Flow-The Secret of Happiness

Most of the books on my shelves are books I have read, or deliberately decided not to read after losing interest after a page or two. So it came as a bit of a surprise to find an understated book in the middle of various dog-eared novels I had not yet read - the power of flow.

This is most likely a transplant from my parents' extensive self-help collection and must have snuck into one of my boxes. However, I didn't notice until I had - conveniently - experienced stagnation in many aspects of my life.

I'd say that's what divine timing is all about.

For the next few hours, I cruised through the pages, thinking back to all The Times in my life when things seemed to fall into place and doors opened without me having any physical strength - those times when I was completely and utterly "in the flow."

In that moment, I intend to pay closer attention to what I usually call coincidences that are actually information that prompts me to take a particular path, to let go, or to live in the moment.

I also note the emphasis on total openness to receiving such information.

The next morning, I was driving my car for a routine oil change and mentioned to the mechanic that my power steering occasionally locked up during parking.

After examining my car for 30 minutes, he returned with the conclusion that the repair would cost $1,900, about $1,850 more than I had planned to spend.

Now this is a small problem in my process.

I took a few deep breaths, drank my coffee, and tried to let the incident roll off my back.

On the way home, still fretting about the cost, I stopped at a traffic light. Right in front of me was a car with a license plate that said one simple word: Receive.

This message may mean many things to the driver, but for me it was a synchronized message - to let go of worry and accept the good things to come.

It was a seemingly unrelated chain of events that was able to support me in situations that would normally leave me feeling depressed and without much confidence - reading the book, being in a place where I could absorb the knowledge it had to offer, and then receiving a message that spoke directly to what I was experiencing and feeling at the time.

Even though it didn't look so brilliant on the surface, I still felt much calmer, knowing that the pieces were exactly where they were supposed to fall.

This is also taught something important: being in flow doesn't mean that seemingly negative experiences can't touch us, it just allows us to go through them with greater grace and ease.

My body is telling me the same thing. Often, when I'm shaken by something unexpected, I feel like I'm not ready and my stomach immediately drops and then it feels like a scramble of nerve endings until I'm able to move through emotions.

This time, the sensations in my body remained neutral, as if I knew instinctively that everything would be all right. I'm on the move mentally and physically.

To incorporate flow into my daily experience, I keep reminding myself of these three things:

Reminder #1: Everything is connected

If we treat every event and experience as something isolated, we miss out on the information we can glean from connecting the dots and the lessons that thinking has to offer.

Life becomes more profound when we are able to weave together events and experiences to see the bigger picture.

When we can recognize that a plan is unfolding for us, it also provides a sense of support, and that everything we need to grow is presented to us when we need it.

We cannot experience flow until we can see the strings that connect everything we have experienced, everything we are currently experiencing, and everything we have yet to experience.

Reminder #2: Listen to yourself

If you refuse to listen to yourself, you are not in flow.

In order to experience flow, we have to get better at something most of us struggle with: trusting our intuition.

We may have a sudden urge to do something or call someone, but instead of acting on it, we question the validity of the idea and dismiss it because it's unusual.

We didn't believe we had heard the right message, so we let the moment pass. In other words, fighting what the universe is telling us is the path of least resistance to maintain our current comfort level.

Fighting is always the opposite of going with the flow.

Reminder # 3: Take it easy

Notice the look and feel of an easy life.

Sometimes it's easy to forget that life isn't supposed to be hard and that struggling isn't a natural state of affairs.

If we pay careful attention to the look and feel of the process, not only are we more likely to recreate it, but we can immediately know when we've gone off course.

When I was 16, I struggled for months to decide whether I should transfer or stay put. I'm obviously unhappy in my current situation, but fear is keeping me from moving forward. I feel completely stuck.

Then one day the walls collapsed and I decided to change schools that I hadn't considered before. It didn't feel forced in any way, in fact, I felt lighter than I had in weeks. By the end of the day, the logistics had been worked out and there was a clear path ahead of me.

The feeling I felt -- the sudden feeling of knowing -- was the feeling I had been guiding me back to flow for the past eight years.

Let nature take its course is the natural state of life, but we must decide that it is so - even if our circumstances and upbringing tell us otherwise.

** Have you ever experienced something that tells you about your flow? Share your own experiences and stories in the comments section below. Can't wait to read it.