Latest / The IDEA SANDWICH Podcast / The Cycle We've Forgotten
Transcript
- Ara Topouzian: To make a great sandwich, you need great ingredients. And the same goes for your work and yourself. The way you layer them, balance them, and maybe even toast them a little. That's what makes something memorable. I'm Ara Tapusian and this is the idea sandwich, where we mix the right layers of creativity, business, and life to make something worth biting into. Today I want to ask you a question. Have we forgotten that life moves in cycles? That question wasn't mine. It came from a conversation I had recently with a friend. I was interviewing him about leadership challenges, asking him what he was seeing, what leaders were struggling with, what patterns kept showing up. We talked about uncertainty, pressure, expectations, and the pace of change. Then he said something so simple that I almost missed it. He said, I think we've forgotten about cycles. We finished the conversation and moved on, but I couldn't stop thinking about those five words. We've forgotten about cycles. The more I thought about them, the more I realized they explain so much about how we live today. Think about nature for a moment. Every single thing operates in cycles. The seasons change, the sun rises and sets, the tides come in and go out. The moon grows full and then slowly disappears before beginning again. Nothing in nature is permanent. Nothing stays at its peak forever. And yet, somewhere along the way, we've started expecting our lives to be different. We expect our careers to keep climbing. We expect our businesses to keep growing. We expect our relationships to always feel exciting. We expect our investments to keep going up. We expect ourselves to always feel motivated, creative, energetic, and happy. And when All those things slow down. We assume something is wrong. But what if nothing is wrong? What if we're simply experiencing a cycle? I wonder if we've lost our patience because we've forgotten that growth isn't supposed to be constant. Maybe social media has something to do with it. Every day we're reminded of someone else's promotion, someone else's new client, someone else's funding announcement, their vacation. Someone else's big win. It's easy to believe everyone else is living in an endless season of success, but that is an illusion. Nobody posts the months where nothing exciting seems to happen. Nobody celebrates the quiet season when they're rebuilding confidence. Learning a new skill, recovering from burnout, repairing relationships, or simply waiting. Yet Those seasons are often where the most important growth happens. And as leaders, I think we fall into this trap all the time. Business slows for a quarter and we panic. The team seems less energized, and we assume we need another initiative. Results plateau. And we immediately think we need to reinvent everything. Well, sometimes that's true, but sometimes the organization is simply in a different season. Sometimes people need Time to absorb change. Sometimes progress is happening below the surface. A farmer doesn't plant a seed and dig it up every few days to check whether it's growing. The seed is doing exactly what it's supposed to do. You just can't see it yet. Maybe our lives work the same way. Maybe there are seasons for building, seasons for learning, seasons for creating, seasons for grieving, seasons for resting. And yes, seasons where everything seems to click. the problem isn't that we have different seasons. The problem is that we've convinced ourselves we're only allowed to enjoy one of them. Summer, success, momentum, constant progress. But if everything stayed at its peak, would we even recognize it as success? If every day was sunny, would sunshine mean anything? The difficult seasons don't just test us, they give meaning to the good ones. I think that's what my friend was trying to tell me. We have forgotten that cycles aren't interruptions to life. They are life. Maybe resilience isn't about avoiding winter. Maybe resilience is trusting that winter isn't permanent. Because winter isn't failure. It's just winter. And spring has never needed our permission to arrive. So here's today's question. What season are you in right now? And instead of fighting it, what if you learn from it? Because maybe the greatest mistake we make isn't experiencing difficult seasons, it's believing that they're never supposed to happen in the first place. Thanks for listening. Because sometimes the best ideas come from the simplest ingredients. I'm Ara Tapusian, and this is the idea sandwich.