“The Brightest Spring follows the Darkest Winter.” This is a sentiment that is echoed through many sayings. The sun shines brighter after a dark night. A candle shines brightest in the darkest room. There is this idea that we value positive things more when we’ve experienced their absence. Simply, the light seems brighter because we’ve missed it and become used to the darkness. But what if instead of the light seeming brighter, we choose to create more light after experiencing darkness? Or in other words, creating more positive things than one started out with after experiencing a time of their absence. Maybe instead of the spring just seeming brighter after a darker winter, what if it actually was brighter than other springs before it? What would this mean?
There is a lot of suffering in the world. There is so much pain, anger, violence, starvation, the list goes on. It’s not hard to see how people around us suffer. However, a lot of the time it isn’t until suffering gets really bad that we both collectively and individually decide to shift for the better. Take for example the recent school shooting in Florida: it seems that after this shooting there is more movement and pressure to do something to prevent more shootings from occurring. But so many mass shootings took place for us to get to this point. On an individual level, how often does it take a big consequence or life event for us to reflect on the unhealthy habits we have and change them? From my experience, most of the time. Usually when someone wants to change it’s because something happened in their life that caused them to want to change. They experience an epiphany usually caused by an increase in suffering, whatever that looks like for them.
These changes and shifts, once we say enough to the suffering we are experiencing, do make things better. It does create a “brighter spring” so to speak.
Suffering isn’t necessary.
It is easy to go with the status quo. To accept some level of suffering and pain, as long as there is still some happiness to be found. It is usually when the suffering gets too much and goes beyond a certain threshold that we say enough is enough and have the desire and motivation to change.
But it doesn’t need to be this way.
We can choose to shift ourselves for the better without experiencing this suffering.
How do we do this?
First of all, by being really aware of ourselves and telling ourselves the truth. Looking honestly at how we cause ourselves suffering. Whether it’s staying at a job that you don’t like, being extremely self-critical, living with a lot of stress and anxiety, not doing what you love due to fear of judgment, or anything else you do that causes unnecessary pain in your life. Tell yourself the truth, shine a light on how your actions or inactions cause you pain. By being honest and making yourself aware, then you can shift.
The first step is illumination, shining a light into the darkness.
We can also continually strive for change. It is always possible to improve your life. Keep looking at what you want, what new things you want to bring in to enhance your life. Think about what will bring you more joy and happiness and do it! Create it! We have one life, we might as well make it as happy and great as possible.
Being aware of how you cause yourself suffering and taking action to improve your life isn’t necessarily easy. It might be, it might be easy to see where you’re causing yourself pain and to change your life so that you have more happiness. But often it is easy to be blind to how we cause ourselves suffering because we don’t have an outside perspective. Sometimes we also don’t know what will bring us joy or if we do know what brings us joy, we don’t know how to bring it into our lives. This is where receiving a Life Activation can be pivotal.
Receiving the Life Activation both provides clarity around what best serves you, what brings you joy, and helps you shift to let go of what causes your suffering. The Life Activation shines a light on your life, it helps show you where suffering is created and supports you in shifting your life for the better.
In other words, it helps you enhance your life. It helps you create your “brighter spring.”
Winter is ending. We’re starting to enter the time of the year with more sun, more growth, more good times. I invite you to think about if you let the brightness of your spring be determined by the darkness of your winter? Or, will you choose to enhance your life and intentionally make your spring brighter?
