Time To Go With The Flow?
No one is born with boulders in their river.
We are born and life flows freely, it’s easy and natural like the perfect, bubbling river. The only thing we know is the natural flow of life, happily and carefree downstream.
As we grow up, we gain a sense of identity from our upbringing and through socialisation. We learn the rules of socialisation, a sense of right and wrong, we get to know who we are and what we are about. As sophisticated human beings, we begin to experience life.
Some experiences we react well to and they fuel our flow.
Others we react badly too and a boulder is put in our river.
But it’s OK, we learn quickly to take a path of least resistance and navigate around the boulder keep on flowing to the best of our ability.
Being human inevitably means collecting boulders.
We’re sophisticated people and more than able to navigate twists and turns along the way through. Sometimes, we build our own imaginary boulders, ‘a lack of confidence’ may act as another boulder to the stream, those little voices of ‘saboteurs’ disrupt our natural flow, a ‘fear of offending people’ or ‘not being liked’ are more boulders in our water
With every boulder, more energy is wasted in navigating them, we flow with less ease and are diverted from our natural path.
Before we know it, we are still making our way downstream but everything seems a little less free-flowing, there’s something that is taking out our natural direction, our energy is being diverted, it all takes a bit more effort.
The boulders we collect through life, block our ability to go with the flow.
Our task is to take charge of our own river, to clean it, to deconstruct the boulders and return it to our strongest, most natural and effortless flow. Here life is beautiful and each bubbling meander can be savoured.
Going with the flow takes effort. It means the ability to let every experience fuel your flow, not block your path. It means knowing what powers your river so much that the boulders offer no resistance, it is the skill of learning to fill your life so full that your natural levels fill the river up taking you flowing easily over the boulder.
To go with the flow
• Choose how you react to every experience, know you can let it ‘fuel you flow’ or let is ‘slow your flow’.
• Take a close look at the boulders that are in your river, see which ones you can quickly remove. Which have you build yourself?
• Understand what it is that gives you so much flow that the sheer force of you can move those obstacles out of the way.
• Learn to appreciate nature’s obstacles and enjoy each part of the downstream journey, knowing you will come across another.
• Learn to like the quiet parts of the river between the boulders and waterfalls of rapid flow.
• Always respect other people’s rivers, they have boulders too.
