Foreign.

Well, hello and welcome to the Uphill Community Podcast.

Your source of inspiration to gain clarity, elevate your standards and embrace your call to.

Together we choose the uphill climb, pursuing the hard best over the easy good.

And discovering the extraordinary life waiting to be lived in community.

So welcome to the show.

I'm so glad that you are here and you are joining me today.

Man coming in from the nightmare of a game of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, losing to Ohio State, I have to say was rough, it was tough, it was a good game.

You know, they got to the national championship again, little disappointing, I would say a lot disappointing.

But yeah.

So those of you Ohio State fans out there, hey, good win, 11 points and but I believe the Irish will be back next year.

So anyway, I'm not going to spend my time talking about a football game, but it was sad to watch.

But I did have some friends come over.

It was pretty cool.

I cooked a big brisket.

It was so good.

It was so good.

13 pound brisket was so delicious.

So as a matter of fact I got a couple, two, three slices that I still need to eat that are left over from it.

But today's episode I'm looking forward to building off of the, you know, what I did last last week, the relational circles.

And my goal today is to connect on that, but not, you know, I don't want to go back into it all, but I want to get into how relationships evolve over.

And I think all of us can appreciate that in relationships and how they evolve.

Sometimes it's easy to understand how they evolve and sometimes it's not so easy.

Right?

It can be difficult.

Sometimes we're confused by it.

We wonder what happened to the relationship and where did things go wrong if they're no longer together or what happened, how do we drift apart, how do we grow apart, those types of things.

And then also knowing when it's important for you not to let them drift apart and how to invest into them, so forth, so on so many things when it comes to relationship.

But I do believe relationships make everything else better in our life.

The quality of your relationships will determine so many things.

And next week I'll be talking about relationships as it relates to your purpose.

So I'm really looking forward to building on these ideas.

But before I do that, remember you can follow me on Instagram at Tim Pecoraro.

You can also follow me on LinkedIn and that's just go to LinkedIn, type in Tim Pecoraro, you'll see me there.

And most of the times you're just seeing me put some content, some things that inspire you.

I'll be adding more things in the future.

I love to put up free tidbits.

Like last week, I think on Instagram, I put up there's probably five, five ways to distinguish yourself.

So I believe there'll be another five next week of five characteristics or traits that distinguish you from someone else.

So that'll be a 10, a total of 10.

Why do I do that?

Because I want to add value to your life.

I want to help you get to the next level in your life.

I believe in creating clarity, raising standards, helping people embrace their call to and for more.

And I do that all the time.

I love it when I go speak somewhere.

I'm the guy.

I love to be a closer.

So when I get to do keynotes, I love, I mean, kicking off is fun, but I love when I'm able to attend somewhere, be and being in the room and listen to all the things that are being said and done throughout the whole weekend or several days of an event and then come up there with what I know is the theme.

But then being able to pull all those pieces together and be a closer and just finish, finish strong, send people out with speaking inspiration to their aspirational self, that identity that they want to ultimately see in their life.

So that's what I love doing.

And yeah, so today, this topic.

Well, actually, before I do that, once again, sorry about that.

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If you want to learn about the community, go straight to it at it's real simple.

It's theuphill.community that's it, theuphill community.

Now let's jump into today's topic.

And this topic is how relationships evolve over time.

And I've experienced it.

There are times that I have relationships and I talk about these things a good bit, guys.

So if you've heard me on podcasts, before I talk about relationships, because my one word, my main driver in life is people.

My rule is you'll never look into the eyes of another human being.

That does not matter to God.

Now, those relationships can be complicated.

They can be difficult, they can be different.

Some relationships, you can't do everything with everybody.

And I get that.

But, you know, I have three nouns in one word.

My three nouns are a leader, communicator, and an artist.

And my one word is people.

And so I do talk about relationships and people a lot.

Even in with my business clients, I will talk to them to help people understand concepts better.

It's always good to bring up relationships.

If you bring up relationships, you can help people in business.

