Flourish in Every Season: How to Navigate Cycles of Change in Your Career

Your career has seasons. Times of planting, growth, harvest, and rest. Yet most professionals treat every phase the same, pushing for constant output instead of working with the natural cycles of growth and renewal. In this episode you'll hear how to: 

• Identify which season your career is in and how to use the season to strategically to grow, reflect, or reset
• Recognize the signs that signal a new season is coming
• Avoid forcing an early “career Winter”
• Turn slow or uncertain periods into opportunities for reflection, clarity, and growth

Chapters

• 0:00 Patterns, Seasons, and Mindset
• 1:06 Spring: Intentional Beginnings
• 2:03 Summer: Growth Without Neglect
• 3:25 Fall: Harvest, Feedback, and Focus
• 6:12 Winter: Reflection and Strategic Rest
• 8:12 Name Your Season, Plan Your Moves
• 9:27 Coaching Support and Next Steps

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hey friends, this is the Career Refresh, and I am your host, Jill Griffin. Okay, I've been thinking a lot about patterns and seasons, especially as we are approaching the final months of the calendar year. And it's not just about goals, right? It's understanding are there rhythms and shapes and flows to the kinds of work that we're doing. And it started getting me thinking again about something I've talked about before in the seasons of your career. This is about recognizing that your work moves in cycles. So your strategy needs to move in cycles, just the way nature does. This could be periods of planting, growing, harvesting, and at times even thinking through and lying dormant, not necessarily taking action. And what I want to talk about also is that the seasons of your career have absolutely nothing to do with age, how long you've been working, or what appears on your business card. It's understanding that these cycles are happening regularly, and when we notice them, we can navigate our own career path with a little bit more grace and ease. So let's dig in. It's about fresh starts and new beginnings. Ideas might be popping and starting to percolate. You feel the energy growing. Perhaps you're starting a new role, you're leading a new huge initiative, there's a global transformation, your company just went through a leadership change, or maybe you're finally reaching out to some of those industry connections that you've been meeting to contact or reconnect with. In this season, you are planting seeds, you are making introductions, you are mapping out your strategy, building relationships. You have to pace yourself because spring cannot just be about frenetic energy. It's about intentionally planting. And when you take time to align your career strategy with your actual values, strengths, your approach, this is how you start to create the path forward with intention. Next season, you all know, is summer. This is about growth, right? Things start really clicking. You're past those first awkward months in a new role on the project that you're working on. You're starting to gain momentum. People are responding to your emails, they're saying yes, there's collaboration. Summer feels lush and abundant, right? Growth is happening. And this is where I at times see hive achievers start to make mistakes because they stop investing in themselves because everything's already happening and they don't feel like they need to focus there. They don't need to nurture their garden in this area. So they skip on mindset work. They skip on showing up at industry events because they're too busy and they're in the lushness of things. They they may skip or put off their coaching appointments, or if you're in therapy, your therapy appointments, right? This is not the time to put off your professional development. But when you're in the flow, you sometimes think you don't need the development because everything's going. You always need development friends. Don't do this to yourself, right? Summer is precisely the time in which you want to tend to your growth and do it deliberately with strategic attention. When you don't have that strategic attention, you might miss opportunities that are right in front of you or push yourself too hard when you get into other seasons, which we're going to talk about because that can lead to burnout. Next season, fall, autumn. This is about harvest. This is when you're starting to reap the rewards of everything you've sown. This is celebrating your wins. This matters more than you think because if we skip the celebration, at times we can reinforce the belief that we haven't achieved, or like I'm a I'm behind, or I'm not where I need to be. We need it, it's kind of that dopamine reward cycle. We need to complete the cycle. We wanted the thing, we got the thing. We have to remind ourselves that we got the thing. Because if we skip this celebration, we're going to continue to search for external validation, right? Because we're not giving it to ourselves. So if we don't give it to ourselves, we're going to need like, wait, I didn't, no one gave me feedback. No one said I did a good job on that thing. That's what we're talking about. You have to celebrate your own wins, water your own garden, plant your own seeds. This is what we're talking about. And understanding that this is this work is a lifetime of reflection. It's not a one and done. I do it every week, honestly. I look at my week and decide what worked this week, what didn't work, what would I do differently, where can I celebrate? What were my wins? Where was I on my A game? I look at that on the reg because it helps me continue to know the path