Turn Over a New Leaf
Discover the lesson to be learned this season
The 12 Phases in a Season of Growth
The 12 Phases in a Season of Growth, is a collection of ancient lessons taught by Mother Nature showing you how to begin, grow, let go, rest and repeat.
This series will help you discover what growth your intuition is guiding you towards & will give you step-by-step guidance towards the growth that is natural for you.
If you are new to True by Nature, welcome! Every Wednesday throughout the summer, I send out another chapter in my (eventual) eBook, The 12 Phases in a Season of Growth. So far, I have released:
Turn Over a New Leaf (this post)
I have created a special section where I store The 12 Phases in a Season of Growth, as it is not featured on my homepage of this blog.
Your Lesson This Season
In this season of your life, there is a very specific lesson you are invited to learn. Your intuition, that sweet and persistent nag within, is trying to get you to learn something that will help you evolve.
This lesson is designed to help you expand a have a deeper understanding of who you are and where you are headed in your life.
You know the intuitive nag I’m talking about; the one that reveals conflict, confusion and frustration in your life. Your inner-wisdom is doing everything it can to get your attention to show you what is meant for you to learn.
This lesson is designed to help you grow and heal. Your intuition is guiding you towards the exact healing you need in order to move forward in your life.
If you are feeling stuck or have stagnant energy in your life—trust and believe that your intuition is hard at work trying to get you to see what is right in front of you.
Once you discover the lesson, you can begin the growth process that will help you see what action steps need to occur in order to evolve in this season of your life.
Every lesson your intuition presents to you will ultimately reveal your relationship trust & fear. Your inner-wisdom is hoping that you learn to trust the messages that come from within and take the appropriate action (growth).
This chapter is called Turn Over a New Leaf because it symbolizes your willingness to approach your life through a different lens— fully guided by your intuition.
When you discover the lesson you are invited to learn this season, you will immediately see that your fears, doubts and wounds will be revealed. You are likely to feel vulnerable and afraid to trust the guidance within.
You are reading this because you are meant to begin this wild journey of fully relying on your ability to know what is right for you at every stage of your life.
You sense that your life & legacy might be a little more meaningful and interesting if you fully embody who you are. You are becoming more and more willing each day to move forward in a way that is right for you, knowing that when you trust yourself—everything has a way of working out.
Turning Over A New Leaf is a promise to yourself to put your relationship with yourself above all else and that you are intuitively guided by a trustworthy source at all times of the day and night.
This is the first phase of twelve because represents a shift in mindset and reveals what needs to be done.
After you finish this phase, you will be ushered into the growth process where you will learn, step-by-step, how to answer this call from your intuition and grow in a way that is natural for you & only you.
The Relationship Between Gardener & Garden
Once you have made the commitment to start trusting your intuition, I invite you to see yourself as the gardener and your life as the garden.
As the gardener, you choose what grows. You can nourish your garden, get to know the soil, seeds, sun and insects— or you can ignore it all and hope for the best.
You can be the type of gardener who copies what other gardeners do or you can view your garden as your masterpiece; season by season adding more beauty to that which you actively cultivate.
You can put in the hard work, get your hands dirty and put in the time & labor that’s required for anything of great value to exist. Or, you can let the garden run wild and wonder why it’s overgrown with weeds and not producing what you want.
You have the choice of being any type of gardener you desire—your garden will reflect your experience, willingness to learn and your dedication to your intuitive guidance.
Being the gardener of your life means that you are in relationship with every single plant in your garden. One plant could be your relationship with control and another could be your relationship with food and alcohol.
Each plant is there to teach you more about yourself to help you grow and evolve. Each plant has a specific lesson for you to learn so that you can move on with that knowledge to the next season of your life.
Whether or not you are aware of it, you have a relationship with change, fear, work, purpose, worth, letting go, new beginnings, self-sabotage, expectations, people-pleasing, anxiety, worry, happiness, vulnerability etc.
The three categories that all of your relationships likely fall under are your relationship with yourself, others and with nature.
Relationship with yourself: mind/body/spirit
The areas of your life that need tending could include relationship(s) with your belief system, body, purpose, addictions, fear, inner-conflict, confusion, anxiety, self-sabotage etc.
Relationship with others: family/friends/misc. people
We are all here to teach each other lessons and to inspire growth. As humans, we bring out different qualities in each other that contribute to personal evolution. Every relationship you have had (or are currently in) was/is designed to teach you a meaningful lesson that will help you learn what you are supposed to learn in this lifetime.
