When Life’s Cycles Become Something You Can Feel

Last weekend, I presented a workshop on the Cycles of Life. As we explored the seven periods, I experienced something that brought fresh meaning to a framework I have worked with for twenty-one years.

Each period stirred a recognisable feeling within me. There was a particular quality to it—a texture and movement of energy that I could recognise in my own life.

I began to see the periods as states we can inhabit.

In the personal-year framework I draw from Harvey Spencer Lewis, the year unfolds from birthday to birthday through seven periods of approximately fifty-two days each. These periods offer a rhythm for reflection: a way to consider when to begin, explore, act, complete, enjoy and release.

What follows is my interpretation of their felt qualities. I use “energy” to describe the subjective experience of vitality, attention and readiness to act. The seven states give me language for observing that experience.

Persona year cycle of inhabited energies

1. Grounded — The Energy of Identity

My energy feels gathered and steady. I am present within myself, with a firm centre from which to act.

There is a quiet solidity to this state. I feel my feet beneath me and become aware of the space I occupy. My attention returns to who I am, what matters to me and what I am willing to take responsibility for.

I can hear my own voice more clearly. My boundaries become easier to recognise. There is less need to reach immediately towards an answer because I have somewhere within myself to stand.

This is the period of identity: gathering confidence, establishing direction and trusting my capacity to participate.

To inhabit this state, I give attention to what steadies me. I clarify my intentions, care for my foundations and allow decisions to arise from that inner footing.

I am here. My energy is gathered. I can begin from myself.

2. Expansive — The Energy of Expectation

My energy opens outward. I feel curious, drawn towards possibilities and willing to enter unfamiliar territory.

The horizon seems to widen. A question interests me. A conversation opens a door. Something I had overlooked begins to attract my attention.

There is anticipation in this state, but also room to explore. I do not yet need to know exactly where an opportunity will lead. I can approach it, ask questions and discover something through contact.

This is the period of expectation, planning and experimentation. My attention moves beyond what is established towards what might become possible.

To inhabit this state, I leave room in my plans for discovery. I try small things, meet uncertainty with curiosity and notice what draws a willing response from me.

There is more to discover. I can open towards it.

3. Activated — The Energy of Ambition

My energy feels charged and ready for effort. There is drive, momentum and a desire to engage.

Possibility now asks something of me. I want to move, build, pursue and make progress. My intentions acquire strength as I place action behind them.

Challenges can feel stimulating. I have something to work towards, and resistance gives my effort a point of contact. There is satisfaction in applying myself fully and seeing movement follow.

This is the period of ambition: the desire to do something with what has awakened.

To inhabit this state, I give my drive a clear direction. I choose worthwhile tasks, commit to the work and recognise the difference between purposeful effort and simply keeping busy.

I am ready to engage. I can put my strength behind what matters.

4. Intensified — The Energy of Mental Activation

My mental energy feels concentrated and quick. Ideas arrive vividly; connections demand attention.

Thought has a sharper edge. I may suddenly see how several pieces fit together or recognise a possibility that was hidden a moment before. An insight can arrive with enough force that I feel compelled to capture it immediately.

There is brightness here, and sometimes restlessness. My mind may move faster than I can comfortably express. Writing gives that movement a place to land.

This is the period of mental energy, where attention intensifies and understanding may shift. It is the pivot of the cycle: a fresh perception can change how I approach everything that follows.

To inhabit this state, I record what comes, examine it carefully and act when the insight has a sound basis. The vividness of a thought deserves attention; its accuracy still deserves consideration.

My mind is alive with connections. I can give them form and examine what they reveal.

5. Coherent — The Energy of Accomplishment

My energy feels organised and purposeful. Thought and action come together, and things take definite shape.

There is a feeling of alignment. What I understand, what I intend and what I do begin to support one another. My effort has somewhere to go, and I can see its effect.

I become attentive to completion: the final adjustment, the necessary decision, the detail that allows a project to stand on its own. Something that once existed as a possibility is now present in the world.

This is the period of accomplishment. Coherence is the state that supports it—the feeling that my capacities are working together towards an outcome.

To inhabit this state, I finish carefully, recognise the result and share its benefits. I allow myself to acknowledge what has been achieved.

My energy comes together. I can bring what I have begun into being.

6. Relaxed — The Energy of Enjoyment

My energy feels loose, playful and available for enjoyment. I can receive and appreciate what is here.

The pressure eases. I have room to notice the taste of a meal, the warmth of companionship or the pleasure of an unhurried conversation. My attention can rest on an experience long enough to enjoy it.

There is a softer movement in this state. Laughter comes more readily. I can be spontaneous, let an afternoon unfold and allow something ordinary to delight me.

