Caroline Cavanagh maps seasonal cycles onto human energy: autumn is winding down, winter is rest, spring is building, summer is peak productivity. Trying to stay in summer constantly causes burnout. Your body needs all four phases to stay healthy.
Chapters
A common mental health issue is burnout, running so fast that actually your body goes, enough now, and you collapse in some way, shape, or form. So here's a little tip that I use that really, really works. In nature here, we have our seasons. Currently, it's autumn. Autumn is a time when nature starts shedding things It no longer needs. Autumn's followed by winter, a time of rest, recuperation, stillness. Then spring comes, energy starts to build again until we're back in summer— abundance, lots of life, lots of energy. However, as human beings, we try and stay in summer all of the time, and if nature did that, Nature would collapse too. We need the seasons. And we can take this into a day as well. Nighttime is like wintertime, it's a time of rest, recuperation, stillness. From when you get up through to late morning, that's like the spring— energy is building, getting more productive. Then from late morning through to the afternoon, that's our summer when we're at our most productive, most abundant. But then from that late afternoon through the evening is the autumn when it all starts to quieten down again. So we need to have quieter periods because if you don't have a long enough winter, the spring will be compromised, the summer will be compromised. If you try and have a summer all of the time, you will ultimately burn out. The seasons each have a purpose. Every part of your day has a purpose. The secret is to balance it.
