April 2023 – A New Season A New Mindset A New Hope

Apr 1, 2023 | Musings

a new hope
March 2023

Click Here to Download

A New Season 

Surrounded by pollen and allergies, it is hard to miss that spring has sprung. New, light pink buds on the trees plus more grass to mow puts me in mind of new life and rebirth.

After the dying that comes during winter, the rebirth of spring feels warm and good. Some winters are especially harsh and more fruit, more earth, more beauty seem to have died. There are times when rebirth is hard to imagine. Disappointment, discouragement and even despair threaten to destroy a vision of something new. But the message of this season is that new life wants to be born.

Nature is always delivering messages of hope to us as she reminds us of the resiliency and beauty she possesses. Butterflies are such poignant images of life, death and rebirth. Their entire life consists of beginning as a caterpillar, entering a cocoon and dissolving into utter nothingness only to be transformed into a beautiful butterfly. This process takes about a month from beginning to end.

What might be being reborn in you? Can you identify this transformative process calling to you in your life? Do you see your beginnings, the cocoons, the dissolution of all you knew and a hope for transformation?

Mother Nature’s wisdom tells of a consistent and true story of life, death and rebirth. Our soul’s know the butterfly we are meant to be. Submitting ourselves to the path of cocooning, dissolving and miraculously being reborn is a mysterious and sacred movement leading to something beautiful.

A New Mindset

Carol Dweck in her book, Mindset describes the power that our mindset can have on every aspect of our lives. A fixed mindset believes that intelligence and talent do not change. A growth mindset believes that intelligence and talent can be improved. Studies show that people with fixed mindset give up more quickly, feel ashamed about failures, are prone to hide mistakes and struggle to feel motivated to achieve goals. Those with the growth mindset are more likely to accept mistakes as opportunities, put forth effort towards mastery and use feedback to learn and develop. Knowing what mindset we lean toward can help us understand where and why we get stuck and help point the way toward something different.

A New Hope

Brain plasticity research shows that the brain can actually change. Connectivity between neurons can become stronger, get faster and even grow! These advances in research give us clues about the empowering impact our actions can have on our mental health. It matters when we adopt new practices. Transformation is possible if we try new strategies. Small efforts can make big differences. Changing our mindset, believing we can improve, rewarding ourselves for good effort, getting feedback about ourselves, challenging ourselves with harder tasks and accepting failures with compassion can lead to new hope for change.