Going Through Winter
For the most part, the COVID era has well and truly passed. How lucky we are to all see the other side of it. Now, if you’re hoping for a heated opinion piece I would leave now, this truly isn’t where this is going.
I’m here to talk about strong, resilient people. Which we all became, because no matter what side of the fence you were or are on, or if you were just sitting on it, this wasn’t an easy time. Social life was given and taken from us in a moment, family and friends became ill whether this was physically, mentally, or both, and everything we knew about life truly changed in an instant.
This, although novel, and at a surface level different in many ways, was not a unique experience for our ancestors. This is something many generations have experienced during historical wars, poverty, massacres, natural disasters, and other major worldwide adversities. This is an example of the seasons of humanity. An amazing concept I first discovered through Tony Robbins while I sat at home with COVID jumping around in front of 24k other people jumping around on zoom.
Thank Goodness It’s Summer
He used a recent historical example of how after the war there was the baby boom and all of these babies grew up in the ‘Summer,’ the easy times. Everything was better, the ‘Winter’ was over. It wasn’t for decades, until COVID really, that the westernised parts of the world experienced a real ‘Winter.’ Tony explained in a very concise way which I will share with you, how this process repeats itself in history.
The Concept
“Bad times make strong people, strong people make good times, good times make weak people, weak people make bad times.” – Tony Robbins
Now, before anybody gets offended, this is a concept on the workings of humanity at a population level and is not a personal attack on your character.
However, hear me out, if this cycle functions at a population level who says it isn’t also possible at the individual level? AND what if we could actually use this pattern in our favour for personal growth?
Leveraging the Seasons
I figure, let’s make this a tool. If ‘good times’ create ‘weak people’, maybe we shouldn’t spend every second trying to make things easier or more comfortable. I love the term coined by university professor and author Michael Easter, this is what he calls ‘The Comfort Crisis’ and he’s not wrong. We as a people have never been more comfortable, we have never had more access to goods and services and never had such a high standard of living. However, we are more mentally and physically unwell than ever.
So here’s my experience of testing this tool. At the beginning of 2022, I decided that it was time I really sunk my teeth in and took my sport seriously. I am an Australian Trampoline Gymnast. I compete in two disciplines; Double Mini Trampoline (DMT) and Trampoline (TRP). All of my life I have been a gymnast, always quite good but never great. That’s a story for another day, you can find it in my other post on identity. I decided to make this shift because I felt I had become ‘weak’ and desperately needed to break out of this mold. I was like a kid from the baby boom, just riding the easy-living waves.
Winter by Choice
But what I am trying to get to is the fact that on this journey, one thing I decided I would do at each and every training session was something hard, something that I didn’t want to do. GET OUT OF THE COMFORT CRISIS.
In the beginning, there wasn’t a scarcity of things to choose from, everything scared me and everything was hard. I started just showing up in a good mood because that was already hard enough after dealing with years of mental blocks. I then moved on to doing a skill that scared me a little, enough to feel like an achievement when I executed it, but not so much that I couldn’t complete it.
The funny thing about being in this place mentally is that when you begin this process it’s only the smallest things you have to push through but they are the hardest and scare you the most. Then when you get good at it, you are facing massive challenges, things that you had previously convinced yourself weren’t within your capability. I was learning skills that I never dreamed of because the comfort of the ones I had been doing for years held me back. I never leaned into the ‘winter’, I had my ‘summer’ and stayed in the ‘weak’ zone (as in the image above) for far longer than I should have.
The crazy and amazing thing is that the hard things scare you much less. You learn to enjoy them. Not because the thing you’re doing is any less dangerous, or mentally and/or physically challenging but just practicing doing hard things causes this growth and progress that you barely notice in the process. I came to look forward to the hard work.
I was not going to war as the soldiers pre-baby-boom, but I was putting myself in hard and uncomfortable situations every day, and most importantly, by choice. This is where I could grow and be prepared for an unplanned ‘winter’. Putting yourself through an intentional ‘winter’ or ‘bad time’ is like training for the bad times that might be out of your control. You are more adaptable and agile in the uncertainty and the unknown.
You might even like it. I experienced many ‘summers’ as a result of this, along the way. The more ‘winters’, the more ‘summers’ if this model is true, it’s a cycle. Once I hit ‘summer’ I had so much gratitude and appreciation. Then after a little time spent relishing in that, I had to frame it in a way that I now had to find my next ‘winter’. So as not to stay in the ‘good times’ for so long to become ‘weak’, which really means to stop growing.
Winter Not By Choice
After making the most progress I had ever made in a year as a trampoline athlete and building my skill level enough to be a contender for the Australian team to go to the World Championships at the end of 2022, the qualifying competition came around.
The day had arrived, when I had to show up and perform my best. I went for my first routine, landed funny, and broke my ankle. Heartbroken. I couldn’t complete the rest of the competition and I definitely could not compete in a month’s time at the World Championships.
Here I faced my own personal little unplanned ‘winter’.
I was honestly confused, I thought, ‘Is it weird that I feel okay about this?’, ‘Did I not want it enough?’ Yes, I was feeling sad for a short while, in all honesty, it was maybe a few days. But I didn’t feel this overwhelming devastation as I have with previous setbacks and injuries. I would be so down, have problems with confidence, and have the ‘not good enough’ track running through my mind on repeat. It would take a real toll on my life as a whole, not just as an athlete.
On reflection, it was totally OKAY that I was okay, actually, it was awesome! And I absolutely did want it enough. There was just a new resilience and strength in me that hadn’t existed before, a new perspective.
I was so extremely proud of the work and progress that I had made throughout the year. I had faced tough competition, won and lost against others, and won and lost against myself. It was as if I had trained for this hardship and it felt so small compared to the impact of my journey in the past year that it didn’t really get me down. I was excited about what this ‘winter’ had in store for me, for how much this would challenge me as a person, and as an athlete, and force me to grow.
It almost sounds insane… excited to have broken my ankle?! Well, it took a whole year to get to the point where I could manage and respond to a situation like this in the way that I did. It also took 23 years for me to figure out that I could do something differently. There’s no timeframe for these things.
“Between stimulus and response there is a space, in that space is our power to choose our response, in our response lies our growth and our freedom.” – Viktor E Frankl
I am not and will never claim to be a perfect example. I, just as everyone else is, am doing my best and sometimes I take a day, a week, or a month off doing hard things. Because it’s hard. But the thing I try to remember is to always get back on the horse. I think to myself, “I love the Summer, but you’ll only have more of them by seeing through the Winter.”
So, here’s my challenge to you. Do something hard today, do something hard tomorrow. Build a stronger you. Be prepared for the Winter, you might find you actually like the cold.
If you have had a similar experience or are feeling ready to have your own Winter by choice, let me know in the comment section or share with someone who needs to see this!