So what we're going to do is we're going to dig into this topic of how relationships, you know, well, obviously we know how they're important, but how relationships evolve over time.

Okay, so I'm going to look at this topic and see how it touches you and how it touches me.

But the way they evolve, they touch us.

Right?

So it, there's, there's some areas that, and how they touch us that I'm going to talk about, but I'm going to use it.

I'm going to use nature.

Right.

And just seasons.

I think we all understand seasons.

And what is your favorite season?

Mine, I love the fall and the winter.

Those are my two favorite seasons.

I know a lot of people.

There's.

It's the spring or the summer.

I love the fall and the winter because my greatest and fondest memories are in the fall and in snow.

My favorite sports, my sports that I participated in, the ones that I excelled in, were wrestling and football.

Those were fall and winter.

Winter sport.

So football was fall and then we went into wrestling season and I loved it.

Now, of course, you wrestle coming into the spring, but those were, it's just, I loved it.

I love running in the cold weather.

I loved when it was snowing outside.

I love watching the leaves change.

I love music that makes me feel fall or, or how it makes me feel winter.

I love that because of what it means to me.

That's just what it means to me.

All right, now here's the thing, though.

When it comes to people, what's interesting is because I am a fall, winter and I can have, I, I, that's why I want to use the seasons because it helps me know my relationships too, because I am drawn to that.

So, yes, I like all different types of people who, whatever season they like, that's up to them.

That's cool.

But I always do.

I mean, I really do.

I feel like I'm drawn to those people who like fall type stuff and winter type stuff.

I'm drawn to that.

Okay.

I'm drawn to anybody who, you know, if they wear the colors that way, if they like music, that makes me think of those things.

That's a natural, you know, it speaks to me.

All right?

So I just want you to know things around you will help you learn.

So for me, it's nature.

Nature helps me know how relationships evolve over time.

So relationships go through cycles, and this is how I work with this.

They go through cycles of growth, flourishing.

Right?

They go through transition and even rest.

Those.

Those are the areas.

Growth, flourishing, transition and rest.

So have you ever looked at a friendship or a relationship in your life and realized it's changed?

Right?

I'm sure, because I know I have.

Or maybe someone who was close to you, they've drifted away.

Or perhaps it's a connection you never expected is becoming something special.

You didn't expect it.

I've had that many times in my life.

There are times when that's good and there's times that that's bad, but it's real and we need to learn from it and we need to pay attention to that because these are all things that are helping us.

The more we can learn about how we connect with people, the better off we are.

So as we.

I talked with you last week about building inner circles, the in between circles, and then the outer circles.

You know, you need to now look at how they evolve.

So listen back to the episode before this one so you can hear that.

But this now is the next part of building off of that.

Maybe I may even go back and number this.

The last week is part one, this is part two.

Part three is next week.

So if you've ever experienced a relationship that's drifted away, it's changed.

It can be bittersweet from the starting of a new one or one that's drifted away.

It's bittersweet.

They're.

They're also very natural.

It's a natural thing, no different than watching nature.

And it's the beautiful part of life.

It also can be a very painful part of life.

So here's how I want to break this down.

And I'm going to make sure I have notes so I don't go too far, too far on sidebars, because I tend to do that.

So I'll start with the spring, right?

So this is like your season of growth.

Spring is when relationships, obviously where they begin, the spring of a new relationship, it could mean that it's a new friendship.

It could be a new work connection or even a new phase in an existing relationship.

But during this season, everything feels ready.

Here's the key to a spring, the season of growth.

Everything feels fresh and it feels exciting.

The spring of a relationship.

I'll give you an example of this.

The other night my wife and I, we had dinner with a couple and getting to know them and amazing story.

The.

The husband is a.

He's in pro sports and he's struggling with.

There was an illness and I mean just this unbelievable stuff they went through that impacted his ability to play the game.

He's had to go through certain surgeries and now he's being cleared to come back and just hearing that story and hearing the impact on them and it's a brand new relationship.

It's getting to know some people don't really know them.

