Why Modern Life Is Exhausting Your Mind: The Missing Seasons

Many people are experiencing overthinking and a sense that something is missing. They're finding that life isn't as good as they thought it would be.

So naturally we search. It might be through reading books or trying techniques. We get motivated and productive, maybe turn to spirituality. And yet, at a collective level, the numbers for depression, anxiety and suicide continue to move in the wrong direction.

That made me wonder if we might be looking for answers in the wrong place.

I think something has changed in the way we live that's affecting the mind. We've accidentally built a world that asks one part of the mind to do almost everything, and it's taking away something that another parts of us needs to feel great.

The part of us that runs everyday life, the one that thinks, plans, and talks in our head, now has a job far bigger than it was ever built for.

I often see us as needing the four seasons. Everything in nature moves through cycles, and I think this part of the mind was designed to do the same.

But right now, it's living permanently in summer.

Summer is fun, it's exciting. It's the season of doing, solving, planning and pushing forward.

But it's being constantly used, and we are feeling the effects of it. No one thrives in a season that never ends.

What this part of the mind needs is its other seasons back. Autumn, winter and spring. 

When we try to meditate, I see it as a way of helping the mind to experience winter again.

But when a mind has been out of winter for long enough, it can lie there attempting to meditate and still be running on summer logic. "How much time do I have left?" "Am I even doing this right?"

The thinking itself keeps the mind in summer.

Something else happens too.  The longer the mind spends in summer, the less at ease it becomes in winter.

This can begin to show up as things like insomnia and night waking. The mind is trying to rest and finding it difficult.

And it isn't only enough time spent in winter we've lost.

Spring and autumn activities for the mind used to be part of ordinary life. So ordinary no one even knew what they were doing, or how important they were.

They were the in-between seasons which looked like natural transitions in our days. The little pauses that happened without us even thinking about them, as well as the activities and environments we used to naturally be in. They have been increasingly disappearing too.

So we're not just skipping winter. We're living almost entirely in summer, and the mind becomes exhausted from it. We feel that exhaustion. We start to feel like something isn't right. Because it isn't. Because we're missing nearly all of the seasons, not just one.

When I look at nature, I don't see constant productivity. Every living thing has periods of activity followed by recovery.

Every living thing has a rhythm. Whether it's the ocean pulling back before creating the wave, or the inhale before the exhale.  There is always a pause before the next push.

And yet, collectively, we're living lives where we are "on" almost all the time. Then we try to solve it with more of the very thing that's keeping our minds in summer. 

Maybe instead, the answer is to bring back the other seasons that the mind needs. To restore ourselves physically and mentally, and perhaps start turning these statistics around.  

If you're tired in a way that doesn't quite make sense given how "fine" everything looks, it might be that you've been stuck in one season for far too long. And that is actually something relatively easy to fix. 

If you'd like support figuring out the best way to get back your other seasons. Get in touch. I'd love to help.

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Prefer to watch?: Modern Life is exhausting because it's missing what your mind needs.