crops on land, it can no longer be fruitful anymore. That land, it needs to be rested.
[00:06:45] Right. And we have to see that even though we are not producing, we don't have output, but there is so much profound transformation happening underneath, even though we can't see it just like a seed in the ground that we can't see.
[00:06:58] So founders will fight their winters, right? Because I know for me, I was like, oh, I was in such a momentum. I was such a growth phase. It was all going well, and I was gonna do this, this, and this, and I've had to park those ideas. And it was just, you know, we resist it, we ref, we fight it. And then you also think, well, I can't slow down what's gonna happen to my business now.
[00:07:17] It's a really interesting time because it will show you how well you've built your team. Right, and how well things can run without you there so much. Right? and then you can see where the cracks are, right? So that's one thing. But
[00:07:30] the stillness and this time does not mean that we're losing momentum or falling behind.
[00:07:36] It's a necessary period that you have to go through.
[00:07:38] Like someone said to me, you know, they had a staff member that was saying, I just need a break. I just need a break. I just need to take a break. Right. I need a break. And then she ended up breaking her leg and he was telling me this story and I was like, yeah, I didn't feel like that, but okay.
[00:07:52] I get the point. So sometimes, you know, I talked about this in a previous episode, we can look at accidents and things that happen in our life, or heartbreaks [00:08:00] or loss as a moment, a learning moment. Maybe it is. Maybe it is. Like you can make it a learning moment. You can, whatever story you attach to that.
[00:08:09] You know, if I attach to my story, oh, I really needed a break and that's why I broke my leg. I didn't feel like that at the time. Maybe I needed to be more, you know, slow down a bit for sure. But. You know, whatever story I decide is gonna dictate how I feel. And accidents are accidents and things happen in life that we can't control.
[00:08:29] But what I know is that from this time, you can use this as an opportunity for growth, right? Because it's in our stillness, it's in our contemplation time that we really get more answers than when we are really busy.
[00:08:44] So it's really important that you see this as a, as a point of renewal, right? So like I said, the nature goes through seasons throughout the year of slowing down. We don't have those seasons anymore. We used to, but we don't have them anymore. So I remember reading a book years ago, and I can't remember the name of it, but it talked about.
[00:09:00] people living in the cities would normally at wintertime, or on the weekends would escape out of the city in order to self-renew. Right? Because being in the buzz of the city and working all the time was, very draining, right? And so then people would leave the city on the weekends or go on holidays or even for the winter, take a break, and they'd get outta the city and they'd be in nature and they'd be walking and sleeping and eating good food and they'll be renewing.
[00:09:22] But then. Uh, antidepressants came in, right? People were encouraged to stay in the city and keep working and not take breaks, and, but they were becoming depressed. And so therefore, antidepressants were then prescribed for something that was really natural, which is our natural need to escape and rejuvenate, right?
[00:09:41] Have a slow patch in order to come back stronger. Okay? And so I think it's really interesting that if you cannot fight this period, you'll come through it with a lot of, A lot of wisdom, you know, I certainly found, for me, it's given me just so much more clarity. It's slowed down my mental [00:10:00] processes and allowing me to see, see things more clearly and kind of new directions as well.
[00:10:05] Right? So it's sometimes we could be steamrolling so fast in the wrong direction. We don't realize it because we don't have any clarity. So the book that I wanna talk about that I was reading was called Wintering by Catherine May. She's a UK author and, and it's a really beautiful book. She said, you know, like uh, you know, we don't look at nature as if it's failing, you know, when it's wintering.
[00:10:24] And you know, in previous times we really gave ourselves time to have some downtime or to have a quiet patch, which we just don't honor anymore. It's all about output and productivity, and it's to our detriment, right? Are we actually being more productive by never slowing down? No. Okay. and then she talked about countries, you know, where they prep for a very cold winter, like in Finland.
