Coming Home to Your Natural Rhythms: Why Seasonal Living is Revolutionary for Mama Entrepreneurs
Many years ago I remember stepping outside my front door with my first child all bundled up in his warm layers and just breathing in the crisp cold air of late Autumn. The brown leaves of an oak were twirling around on the footpath and it just felt wonderful. But as I had spent a good 15 years in corporate offices I hadn’t been able to have that daily connection as much. Or at least not able to fully appreciate it. Every day became a chance to connect with and observe the seasons as they changed. I knew then that I had been missing out and I really needed it.
It was this gentle stirring of knowing. A knowing that the hustle-harder mentality isn't sustainable, that the constant push against my natural rhythms was leaving me depleted rather than energised. I started to craved something deeper, more aligned, more... real. I started to see and feel that the simplicity of connecting to the seasons gave my life more solidity, grounding and it felt like time wasn’t moving so fast.
I think this is something previous generations understood intuitively (probably way before the industrial revolution), something that's been guiding life on Earth for millennia?
Welcome to seasonal living—a way of being that honours the natural cycles of expansion and contraction, of growth and rest, of doing and being. It's not just about decorating your home with fairy lights at Christmas! It's about remembering how to live and work in harmony with the rhythms that govern all of life, including our businesses.
What is Seasonal Living?
Seasonal living is the practice of aligning your life, work, and energy with the natural cycles of the seasons, both in the external world and within your own body and spirit. It's about recognising that just as trees don't bloom year-round, you weren't designed to be in constant production mode. Every part of nature has a cycle even the flowers that bloom in Winter (I see you violas!).
This ancient wisdom acknowledges that there are times for planting seeds (spring), times for growth and expansion (summer), times for harvest and celebration (autumn), and times for rest and reflection (winter). When we align and connect with these cycles in our businesses and daily lives, we move from forcing outcomes to flowing with natural energy patterns. And as a mama I know that my kids have their own natural energy patterns as well and forcing them never works. I have always maintained (and with my clients) that its about finding our flow - within our selves, with our kids and family, with our home and with our seasons.
Each season carries its own distinct energy and invitation. Spring brings the energy of new beginnings, fresh ideas, and gentle emergence—perfect for launching new projects, starting collaborations, or implementing changes you've been contemplating. Summer embodies full expression, visibility, and abundant energy—ideal for marketing pushes, speaking engagements, client-facing work, and being highly active in your business. Autumn carries the energy of harvest, gratitude, and wise discernment—a time for celebrating achievements, analysing what worked, completing projects, and making strategic decisions about what to keep and what to release. Winter invites deep rest, reflection, and planning—perfect for visioning, course creation, behind-the-scenes work, and allowing yourself the spaciousness to dream and restore. Understanding these seasonal energies helps you align your business activities with natural momentum rather than swimming against the current.
Of course there will be some elements of your business and life that can’t wait till the next “right” season but overall we can find ways to create sparkle and joys and love our lives in each season while still doing what needs to be done.
For mama entrepreneurs instead of fighting against your natural rhythms, you learn to ride them like waves, finding ease where you once found struggle. It’s not even surrender or acceptance but a quietening, listening and reflective time to drop your shoulders and go with it.
Why Your Body and Business Crave This Rhythm
Your body is already living seasonally, whether you acknowledge it or not. Your energy naturally shifts with the light, your creativity waxes and wanes with your hormonal cycle, and your capacity for social interaction fluctuates with the demands of motherhood and life seasons.
When you ignore these rhythms, you create internal friction. You push for summer energy in your winter season. You demand spring creativity when your body is calling for autumn harvest. You schedule high-energy tasks during your natural low-energy times, then wonder why everything feels so hard.
When you work with your natural rhythms rather than against them, you accomplish more with less effort, make decisions from a place of clarity rather than forcing, and create sustainable success that doesn't burn you out.
The Business Case for Seasonal Rhythms
Traditional business advice tells us to maintain consistent output, to show up the same way every day, to push through regardless of how we feel. But what if this approach is actually limiting our potential?
Seasonal business rhythms allow for periods of intense creative output followed by necessary integration time. Some months are naturally better for launching new offerings, while others are perfect for behind-the-scenes development or relationship building.
When you align your business activities with natural seasonal energy, you tap into collective rhythms that your ideal clients are also feeling. Your spring launch resonates because everyone is feeling that fresh-start energy. Your autumn planning sessions appeal because people are naturally moving into reflection mode.
This approach also provides built-in boundaries and rest periods. Instead of believing you should be producing at the same level year-round, you give yourself permission to have seasons of expansion and seasons of contraction. This prevents burnout and actually increases your overall productivity and creativity.