Started connecting and started to just get curious and, and, and here we are, we're talking and so this is a.

It's what they're going through is a very difficult thing and.

And we don't have anything to liken it to.

Neither of us.

My wife and I have not experienced any of what they've experienced.

But there's a freshness about it and a newness in that they're sharing things.

And it's very authentic, it's very real, it's very unforced.

It's natural.

It just came up in the conversation in getting to know them and they shared it.

And so it was really cool.

And so in that by that sharing the story.

Here are some things that are happening in sharing the stories and then us sharing stories with them.

Here's what's really cool.

This is where this refreshing part and this exciting part comes in.

It's building trust.

It's brand new.

Something you haven't heard.

It's you being able to see people in their life or see people and what they've gone through.

You begin to appreciate things.

It's just that fresh air and then it just feels like there's possibility here.

Especially when you know you're able to connect not necessarily around the exact thing, but just in appreciation and valuing.

Being curious and just really listening and.

And seeing empathy and compassion and sharing some laughs about it or even hearing a part of it.

It makes you kind of tear up, but you feel that connection.

That is the spring of something.

That is what's so awesome.

It's the spring now the Second season is the summer, and the summer is the season of flourishing.

And the summer represents that peak connection time.

This is when relationships, they bring us joy and there's energy and there's fulfillment.

Where just like the couple that I'm talking about is like, if I go meet up with the husband and he and I are gonna meet and we've been talking for a while and then I go somewhere, I begin to feel that energy around it.

I begin to see there's joy there and there's that fulfillment.

And we begin to sync up around some things.

So even though I have kids and I even now have grandchildren, he doesn't even have any.

But we found other ways to connect.

There's other things that have so much more meaning to it.

We begin to sync up, right?

That's what's really cool.

And we find that connection and we find that where things click and the relationship thrives, you feel the traction, you feel that energy.

Here's a quote, and this is from Proverbs and it's Proverbs 17.

17.

And this is what makes me think of summer and of the season of flourishing in the new relationship.

Like I'm mentioning with this gentleman, a friend loves at all times and a brother is born for a time of adversity.

You know, that's what you feel like when you have that freshman, that energy.

You just know that, that refreshing and it's there, it's in the air and there's that fulfillment, there's that joy.

And a friend just loves at all times.

And that's when I begin to think thoughts like that, you know, so in the spring, the season of growth, you start moving into that, you know, the season of growth that feels fresh and exciting.

Then you move into that flourishing time where it's joy and energy and fulfillment.

But then there's also the transition or the seasonal changes that are how a relationship can evolve over time.

And not all of them, but some.

And well, even though you may not lose the relationship, but all relationships go through these things, you know, true long lasting relationships will go through these and hopefully they continue and then some, obviously they don't.

But the third one is the autumn, right?

So the autumn is the season of transition.

And remember autumn, naturally for me, when the leaves change and I'm from Connecticut and I love it.

There's a song by U2 that goes October and the trees are stripped bare from all they wear.

What do I care?

It's a great song.

I love it and I listen to it and I love the mood Kind of puts into me in the way it.

Like what it.

It gives me for me, like life prompts and writing prompts that come to me from that song.

So autumn is that time of change, right?

So it's like in relationship, it's the season, it's the transition time.

It's someone's.

The priority shift or circumstances begin to pull us in different directions.

I have a very good friend, 30 plus years, and he is.

You know, he's in youth ministry.

He's in.

He's in young adult stuff, and he leads a massive organization.

And he and I used to talk all the time, and now we talk maybe a couple of times a year.

But every time we talk, even though we've seen this transition and it seems like we've had autumn for a long time, but when we get on the phone a couple times a year, we feel the immediacy of spring and summer in a conversation or two.

And how we can connect because the relationship is still there.

So in there, it is bittersweet, right?

But it's also an opportunity for us to grow and reflect in that distance in that time.

So he and I have learned how to.

In the times that we're apart and we're not speaking much or whatever, we.

We use that time to be able to think about the meaningful things that we can share with and connect with one another, whether it's at a meal or whether it's just on phone.

