Going With the Flow

"Once the water starts flowing, it usually has its own ideas on where to go." ~ Thomas Ardito

You were fairly skilled at going with the flow when you were first born. You hadn t made many determinations about how things were supposed to be. Life came at you a moment at a time, and you let that happen. Nothing harmful happened to you when you were in the flow, did it?

Between then and now, you ve had many, many experiences. You ve learned to think and to reason. You decided whether you liked learning new things or not. You found yourself a career. You may have gotten married; may have had a family. And somewhere, somehow along the way, you got out of the flow. You made decisions that did not permit you to accept things as they were happening. You may have become defensive, or perhaps, stubborn.

You were trusting and secure when you were in the flow. You accepted what life gave you, and you dealt with it, often with equanimity. Would you like to return to that place of acceptance? Do you think you are capable of having to control absolutely everything in your life and let yourself return to an easier, less stressful, more accepting method of living? Change or changing is the norm in life, and it does not require our control. It requires trusting that whatever comes our way, we are capable of maintaining our sense of peace via acceptance.

Here are some tips to help you get there.

1. If you make mistakes, it s not the end of the world. It s simply a mistake. If you no longer made mistakes, you would not be here in this relative state of unfoldment. Accept that you make mistakes. In truth, you ARE perfect, but you simply haven t embraced the fullness of that idea yet. You will eventually. In the meantime, accept change, imperfection, and making mistakes in yourself and others.
2. Perfect is a relative concept. Every one of us thinks we know what "perfect" should look like, and each of the pictures is different. Not one of the pictures is wrong, however. Couldn t you accept that each messy picture is perfect as it is and that you don t have to get in there and straighten up the lines. Instead of looking for what s imperfect, you could develop the habit of finding some small aspect that IS perfect and focus on that.
3. You re only in charge of you. The next door neighbors with their loud music cannot be controlled by you. Ever tried NOT being angry and permitting yourself to fall asleep even when their music blares into the night? It IS possible. They may be younger than you, working their way through young adulthood as you once did. You can t control others. You can only control the way you react to them.
4. Laugh and shrug more. I have a friend whose grandfather used to shrug and say "What am I m gonna do?" when he encountered a challenge. It always made me laugh, and sometimes when I m up against it with challenges, I think to myself "Just shrug like Pop Pop and say "What am I m gonna do?" Just smiling is a big help! The next right idea will present itself to you when you smile.
5. Deep breathing helps. If you feel perplexed, scared, or angry about feeling out of the flow, pause a moment and take a deep breath. Picture that stream, flowing effortlessly. Know that you are like that stream. Begin to look for solutions and your mentality will bring some up for you to choose from.

Our lives are not neat and tidy. I think messy and chaotic might be a better description. If you permit yourself to accept this, to step back into your nature, and allow the flow of right and good ideas to come your way, you ll discover it s a lot easier than coercing your direction.

"It is easy to be pleasant when life flows by like a song, but the man worth while is the one who will smile when everything goes dead wrong. For the test of the heart is trouble, and it always comes with years, and the smile that is worth the praises of earth is the smile that shines through the tears." ~ Irish Proverb

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