The nights are getting longer. Less sunlight means your eyes are less active, your brain is less active. Your spirit is heard when your mind is quiet.
Autumn, the last harvest, marks the end of the agricultural year. A good time to think of the year past. Be proud of yourself for what you did well. Take notes of what didn’t work as well as you’d hoped. Use those notes to be more ready for the next growing season.
There’s more than one way to harvest a year. I measure a harvest year in your overall health. Is your body healthy? Is your mind clear? Is your spirit happy? Are you happier than you were last year?
Your physical harvest can be measured by how many, and how often you have symptoms. No symptoms, no problems! If you do have symptoms that keep cropping up, Autumn is a great time of year to stock up on winter tonic foods, herbs and plan more play. Play is essential to physical health, consider it a nutrient. Play deficiency causes stress. Stress causes symptoms.
Your mental harvest is measured by how flexible your mind and emotions are. A clear, flexible mind can handle any new situation seamlessly, confidently. No symptoms, no problems! Your emotions are tools that can enhance or adjust your lifestyle. You are in charge of how to use them in. All emotional tools need to be put away and rested after each use, except love.
If your emotions are in control of your life, or if your mind is too fixated on being right, adjust your diet with tonic foods for two weeks. It’s probably too much salt and/or sugar.
Your spiritual harvest is measured by how compassionate, grateful, and happy you are, no matter what. Easier said than done sometimes, but always worth the effort. A healthy spirit knows that HOW you look at a stressful situation makes all the difference.
This is a time of year for looking at the past and making plans for the future. Maya Angelou said, “If you don’t like something, try to change it. If you can’t change it, change the way you think about it.”
If something happened to make your life unhappy, or unhealthy, in some way…begin taking steps to change it. If it’s made you angry, use the anger as motivation for action. Get others to help if its a social matter. Someone has to be the first to try to do something different. If it’s something that only you can solve, start. Yoda said, “There is no try. There is do or not do.” The first step of changing something is having a plan.
If it’s something you can’t change, or have suffered a loss, learn from it. Don’t cry that it’s over, smile that it happened and grow stronger because of it. Use it as motivation. My mother was always looking for the silver lining around any dark time. It drove me crazy as a kid and young adult.
Now, I know it’s the wisest way to look any problem. Those silver linings are pure gold for calming stress. Stress clouds your mind. If your mind is clear, you can think of another way of looking at a problem. Use this quieter part of the year for changing the way you think about things that caused stress in the last year.
