By Marnie Pehrson Kuhns

I love discovering the cycles, patterns, and stages of life. All of nature operates in rhythm—ups and downs, highs and lows, circles and pendulum swings. The Law of Rhythm is everywhere. You’ll find it in brain waves, biorhythms, the turning of seasons, the rise and fall of the tides, the dance between night and day, and the earth’s steady journey around the sun.

You’ll even find rhythm woven into the Hero’s Journey—the classic cycle that shows up in every powerful story, and in the complicated nuances of our own lives.

One of the major themes in my life has been studying these rhythmic patterns that show up in everything we do. Rhythm is most famously recognized in music, but it shows up in our personal lives too. And when we work with the rhythm instead of against it, life flows more easily. We’re more at peace. We feel better.

One of my favorite illustrations of this is something called the Creative Cycle, which mirrors the seasons of the year. Your personal creative rhythm may not match the calendar seasons, but the energetic stages often follow a similar pattern:

🌱 Flow – Spring

This is where ideas are blooming. Your energy is high, and you feel alive and inspired. Thoughts come easily, you’re excited about possibilities, and joy naturally bubbles up. Life feels like it’s moving in sync.

☀️ Production – Summer

Here, you choose an idea from the Flow phase and bring it to life. You’re implementing, building, and getting things done. It’s satisfying and productive—and you feel like you’re making progress.

🍂 Organization – Autumn

After the intense output of the Production phase, you may notice things have gotten a little messy—maybe your space, your schedule, or even your self-care. This is when you hit pause and re-evaluate. You might start a meal plan, clean your home office, catch up on neglected tasks, or put new systems in place. It’s time to reset and prepare.

❄️ Rest – Winter

This is the season where nothing seems to be growing. New ideas feel distant. You may feel unmotivated, uninspired, or just plain tired. You might crave sleep, quiet, comfort food—or maybe your body forces you to rest through illness or burnout.

The Rest phase can feel discouraging, even depressing, but the secret is not to resist it. The more you surrender to what it’s trying to offer you—true rest and renewal—the more easily you’ll move into the next cycle.

Let it be what it is: a chance to refuel.

Because right on the other side of rest is a new burst of Flow—full of ideas, fresh energy, and inspiration.

This cycle repeats constantly. We experience it in days, in months, in years. There are cycles within cycles within cycles. And the beauty of the Law of Rhythm is that it reminds us: all of this is natural. It's normal.

You're not broken when you're in a Rest phase. You're not a failure because life got chaotic during a busy Production season, or because you lost momentum on a dream. Over time, you learn to carry self-care through every stage of the cycle, so the Organization and Rest phases don’t feel so overwhelming.

You learn to welcome rest instead of fearing it.
You learn to capture and document ideas when they're flowing freely.
You learn to ride the energy wave in Production and then reset without shame.

It’s all good.
It’s all part of the rhythm.

This too shall pass—and another cycle will come around.

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