This is the period of enjoyment, gratitude and appreciation. I become available to the life around me and to the benefits of what has already been created.

To inhabit this state, I allow pleasure its place. I savour, play, connect and receive.

I can soften into this moment. There is life here to enjoy.

7. Integrative — The Energy of Realization

My energy turns inward and settles. Experience finds its place within me; I absorb its meaning and release what is complete.

I feel a greater need for space. Events that required action now invite reflection. I begin to recognise what they have taught me, what they have changed and what they no longer ask me to carry.

Some conclusions emerge slowly. I may need quiet before I know what an experience has meant. As understanding settles, I can distinguish what belongs with me from what has reached its end.

This is the period of integration and realization. Slowing down gives me the opportunity to absorb the cycle I have lived through.

To inhabit this state, I review, complete and release. I attend to unfinished matters with care and let learning become part of how I live.

I can let this experience settle within me. I can carry its wisdom forward.

Learning to Participate in the Rhythm

Across these seven periods, I recognise a movement:

My energy gathers, opens, mobilises, intensifies, takes shape, relaxes and integrates.

There are also relationships across the cycle. Expectation finds an answer in enjoyment, as what I once anticipated becomes something I can receive. Ambition finds fulfilment in accomplishment, as intention becomes a tangible result. Identity deepens through integration, as experience reveals more of who I am.

I do not expect my inner life to obey a timetable perfectly. Several states may be present together, and circumstances make their own demands. The framework gives me a starting point for attention.

I can ask: What is the quality of my energy now? What kind of participation does it support?

When I feel grounded, I can establish my footing. When expansive, I can explore. When activated, I can apply myself. When intensified, I can capture and examine insight. When coherent, I can complete. When relaxed, I can enjoy. When integrative, I can absorb and release.

That was the discovery I carried away from the workshop. The cycles had become something I could feel from within.

And through feeling them, I found a more attentive way to participate in my own life.

Virtue Validates Itself When Lived Fully

Life validates my existence.

I am here. I breathe. I am aware.

The gift of this life is mine for as long as this body keeps breathing. Every breath is a reason to be alive—a testimony that my life still has meaning. The warmth of blood flowing through my veins tells me that my present existence matters.

There is something miraculous in this simple fact.

Every action I take gives expression to the truth that this life is meant to be meaningful. Life is not merely something happening in the background while I wait for something more important to arrive. The miracle of being alive is itself an event of magnitude.

But here is the kicker.

I am not a single light shining alone in some eternal darkness.

We are a bundle of lights, clustered together like a sun.

Today I will step into the world and meet other people, each carrying their own light, each endowed with purpose, each living a life that matters just as mine does.

Perhaps this is the greater miracle.

I step into each day with my light shining a little of the darkness away. And somewhere in that thought lies an answer to the question of the value of my existence.

I shine for all who enter my world.

It does not ultimately matter whether I experience them as good or bad, beautiful or ugly. Each living being lives, and that life deserves love.

And when I love, something remarkable happens: life validates me because I become what I express.

Love asks nothing from another to establish my worth. It asks me to live from the worth already present within me.

I am not worthy because others praise me.

I am not worthy because someone compliments me, honours me or recognises what I have done.

I am worthy because I am me—fully expressing the virtues I have chosen to live by.

Perhaps this is one of our highest callings: not merely to believe in virtue, admire virtue or speak about virtue, but to embody it.

To become kindness by being kind.

To become courage by acting courageously.

To become love by loving.

Then I no longer need the world to tell me whether my life has value. The evidence is there in how I participate in it.

I breathe.

I live.

I love.

I shine.

Virtue validates itself when lived fully.

The Writer’s Secret: Practising How to See

What’s the most underrated life skill?

For me, it may be something remarkably simple: positive writing.

When I write my free-flow thoughts, by hand, the writing may be free, but it is not without discipline. I have one important rule: I try not to write in negative terms or allow negative emotions to determine the direction of my writing.

This is not an attempt to create an illusion of positivity. It is not about denying what is difficult or pretending everything is good. I think of it rather as deliberately immersing myself in a pool of clear water.

There is a time to grieve and a time to lament. There is a time for anger, disappointment and pain. But that is not the purpose of this particular practice.

When I sit down to write freely, I am practising a skill.

Instead of writing about worry, I look for opportunity or simply notice what is present. Instead of feeding anger, I look for the blessing within the moment. I practise directing my mind towards a positive state — perhaps even, temporarily, something approaching bliss.

And slowly, my writing begins to change my thinking.

I know how easily we can become caught in negative cycles. I have also learned that when circumstances or misfortune press themselves upon us, simply telling ourselves to “think positively” is seldom enough.