that I'm charting forward. So I want you to take time and acknowledge what you've created and then really feel it. Really feel the appreciation for yourself, like that gratitude, maybe it's inspiration, maybe it's focus, maybe it's championship energy. Really take that in and feel that. Then we're getting into preparing because fall requires focus, efficient action. You're harvesting the bounty, but you're also getting ready for what's next. And that means you're seeking feedback, you're pivoting, you're up-leveling your skills, you're continuing to do professional development. And I have permission to talk about this. There's a client that I was working with who was exhausted from trying to maintain constant growth. And while they received really great feedback from their C-suite, they also felt the pressure to continue to accelerate, right? That foot on my gas, I had to stay in fifth gear. And that's just not how it works. There's an ebb and flow. Not every year is up and to the left. Not every year is a significant raise or a significant stock bonus. We hope there is, but the reality is it doesn't always happen that way. And we've been in an extraordinary time of growth where I'm starting to see some of that come and slow down, where there still might be growth, but it might be non-monetary growth. And this is the time you want to really think that through. That ebb and flow, we're humans, we're not machines. So that perpetual acceleration is going to continue to drive yourself in a place that might just be too harsh after a while. It might be a place where you, again, you find yourself crawling into or crawling out of burnout and just feeling a level of exhaustion. The next season is winter. And this is about reflection. Winter time gets a bad wrap, but it's essential. You need time to strategically rest. This is again looking at some honest evaluation. Maybe you're between roles or you're waiting for a major organizational re-org. Um, perhaps you're looking at uh working through some disappointing feedback, or maybe a client resigned their account with you and you're really pausing for a moment and you're reflecting. It's not about being idle, even if you feel the pause. It's just about doing different work. Looking at where you succeeded and where you didn't. Um, this is where I also say this is a great time for meditation, journaling. Uh, how do you want to physically move your body during this time, getting clear on what those non-negotiables are around health and boundaries so that you can show up ready and prepared for the next season. Ready is a mindset. It's making sure your mindset is in the right place. Preparedness is the subject matter expertise. You know how to chop wood, carry water, get it done. But in order for you to set up set yourself up for the next season, you need that pause. Making sure that you're doing this. And also what I find that happens a lot of times in this area is that people stop networking because they feel like, we're fine. I'm in my role and doing great. And then all of a sudden there's a re-org, or suddenly there's a new opportunity for a project. And if you're not staying networked in, you suddenly feel unprepared for what I'm going to call this winter. So investigating kind of what you're thinking around winter and this pause and this reset. What do you actually need to reset? Do you need to reset? Maybe you think you're in winter, but you're actually in spring. Really finding a way to make sure that you're building and getting ready for what's next. This is where I always ask people. So, what season are you in? Taking a moment, asking yourself, where am I right now? Again, this is not about your age or your tenure. This is about the actual energy, the circumstances, and what this moment in front of you requires. When you understand your season, you can figure out how to work within it instead of against it. And you can plan, prepare, and really use this phase to your advantage. And this is what I do with clients all the time, right? We get really clear on what you want to create. We look at your mindset or any belief blocks that might be there. We're removing obstacles, we're having real clarity. And then if I take this action, how is this impacting my professional growth? And how am I going to create impact as a leader? This is all what we're doing, and we're doing it together. And it's to not do it alone, right? I built this based on, you know, I was a bit of an anxious achiever. I was navigating, I was moving forward, I was getting promoted, I was having huge wins and having huge amounts of responsibility. But I always felt a little bit unsure. I always felt like this level of like, am I doing the right thing or should I be focusing in another area? Doing this work and getting clear, not only what season are you in, but as I said, understanding what I want to create, how do I need to look at the gap between where I am and where I want to go? And how do I then want to tap into either upskilling, professional development, coaching, a skill I need to learn so that I can achieve the next thing. This is also about the time where you get to look at some of your blind spots, right? How can you manage your mindset, seize these opportunities, and move forward with less uh wasted energy? If this resonates with you, let's talk. Schedule a free consultation. Um, put in the information for that in the show notes. And as always, I love to hear from you at hello at JillGriffinCoach.com. All right, my friends, I appreciate you all for listening. Be intentional this week, okay? And always, always, always be kind. I'll talk to you soon.