Maybe it's a series of texts that we start off with before we connect, but we begin to share.

Recently I found a songbook that he brought to me.

And this songbook was when I was going through a very, very hard time of my life.

I was probably 22, and I lived in this apartment not far from where I live now, and I lived there.

And he went to this event and he wanted me to come too.

And I wasn't able to go.

So he went and he listened to this artist and this artist.

I have a tattoo on my arm of this.

Of this wood carving that's in this book.

And so he went down and he.

He got.

He saw this concert.

But he came back and he came to my apartment, and it was late at night when he came back through.

And he set the.

The.

The.

The.

The book on my front step of my apartment with a.

With.

With another gift.

And then I got up the next day, opened the door to go to work, and there it was, and I saw it, and he had a little note in there.

And I have that book to this day.

So Just last year, which was not far away.

We're in January.

I took a picture of it and just text it to him.

And he replied back, just a couple of things.

But then how it was bringing tears to his eyes.

Just remembering that.

And it was just such a powerful, impactful time.

So good, such an awesome thing.

But our relationship has experienced longer autumns, but it doesn't mean the connection is gone.

Okay, so you could be.

You're building your life, you're building your family.

Just know things go through change and transition.

It's what you do with it.

It's how you work with that.

It's.

Do you have to let it drift away?

Is there room for it to stay connected?

Can you continue to stay connected?

Can you continue to.

To be in relationship?

Yes, you can.

I'm sure you can, but sometimes maybe not.

You're transitioning to the next phase, right?

Which would be that winter, that change.

Another example, like in transitions, like, just think if you went to college, right, And a college friend was your go to for everything, and now they're in a different city and they're building their own family once again.

Doesn't mean it's gone.

It's changed.

It's a way.

It's just changed.

It's just different.

You got to find a way to connect with it and work with what it is and understand and celebrate and reflect on how that relationship served and how it served each of you.

Okay?

That's very important.

Reflect on those things.

Now, the fourth one is the winter, and the winter is the season of rest.

Okay?

So winter is when relationships seem to go dormant.

You know, sometimes the connections can fade completely though, right?

So just like the winter, everything seems to.

The leaves fall and things slow down and things go.

The animals go into hibernation, things go dormant.

So for me, dormant and fading are things that I need to understand.

I need to spend some time thinking, is this just dormant?

Is this a good time to simply pause and reflect?

Allow me some rest and reflect.

It's a season of just rest in the relationship.

Or is it.

It's run its course and you have to look at that.

You know, I think it's.

It's unbelievably important that we know how our relationships evolve.

Right now, I'm not talking about devolving.

I'm talking about they evolve.

And sometimes you can evolve and they go out, you evolve into the winter, and then that may be it.

Or in some cases it's, you do the spring in the relationship, you do the summer in the Relationship.

You do the autumn in the relationship and you get to a winter in the relationship, and then you can reflect and you look at all those things and it's dormant and you pause and you're just simply sitting still and thinking about that relationship.

And then you go back into the spring again.

There's that reconnection.

All right, so spend some time thinking about that.

So in the winter, though, it's very crucial that you rest and reflect in relationships when that time is given.

Always think it through.

I don't care what the relationship.

I think marriages need that.

You need to understand that you have that season and you should be doing that.

You should do that with your family, with your friends, people at work.

Find those moments where you can reflect and rest.

It's also time to evaluate what relationship is worth reigniting.

Some relationships, the reason you want to take time in that dormant period is to know that what do I need to reignite?

What do I need to put some fire back into and some passion back into?

I told someone recently, you look, if you want spice in your life, be spicy.

You know, like, bring the spice.

And the quote I'm going to share is from Ecclesiastes 3:1 around the winter, in this season of rest, and it's a simple one, everyone's heard it.

But to everything, there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven.

And that is such a profound truth, and it is so real and so rich that we need to grab ahold of that and pay attention to it.

So instead of us being caught off guard, understand that everything has a season.

