Natural Reset

I was talking to my Dad about this and really it was his idea but I thought it was interesting so I thought I'd write about it.
The idea is that throughout history you can track wars and revolutions and often these seem to come when the society has gotten so one sided (one group is just too powerful) that either a revolution destroys the government or another country comes in and wipes them out. Basically the war/revolution resets the government or society or both. The French revolution is probably the most common example of this.
Nature seems like it does kind of the same thing to some extent and in some environments. For instance pine trees grow up into a huge forest and block other things from growing but after a while the pines get old or sick and a beetle or a fire take out the whole forest leaving it open for other species to grow and take their place. And then in geology the whole rock cycle is about changing one type of rock into a different kind. Resetting its nature if you will.
Thinking about all these big, general reset buttons made me wonder about whether this could be related on a small scale, like personally in my life. From a religious point of view the natural reset button in all our lives is repentance with help from the grace of God. However, in my big examples I talked about wars, and fires, which aren't the most comfortable things... rather devastating actually, and repentance doesn't have to be that drastic. I try to repent often but it isn't a process that completely destroys my life, but I suppose my life isn't that out of balance either so perhaps that's why.