Relationship with nature: plants/animals
There is an energetic exchange between every living being. Whether you are gardening, out wandering in the woods or enjoying the company of a cat or dog; every living thing has needs. When in relationship with nature, you can simply ask what is needed to help deepen and expand wellness for all involved.
Every single aspect of life is about relationship- the way in which you are connected to everything. You are in relationship with your mind, body, spirit, family, friends, plants and animals. You are the gardener, aware that you play a significant role in the health of each relationship. You can choose to either neglect or nurture what your intuition is guiding you towards.
Your intuition knows (in order) which relationships need your attention most-guiding you to nurture that which is unhealthy in your life. Each relationship you nurture will grow depending on how much you effort you put into truly understanding what it needs to thrive.
A plant in the garden will only grow if nurtured to its needs. Each relationship in your life needs you to pay attention to what it needs, not what you want.
As the gardener, you can nurture a plant all you want—but you can not control the outcome. All you can do is be aware & intentional while only focusing on that which you can control.
Your intuition is always pointing your attention to the relationships that are unhealthy by causing frustration and conflict. When you are feeling annoyed, stuck or afraid-it’s likely one of your relationships is unhealthy and in need of attention.
In the exercise below, you will find out (by answering a few questions) which relationship (plant) in your life needs your attention first. Once you figure out the lesson, it is your job to start nurturing and growing this plant.
The remainder of the phases in this series will teach you how to grow your plant as modeled by the patterns found in growing actual vegetables, fruits, herbs and teas.
All you have to do for now is discover the lesson you need to learn in this season of your life, and then you can return back to this phase when you are ready to discover the next lesson.
Discovering the Lesson
Now for the fun stuff- discovering what plant in your garden (relationship) needs your attention most. As a gardener, when you look at your garden, you will likely notice what needs the most attention. You will be able to see when the garlic needs harvesting, when the tomatoes need pruning and when the sunflowers are in need of water.
Each day during growing season, the garden needs attention and a wise gardener will prioritize the plants who need the most attention first. Although there are many different plants that need care, a experienced gardener takes care of what is obviously in need.
Surely, there will be many relationships for you to nurture and care for; but there is one relationship that is asking for more attention than the rest. This plant will teach you lessons that you will apply to many of the other plants in your garden in the future.
The plant that needs your attention most is the area of your life that is causing you the most about of inner-turmoil. You may have many areas of your life that need sorting, but I encourage you to accept that for now, there is one primary area of your life that needs your attention most.
This is not to say that you should ignore all of the other relationships in your life; it just means that there is one relationship that needs the most understanding and nurturing.
Here is the simple discovery exercise to identify which relationship needs your attention first and foremost:
Make a list of all of the areas of your life that you perceive need attention
Go back through that list and cross off any of the areas that you have no control over/have very little influence over the outcome
Circle the ones that mean the most to you
Select the one that you have the longest relationship with
Rewrite this area in your life as it pertains to a relationship (ex: relationship with expectations, relationship with food, relationship with addiction, relationship with change etc.)
After finishing this exercise, you will know which relationship you need to address first.
Natural Resistance
It’s perfectly natural for you to feel resistance to addressing this area of your life. Often there is a healthy amount of fear imbedded in the relationship you need to nurture most.
The reason this relationship has been nagging you for so long is because there is a wealth of wisdom to be learned from outgrowing the limitations you have around it.
It’s as though you know on a deep level that this is the most important area of growth in your life. You may even feel like you are at a cross-roads, feeling a desire to take action. Whatever was revealed to you during the discovery exercise, you can trust that the relationship revealed can no longer be ignored.
By choosing to focus on the relationship that needs your attention the most, you will learn the necessary lessons to improve your skillset as the gardener of your life.
The resistance you may be feeling is nothing more than fear. Your intuition is the most trust-worthy source of guidance for you. I assure you that the fear you are feeling is temporary and your intuitive guidance is eternal.
Think of this relationship you are about to address as a debt with the highest interest rate. The reason why you are asked to address the relationship with which you’ve had the longest history is because it is already a huge source of distraction for you, constantly on your mind—it’s time to move forward and grow.
It’s time for you to Turn Over a New Leaf, and surrender to the growth that is being asked of you. Choosing to live you life according to what truly feels right for you and doing what is asked of you takes courage and hard work.
I know that since your reading this, you are curious about living in a way where you know yourself better than ever and are learning to trust that you already have all the answers within.
The next phase in The 12 Phases in a Season of Growth is Phase Two: Organic Root