And if we can work with that, better, kind of like change, change is inevitable.

So get better at change.

Seasons change, get better at the changing season.

Some people move away because they want a different season.

Some people just, they don't want multiple seasons.

So I don't care.

You can move to Hawaii and only have basically summer and spring, then you could do that.

But your life is still going to go through four seasons for the most part.

So maybe nature, you can trick yourself by moving, but just because you move geographically, that doesn't make everything work, you know, accordingly to wherever you're.

What nature is doing.

Nature is just an example, but you're going to go through these seasons and changes in relationship.

So how do we embrace change with grace?

How do we embrace these changes?

It's not easy to accept when relationships shift.

It can be very difficult.

But it's vital to approach these changes.

You ready?

With gratitude.

I have found that when I embrace change, because there's times.

I'm on the disappointed end of a relationship and I get it.

But I still try to find gratitude instead of focusing on what's ending.

I try to reflect on the season that I've shared and the lessons that it brought into my life.

And some of those, obviously I want them to be forgettable, like, oh my gosh, I don't ever.

I can't believe.

But I still need to reflect because there is always something for me to learn, something that needs to help me.

I may have, you know, been in something that I feel.

I feel like an idiot or I may feel stupid or I may feel ashamed.

I may feel like, I don't know, maybe I wasn't the best or maybe, I mean, I don't know all the things that you can feel, think through your life, trust me, you can find any number of things that I'm talking about.

But what I try to do is I look at that and I try to find what is good, what was lovely, what was pure.

If anything, I try to find those things.

So I want to give you some ways to reflect.

Right.

I want you to take some steps, some, some action steps in this, looking at your relationships and how they evolve.

So the first one is I want you to identify the current seasons in your relationships.

So take some time, reflect on your closest connections.

Okay.

And.

And try to see which season is my.

Is this relationship in?

Where are they?

Where are my relationships?

Are they in growth, Are they in flourishing, Are they in transition or are they in rest?

Those are your four areas.

Growth, that's spring.

Flourishing, that's summer.

Transition, that's fall, or rest, that's winter.

When you understand this, it's going to help you get some clarity and you ready and some peace.

Knowing what season is in can give you peace.

Because now you know what you're working with.

Try to answer some of those questions.

The second thing that I want to do after you identify that is celebrate the season that you're in.

So if you're in a spring or a summer, I want you to savor the joy of the spring or the summer season.

If you're in the autumn or the winter, take some time.

Use this time to reflect.

Use the time to heal and prepare for some new growth.

And if you're in the third, right, or sorry, the third thing I want to give to you is whatever season that you're in, not the third season.

So the third thing I want you to do is have some grace for yourself and others.

So change is hard.

Ready for everyone.

That's what's here.

Now, some people may be better at change.

And if someone says change is easy, great.

But they haven't met the thing that make that change is hard yet then because there are always changes that are going to be hard.

And I'm one of those people.

I believe in doing the hard best, not the easy good.

So you need to put yourself.

If everything is easy for you, then you need some different arenas to be involved in, right?

Like if you're the best basketball player, then go play with some other people.

If you're the smartest person in the room, leave that room and go get in a room with people smarter than you.

Like, put yourself in spots where it's hard.

So anyways, 3.

Have grace for yourself and others.

Change is hard for everyone.

Approach your shifts with empathy and kindness, both for yourself and for the other person.

So that's it.

I mean, these are the areas that I want to bring up to you.

These are the things that I want you to think about.

I want you to think about spring, right?

The growth.

I want you to think about that flourishing, the summer.

I want you to think about the autumn, that transition, that season of rest, winter where you reflect.

But I hope no matter what, this conversation is going to give you a new perspective on the way relationships can evolve.

I want you to remember that every season has its purpose and that every connection brings something valuable into your life.

So if this episode resonated with you, share it with somebody, someone who might need it.

Talk to somebody.

Do this with your friends, do this with your relationships.

Take the time to check your relationships out.

Are they growth, flourishing, transition or rest?

So until next time.

We'll talk soon.