Living the Cyclical Life as a Mother
Motherhood is perhaps the ultimate lesson in cyclical living. From the monthly rhythms of your menstrual cycle to the daily rhythms of feeding, sleeping, and playing, motherhood demands that you become fluent in the language of cycles.
Yet somehow, when it comes to our businesses, we often forget this wisdom. We try to maintain the same energy and output regardless of whether we're in a newborn haze, dealing with sick children, or navigating our own hormonal shifts.
Seasonal living as a mama entrepreneur means acknowledging that your capacity will ebb and flow not just with the calendar seasons, but with the seasons of motherhood, your monthly cycle, and the daily rhythms of family life.
This might mean scheduling important calls during school hours, planning intensive work periods around your partner's availability, or recognizing that some weeks you're in your creative spring while others you're in your reflective winter—and both are valuable.
It also means fully asking for support when you need it most.
Embracing Constant Change as Natural
One of the most liberating aspects of seasonal living is that it reframes change from something to resist to something to expect and flow with. Instead of seeing life's constant shifts as disruptions to your plans, you begin to see them as natural rhythms to dance with.
This perspective is especially powerful for entrepreneurs, who face constant change in markets, client needs, and business demands. When you're rooted in seasonal rhythms, you become more adaptable and resilient. You expect periods of growth and periods of pruning. You plan for seasons of expansion and seasons of consolidation.
This doesn't mean being passive or not setting goals. Instead, it means holding your plans lightly, being willing to adjust course when your intuition or circumstances suggest a different path, and trusting that just as nature has its own timing, so do your business and life.
Life is not a sprint. It’s more of a long term adventure with all its ebbs and flows, action and dreaming states.
Returning to Ritual and Intentional Living
Seasonal living naturally invites ritual back into daily life. Not complicated ceremonies, but simple, intentional practices that mark transitions and create deeper meaning in ordinary moments.
This might look like lighting a candle when you begin your workday, taking a walk to transition between client calls, or having a weekly planning ritual that includes checking in with your energy levels and natural rhythms. One of the things we are doing as a family is creating rituals around new seasonal dates in the calendar - the Summer Solstice, the Autumn Equinox, Matariki/Winter Solstice and Spring Solstice not the traditional holidays that we have grown up with.
These rituals serve as anchors in the flow of daily life, creating pockets of intentionality that help you stay connected to your deeper wisdom and values. They remind you that business isn't just about achieving outcomes—it's about how you want to feel and who you want to become in the process. For me it’s allowing my kids to tap into this nature connection as well - that they begin to see how to do it and what it feels like.
For mama entrepreneurs, rituals can be especially grounding. They provide stability in the midst of constantly changing family needs and business demands. A simple morning ritual can center you before the day begins. An evening ritual can help you transition from work mode to family mode.
The Gentle Revolution
Perhaps most importantly, seasonal living offers a gentler way of being in the world. Instead of forcing your way through obstacles, you learn to find the path of least resistance. Instead of pushing against your natural rhythms, you learn to work with them.
This doesn't mean lowering your standards or achieving less. It means achieving your goals in a way that honors your humanity, your femininity, and your role as a mother. It means building a business that supports your life rather than consuming it.
Seasonal living is remembering that you are not a machine designed for constant output, but a human being with natural rhythms, needs, and wisdom. It's returning to a way of being that your ancestors knew intuitively, and that your body and spirit are still calling for today.
When you align your life and business with these natural rhythms, you don't just become more productive—you become more alive. You don't just build a successful business—you create a life that feels deeply nourishing and authentically yours.
The seasons are changing, as they always do. The question is: will you change with them, or will you exhaust yourself trying to stay the same? Your seasonal self is waiting for you to remember what you've always known deep in your cells. It's time to come home to your natural rhythms.
Maybe its also a rebellion. A time for us to say enough is enough. We want to live differently. Create communities and villages that are resilient and have the ability to look after each other. Maybe its time to say we want to try it the old way again.
Want to start connecting now?
My new Winter Rhythm Guide has just been launched to allow you to go deeper into connect to the season of Winter, the season of you. You can see all the details here so let me know how you get on. I wanted to create something that was not a quick fix but easily accessible with prompts and rituals to allow for the space to have those aha moments. To find but not force clarity. To create moments of joy and sparkle this Winter without having to feel like you are enduring it. It’s not just something to get through and hope you’ll make it through the misery out the other side in tact but a joyful season. Here in New Zealand it’s not Christmas so we celebrate Matariki which every year is growing as a more prominent and heart-filled holiday to mark the season.
If your looking for clarity or just want to find ways to connect then grab the guide for $9.90.
xOlivia
Winter Rhythm
Let’s not just ENDURE winter but EMBRACE it. Find your rhythm, rituals and flow with the new Winter Rhythm Guide (2025).