The ability to change our viewpoint needs to be practised before we need it.

That is why I think positive writing is such an underrated life skill. Writing gives us a place to practise directing our attention. We can learn to notice opportunity instead of dwelling only on difficulty. We can look for what is present rather than becoming consumed by what is absent. We can deliberately search for another way of seeing.

With practice, something remarkable begins to happen.

Positivity becomes more natural, habitual and easy.

Not a false positivity that asks me to believe something I do not believe, but a positivity that arises from changing my viewpoint. The circumstances may remain exactly as they are, but I become capable of seeing something else within them.

The question gradually changes from Why is this happening to me? to What is here for me to discover?

I increasingly return to a simple view of life:

Every trial is an invitation into deeper growth.

From there I begin to see what might otherwise have remained hidden: opportunities for growth, participation and observation.

Perhaps that is the real skill I practise each morning.

I am not merely writing positively.

I am practising how to see positively.

It Is an Invitation to Participate in Life Differently

What’s a personal mantra or philosophy you live by?

Mine is:

It’s not a failure when life does not go your way; it is an invitation to participate in life differently — with curiosity and wonder.

This philosophy shapes how I meet the morning.

I meet the day with enthusiasm, curiosity and wonder. I am curious about the challenges that life may bring to my doorstep, because even these can become opportunities to strengthen my will. When something does not unfold as I intended, I try not to see only the stumbling block. I become curious about how it might transform into a solution.

Life will not always go my way. Plans will fail. People will disagree. Emotions will arise. Things I hoped for may simply not happen.

But that does not necessarily mean that I have failed.

Perhaps life is inviting me to participate differently.

There will be opportunities to transmute emotions into experiences of life. Every trial can become an initiation into deeper grace. This is also why the five Reiki principles have become embedded in my morning routine. They help me enter the day mindfully — like opening the blinds of my window and allowing the sun in.

Then I go out and meet life.

I meet people.

Some will embrace me, my thoughts, my values and my plans. Others will resist them and offer their own. My way will not always become the way. Yet even here there is an invitation: become curious about what emerges when my reality encounters theirs.

In that sharing we may find opportunities for caring and growing.

Too often compassion is approached through comparison: the higher understanding the lower, the fortunate looking down upon the less fortunate. Perhaps that is why I prefer the idea of fellow-kindness.

Fellow-kindness means meeting other human beings like me — each with their own agency, desires, struggles and experience of being alive.

When we can meet on the same level, without judgement, something remarkable happens. We begin to discover the potential that exists within the relationship itself.

And perhaps that is where curiosity becomes especially important.

I am becoming less interested in whether another person sees the world exactly as I do, and more curious about the other person themselves. What do they see that I do not? What might their resistance teach me? What new possibility can emerge between us?

Our diversity does not necessarily have to fragment reality. Perhaps together we participate in creating one reality in which each person still has their own place and their own agency.

So when life does not go my way, I try not to close myself against it.

I open the blinds.

I become curious.

I look again.

And I ask:

How is life inviting me to participate differently?

Walking Lightly in Divine Wisdom

There is something about writing my noblest thoughts in the freshness of the morning air. I do not simply sit down and write. I first enter a space of silence.

Deep breathing and autogenic relaxation help me move into a place of deeper focus. Meditation music supports the silence within and creates an atmosphere in which thought can emerge naturally.

I raise my mind through prayer and visualization toward a plane beyond the immediate material world. Here, contemplation is born in a space temporarily free from physical distractions and attachments.

Perhaps this is where I encounter my humanness in an exalted form — where my mystical desires reach toward the divine, seeking spiritual connection, guidance and inspiration.

And then I listen.

Before bringing pen to paper, I try to remain in that space with an open mind. When I begin writing, there is only me, the divine space, the pen and the paper.

I do not query what surfaces.

I do not critique it.

I simply listen and record.

This distinction has become important to me. The work of lifting my awareness has already been done. Once something begins to emerge, I do not need to immediately decide whether it is clever, correct, useful or profound. Judgement would pull me back into the ordinary analytical mind.

There will be time for that later.

When the writing stops, I return. I reread what has emerged with ordinary consciousness. But even here, perhaps judgement is the wrong word.

Discernment feels better.

I can ask: Where does today’s writing fit? How does it relate to my life? Does it align with my being? Does it point toward my becoming?

In this way, free-flow writing becomes something more than journaling. It becomes a movement between two spaces: first receiving without judgement, then returning to reflect with discernment.

And this morning, in rereading what had emerged, I found something beautifully simple:

Joy and peace in walking lightly in divine wisdom.