Life Pattern Cycles: Finding the Rhythm of Your Life

By: Cate

At the age of 37 I went through a major transformation in my life.

I had achieved what I had thought I wanted out of my life. You know that sense that I was "on track" so to speak. I had a career, a happy marriage and a family. I had it all. Or so I thought.

Suddenly it was like my foundation was built on quicksand. I was losing my grip on what I had worked so hard to achieve. I had turned 37 in November, and by the following July, I had left a job of 8 years, left my husband, and moved to a new home.

So What Does All Of This Have To Do With Life Pattern Cycles?

Well, a wise man once said, "You don't find books, rather books find you." I stumbled upon a book by Robin Norwood called: "Why This, Why Me, Why Now." Seemed to fit my sense of loss just at the right time in my life.

Unbeknownst to me at that time, Robin had been a celebrated author of books on personal relationship therapy. The inside cover of the jacket told me more than just that however. It seems that she too underwent a transformation on a grand scale not unlike my own. What twigged for me was that she had undergone seven years of searching from the time of her last book until this one. It occurred to me to look back at where I had been seven years before. It was easy to figure out that I had been 30 years old, and remembering the changes in my life at that time were quite fresh in my mind. I realized that I had undergone another transformation at that time as well.

Energized with this new idea, I grabbed a pen and paper, and I continued to map out my life. I was looking for highs and lows, and times of change and transformation in my life.

And then it struck me. I had found a pattern. Going back every seven years, I realized that, yes, I had undergone great transformations. The younger I was, the more physical those transformations seemed to be, and as I aged, these became more spiritual in nature.

It became apparent that I was not the only one to discover this pattern in life. As I mentioned earlier, books were finding me all over the place. It was like I was sending out some signal on the astral, and not only books, but other sources and resources were finding me. In brief, what I found, was women more than men seemed to be aware of this life pattern cycle, and that most were consistent with a seven year rotation.

Mapping My Life Cycle Pattern

For me, the search was quite easy. Not that I am equipped with a remarkable memory, but I have kept journals since I was a kid (although back then I called them my "dear diaries".)

I started with looking at the most recent events in my life. In the year that I was 37, and the year that I was 30, both were transformative years. To test this theory of a seven year cycle, I then kept subtracting seven years from the previous pivotal year. This I discovered to be the ages 23, 16, nine and two. Certainly one could argue that there are a great many other highs and lows in one's life, but the key here was to find something that transformed me from the path I seemed to be following up until that time. The years that corresponded to my early years happened to both be years that my family moved, thus changing the environment that I grew up in. I would think that although I can't recall too much from these earlier times, I believe that these two events did change the course of my life. In reviewing my journals, I also discovered that at ages 23, and 16, I again made choices or had changes thrust upon me that were indeed taking me in a new direction.

How Do You Find Your Own Life Cycle Pattern?

Not everyone has a journal to reference, and so sometimes, matching up the year pattern would be helpful. For example, find two years that in your mind stand out as not necessarily traumatic, but transformative. Let's say that two occurrences in your life that were substantial were the year you moved out of your parent's home and went to college, and the year that you landed that new job you had aspired to find. These two events happened roughly in August 1977 and October 1991. So, let's say you were probably 18 in 1977; that makes you 32 in 1991.

These two events are about 14 years apart. This doesn't mean that you have a life rhythm of 14. What I suggest you do is take a look at the years in between, beginning with the middle (seven years). I suggest, if you can, look closely at the time between August and October in 1984. (The months that correspond to the months in between the two events you already established.)

From this point, you can continue with a pattern going back in time to find those milestone markers.