Winter Inner Work, Spring Rewards: The Season No One Sees

The beginning of the year brings a lot of “new you” promises.

You may start a new diet, join a gym, or begin to work on that business idea. By mid-February, those resolutions and goals are long gone. Have you ever stopped to ask why we start anything new in the dead of winter?

If you live in a colder climate, the last thing you will want to do in January is wake up early to hit the gym, regardless of the membership you purchased. I believe the New Year’s system has been designed for us to fail.

Let’s look at some facts. In the winter, it is common to sustain a vitamin D deficiency due to lack of sunlight. This deficiency can impact our iron, B12, and folate levels. These deficiencies affect our mood, energy, and diet. Shorter, darker days and increased carb loading are the winter norm. Less sunlight means higher melatonin levels, which induce more sleepiness, and decreased serotonin, which contributes to depression.

Hibernating away from the cold in the dead of winter is not setting us up for success.

What if, instead of rolling out resolutions in January, we retreated inward to connect with who we really are? Push the resolutions off until spring. Success in business is often reflective of our own internal success—of who we are internally. Success has nothing to do with hustling harder. In fact, it has everything to do with how you are doing on the inside.

Steps to professional growth begin with your foundation. That foundation is the deeper relationship you have with yourself. Personal growth does not begin by becoming something new; it begins with remembering who you are. Remembering who you are—or were—before the world told you who to be.

At the heart of every meaningful transformation is the relationship you have with yourself. Just like any healthy relationship, it requires awareness, honesty, compassion, and boundaries. By committing to a period in which you intentionally develop this inner relationship, you will find that it becomes less about fixing what’s wrong and more about nurturing what’s already within you.

All new relationships start with getting to know another person. Why should this be any different when getting to know yourself? Your relationship with yourself begins by learning to observe your thoughts, emotions, patterns, and reactions without judgment. Becoming self-aware means checking in with yourself by asking,

“What am I feeling right now?” And why? What situations trigger me? This can be discovered through mindfulness, journaling, prayer, meditation, or quiet reflection. When you become aware, you develop a sense of clarity.

In today’s world, we are overwhelmed with constant news, tragedy, and drama, and we have lost our ability to freely think without distraction. We used to have moments of pause. In those pause moments is where reflection took place and where clarity was found. We would think critically through all decisions. Now, we are in a constant state of going and doing, and we have lost our foundation of clarity. Clarity is where growth begins.

Changes in our thought process can feel threatening at first because they are unfamiliar to the mind and body. We have to retrain ourselves in how we process information. It requires calming your brain and nervous system enough to hear yourself think. It begins with accepting yourself. Self-acceptance means making peace with who you are—your limitations, strengths, and weaknesses. Release the belief that you must be better to be worthy. Thinking this way is only fighting against yourself.

Flip the mindset from “if only” to “this is where I am, and that’s okay.” Honor yourself and your past without living in it or being defined by it. The past is where the lessons were. Are you pausing enough to see those lessons?

Personal growth requires accountability and ownership of your decisions. While you may not have control over everything that is occurring around you or to you, you do have ownership over how you respond. In this process, we shift from blame to accountability and from victimhood to empowerment.

Taking responsibility isn’t about self-blame; it’s about realizing you have the power to control how you respond. Knowing who you are is the foundation success is built on. Get to know thyself in these wintering days. Don’t limit new goals to the beginning of the year. Plant the seeds now for the spring awakening.

Learn more about my journey here.