Spring is in full swing and depending on where you live, you might have already had the chance to see all different kinds of trees and flowers blossoming. Nature being a perfect teacher, spring is the perfect season to look closer at nature and learn how to blossom amid a crisis. You might be surprised how many lessons one can learn from nature!
Pause
It's not a surprise that a flower (or a tree) needs time to blossom. A quick rewind, the season before spring is winter and this is when the plant life is rather dormant. The temperatures are low and nature prepares itself for when the right moment (spring) comes along to wake up and bloom in all kinds of colors.
If you find yourself in the middle of a crisis or experience an extremely hard time, remind yourself that there's no winter without spring, and that we sometimes need stillness to rest and recover. Moreover, it doesn't help to force yourself or feel guilty about taking a step back. It is part of the process and you are exactly where you're supposed to be.
No matter how long your winter lasts, don't forget spring is right around the corner and that you're just preparing yourself to grow and blossom.
Look around
Slowing down isn't a synonym for shutting down. Just because most of the trees don't have any leaves in winter time, it doesn't mean that there's nothing going on inside and underneath them. Trees have an incredible way of communicating with each other, in their own way, and they do so throughout the year.
So what does that teach us for when we're going through a hard time? Share your thoughts and challenges with your loved ones. Be it close friends, family or your work family. You are not alone.
If you feel like you would like to speak to a mental health professional, that's also totally fine. Asking for help doesn't mean being weak, it means that you're mature and strong enough to know that you are not meant to stay in crisis mode forever, and that you also don't need to. After all, you're not on this planet to hibernate, you are here to live and enjoy life to the fullest.
Slowly but surely
One day, you will feel how both your physical and mental strength will grow, and you will feel stronger. For nature this happens when the temperatures go up and the sunlight wakes up all their senses. However, this isn't the moment when they immediately start blossoming. The buds and leaves first need to grow, and timing plays a crucial role there, too. If they grow and blossom too quickly, they won't last, and the next cold period will damage them.
"It's not the destination, it's the journey," couldn't fit better here. It's also not about being the first or being there too early. What counts is that you trust your own rhythm and take time to heal. And once you’ve healed, you will gain back strength and simply feel that it's time to start again.
Opening up
Sometimes it seems like you can hear a flower burst forth and blossom in all its glory. It doesn't ask anyone for permission or look around what the other flowers are doing, it simply follows its rhythm and blossoms. And isn't that truly beautiful?
It's literally an opening up; an opening up to the new season, a new beginning, a new chapter that starts. You decide if you want to go "all out" or if you want to start with small flowers. It's not a competition, it's about deciding what feels right for you.
Enjoy the opening up to the fullest—opening up to others, yourself and new opportunities! You carry so much beauty inside yourself and it's time to show it to the world. There's enough space for all kinds of flowers and you will find yours. If you want to change places, allow yourself to change direction and trust that "it's not the destination, it's the journey."