Winter is Coming

27th June 2020

For those who have watched the Game of Thrones would remember this phrase well. Your life has seasons. Spring for fresh starts, Summer for greatness, and Autumn for reaping rewards. These seasons have a great purpose in your life. What about winter? Winter is when things go wrong, broken relationships, lost jobs, failed investments, illness, or even death may occur. It is when the stark coldness strikes your heart and soul with despair, fear, and exasperation. It is the time when you cry out, “Why me?”, “Give me a break!” and “I can’t take this anymore, I am in too much pain!”

What is the whole point of having low moments in your life? How do you cope with your winter?

Winter is a time when you get a chance to really see yourself. It takes away all the distractions of pleasantries of life, the convenience of nature, and any hint of positivity that you may expect. It is only when you are stripped bare of your ego, success and superficiality are you able to see with crystal clear clarity what you are made of.

Success is a horrible teacher. It merely reflects and rewards what you have done. It hardly teaches you anything new. Nothing fails faster than success. Adversity, on the other hand, is an excellent teacher. It categorically shows you that what you have done is not deemed right by the universe. Adversity gives you an opportunity to test yourself to see how much will power you possess. It also forces you to learn many truths you would never have discovered without it.

But adversity does more than this. Adversity may open doors that you may not have seen or thought of before. It may lead you to an understanding of self and your power within that may never be seen or released without it.

In those moments when things are going horribly wrong, where life seems to throw curveballs at you from every corner when all you want to do is to crawl away and die, don’t. Embrace your winter, just like how you would embrace your other seasons. Do not ignore or bury it. It has happened for a purpose. Delve into it and understand it. Search for the precious lesson behind it. Use your winter to understand yourself better. The cost of adversity can only escalate if you do not find the lesson behind it. Use your emotions to think but don’t think with your emotions.

Be grateful for the lesson bestowed upon you. This may be the hardest to accept, much less do. How can you be grateful when all you feel is sadness, anger, resentment, fear, and despair? Remember that you are alive. You are still in the game of life. All these feelings are part of life. You were not assured that your life would only consist of everything nice. The fact that you are having all the difficult feelings mentioned earlier shows that you are truly living. Be grateful to be allowed to feel and understand what life has to bring. You are truly living life, every aspect of it, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

So, embrace your winter. Use it to dig down to your core and have a chat with him/her. Understand him/her better and have a discussion on how to grow from this. Nurture your core. Know that by doing so, you will emerge bigger, better, and stronger. Your life will be more substantial and richer in so many ways that it cannot be achieved without your winter. Some of the biggest failures in life are people who have never failed.

Know that if you are going through Winter, Spring is just around the corner. When Winter comes, open your arms and welcome it into your life. It is truly your friend and teacher.

Life gives no one immunity against adversity, but life gives to everyone the power of positive thought, which is sufficient to master all circumstances of adversity and convert them into benefits. – Napoleon Hill

Back to Blog