[00:10:48] Right. So the preparation begins very early in the year because they have to. Prepare the wood for the fires that they'll be lighting, they'll have to pickle vegetables to store for the winter. And she was saying they don't rush any of these things. And in fact, these things that they do, they do it with so much presence and they enjoy doing it.
[00:11:05] Right. They start this preparation, they enjoy doing it, and it's. In those activities that they allow for contemplation and self-reflection because they're so present, right? They don't have any other agendas. They know how important it's to prepare for the winter. They won't survive the winter if they don't prepare for it, right?
[00:11:22] We don't have that experience, in other parts of the world because we don't get that cold. And, you know, we have a pretty even temperature all the time. And Catherine May was talking about in her book that there are things that you can do that allow you to be present. And she was talking about how she was baking, not very successfully, sometimes kneading dough, sorting out a messy drawer, unwiring, untangling wires and things like that.
[00:11:45] But she was like, in those moments, she was a hundred percent present in what she was doing. And that allowed, that was restorative. Right? That allowed for. You know, self-reflection and contemplation, and really that's what this moment is [00:12:00] giving you the opportunity for, right? You've got that opportunity now to, to get so much inner wisdom and direction for your next 12 months, five years, 10 years.
[00:12:12] So what you can do in this time for me? Oh my gosh. I feel like I stared at the wall a lot. I was reading, I was sleeping more, eating really well, but just kind of honoring more quiet time, you know, more time for self-reflection and contemplation.
[00:12:25] I was reading, I was watching this show there was a guy on there, he was a psychologist He said if we get really quiet, like really quiet within ourselves, we will have all the answers that we need. And that was something that, you know, he was saying, he discovered through a really hard time, right? He went through a divorce, a very Emotional time for him. And he realized the more quiet he became, the more answers he had and the more relief, right?
[00:12:55] And so he was talking about in terms of the field or consciousness, right? And so that ability for us to tap into this intelligence behind life by getting really, really quiet. And so when I heard that, I was like, yeah, that really makes a lot of sense to me. And so I had a lot of moments where I was just quiet so I didn't, you know.
[00:13:14] Whatever that looks like for you. It could be going outside and gardening. It could be taking slow walks without listening to anything on, your iPods, right? Just really kind of having quiet time.
[00:13:27] Time for yourself.
[00:13:28] Time to be present.
[00:13:29] Time to reflect.
[00:13:30] And the other thing I will mention, which is going to be really important, obviously you're running a business. You know, if you're a business owner, you need to keep that running and you will see how well your team operates. And the idea here is just to kind of keep the pulse alive in your business.
[00:13:43] You're not gonna be going through a growth phase, you're not going to be anywhere near that, right? You are going to be keeping the pulse alive in your business, you know? I have a friend who's a business owner. When her father passed away, she went through a wintering phase. Like she basically could not do any [00:14:00] work for about three months, and uh, she just found herself like sleeping a lot.
[00:14:05] just couldn't log in, right? And she said, thank goodness my team were so efficient. Like she'd done a great job setting up her team that they're able to manage things. For her. Okay. So I think, you know, sometimes we can have a lot of expectations in this phase, and the idea is just keep it really simple.
[00:14:21] What do you absolutely need to do? Your mind will jump to all the other things that need to be done, but you're really just trying to keep the pulse alive in your business until you come out of your wintering, right? So you need to value the wintering as much as you value output. Output and busyness and productivity doesn't mean success or leading to a good life.
[00:14:41] Okay? and you'll find out in this moment what does, right, what will lead to a good life for you?
[00:14:45] And the final thing that I wanna say is that allowing for the space, right? I'm a big believer in allowing for the space for something new to show up in your life. You know, we can look at these events that happen and think, why, why now? Why this, why me? But. This can allow space for something completely new that you never could even imagine or dream of to show up for you, and that will come through this period of contemplation, right?
[00:15:11] You'll have more clarity. Your routine will be different. It'll allow for the unknown to step into your life and for something new to be created.
