Mobile phone service providers eat your heart out there is 5G connectivity and it is available everywhere! These 5 ‘Gs’ are within us all. They help us access the best of ourselves as we go through seasons of the year. They are dynamic cardinal capacities in that they are like spices to help us flavour our key endeavours in life. As this year is left behind it is always an apt time to look back on how they may have manifested for you and reflect on their place in your 2017 armoury of capacities and resources.
Cultivating the quality of Grace allows us to be with what arises through taking time to go deep and be ‘be with’ rather than ‘do with’. Grace is smoothing down to our essence and walking it into the world, bearing it in our gait and in our graciousness to self and others in simplicity. Winter is a time of going inward and grace helps us be there with more ease. For me it is the fusion of dignity, warmth and spare movement. For awhile we can quieten the fussing mind. Grace helps us to find the balance place where we can allow both the pull ‘to act’ and ‘pull to be’ to rest awhile in the mystery of life , deepening our recognition of that sweet spot where we can ‘ let be to let come’ inform us.
Reflection: Who embodies this quality for you? Where do you draw your inspiration and how does it show, out in the world?
Growth is a drive force. One day the ground is empty brown earth and the next day there appears a small curlicue of a tiny green head showing above ground after winter. There is no stopping the push upwards and outwards. Like plants we are meant to seed ideas and throw up new shoots and grow whatever our conditions, however ambiguous the times. Staying open to new possibilities is part of the process of seasonal renewal. It keeps us vibrant and fresh. When we bring beginner’s mind we are open to curiosity, wonder and discovery that feeds our growth.
Reflection: What fresh and creative way can I seed new thinking in 2017?
Glee is an attitude. It is full of the juicy ripeness of success, celebration, community and relationship. It is joyful, playful and flavoursome. Glee is a shared experience. It is the ‘we’ in relationship. It is the multicolour music of laughter. Summer is the culmination of the growing season when plans, dreams and hopes firework their way to an apex. Enjoying it with both hands open is to approach our glee wholehearted. Cultivating the capacity for glee is to recognise it in the small as much as the large and share it around.
Reflection: When did you last have a real belly laugh? When next summer comes what do you want to see ‘zing’ in your life?
Grit is a capacity. We use when we know what we stand for as a person and being in touch with our strengths under fire. Grit helps us when the chips are down or the pressure to stay grounded and courageous. Metal, in Chinese traditions is associated with the season of winter. Having, having the metal to hang in there or make tough decisions is to have grit. We may not have the sun to warm our backs, or the strong light of day as the days grow shorter but we can have the capacity to know what we need to hold on and stay in the game. There may be moments when we really need to clarify and speak our truth, or ask for it, even when there is much at stake. Grit helps us do that.
Reflection: What needs pruning in your life? What conversations might be overdue and need to happen?
GRATITUDE is a mindset. It is most associated with harvest time. But of course the art of gratitude can be practiced all year round. Spotting a moment to be grateful and savouring it is important and underscores all the other G forces above. We need to be step up and make more opportunities to appreciate and express our gratitude for what we have right here now beneath our noses and feet if we but look. Bringing intentional attention to harvesting what is good fuels us, and makes us stronger as seasonally, we turn from Augusts’ warmth but before Autumn arrives. We stock our metaphorical cupboard with what we want to keep hold of and remember… Visit www.gratefulness.org for more inspiration
Reflection: What needs harvesting from last year? Where do you need to give thanks to someone or for something?
Karyn Prentice January 2017
