How to find your flow to reach your full potential

When to push through and when to let go

I am of a certain generation that was taught with hard work you can accomplish anything. My parents were baby boomers. They both worked in the same jobs until they retired. They saved, stayed married and let their nest egg build spending little on extras. They were what I call grinders. They worked hard and always stayed the course, hell or high water. I believed in this method whole heartedly. It was modeled for me. In school the more hours I put into my studies the better I did on my exams. In work, the longer I spent going over my projects, the better results I got in the end. In my personal relationships, the more I tried to put my heart into them the more I got what I wanted out of them. This is real cause and affect stuff, work hard, get results, rinse — wash — repeat, right?

Or so it seemed…

As I am rounding out my last decade of 40s, I have been dealt with some blows on all levels, personal and professional. At first I tried the old tried and true method of staying the course, working harder and grinding it out.

This method has failed miserably for me. It just doesn’t work anymore. The results I wanted didn’t come and the harder I worked at it, the more miserable I became.

The last four or five years I have become a regular meditator. When I say meditation, I am not talking about sitting cross legged with my arms gently resting on my knees and humming an OM! No, I am talking about sitting quietly somewhere and staring out the window and thinking of nothing or walking along a path and letting my thoughts trickle away or lying in my bed listening to a guided meditation or even practicing Qi Gong. All of theses are forms of meditation for me. In these moments I stop caring about certain outcomes and just feel my presence.

Since I have been meditating, I have been getting more connected to my true self. I have learned I will never have to worry about working hard. It is who I am, but what I have learned is that some things are not worth working hard for. This is where flow comes in.

The best way I can describe it is to imagine you are paddling against a strong river current, you are working hard and putting all your effort into it…your exhausted, your muscles are burning, your breathing heavy, but you are going nowhere because the current is stronger than your will and strength to move forward. If you turn the other direction and paddle just as hard you would find yourself flying down stream inline with the current. And you wouldn’t be nearly as exhausted. In fact, you’d probably be having a better time.

So how does this apply to our lives? I have a friend who loved his business and worked hard and strived to make it great. He had all the skill and talent for success. This wasn’t the issue. It was the amount of effort it took. It was a lot of grinding and a lot of obstacles in his path. I think at one point he could see it just wasn’t worth it anymore. So he had to let it go. Is this failure? I don’t think so. It’s the process of self-actualization. Self-actualization is the achievement of one’s full potential through creativity, independence, spontaneity and a grasp of the real world. One’s full potential…if you are in a situation where you are working hard with the same or minimal results are you really achieving your full potential?

It happens though…we work ourselves to death in relationships, in jobs and in our lives in ways that keep us from self-actualization. Flow is the ability to move in and out of these while being able to continue to reach one’s full potential. Our full potential is achieved when we are in flow. They resonate together.

So how do you get into flow? I believe there are a few methods and I will share what flow is and what it isn’t.

1. If you are thinking too much about something you are not in flow. Does your mind ruminate, does it feel that you are creating a multitude of scenarios in your head about what, where, when, and how? Are you planning to the point of not feeling? Then you are not in flow. Flow is when you have a plan and some ideas, maybe even some details. You start the plan and things pop up for you, an opportunity just at the right time…a phone call when you needed one…an email message with the solution to a problem just when you needed it. Some people call these signs. Sure you can call them that, but this is when you are in flow. Things just click without a whole loft of additional effort and definitely no ruminating.
2. Do you have a hard time sleeping? If you do, you are not in flow. Sleep is a good indication of an overactive mind and the failure to relax into that parasympathetic nervous system , the rest and digest part of our day. When we worry or over think our minds stay in problem solving mode and this is like a runaway train. Sleep deprivation can take a toll on our health and our bodies systems leading to more anxiety. Just see my article on stress. When you are in flow you tend to fall asleep easily. Your circadian rhythms which are a big part of maintaining homeostasis are operating in sync with your surroundings.
3. Are you in a state of flux? Sometimes we see transitions or the space in-between projects, relationships, careers as an indication of defeat. When we are not doing, we panic. I am a classic example of this. When I am idle I tend to be the most agitated. Remember, I said I never have to worry about working hard. However, being idle is much like sleep. It allows us to regroup, to pause, and listen. There are a lot of people who struggle with this. They don’t take vacation or they take their work on vacation or maybe they eat their lunch at their desks. They work into the wee hours of the night. These are the people that classically talk about how “busy” they are. There is no time in-between. Pause is powerful. Pause is where the opportunities show up. The chance to learn something new. I think of it like a muscle. After a long and hard workout, you don’t go back to the gym the next day and do the same thing, you usually have a day of rest for the muscles to recover. If you don’t take care, stretch, cross train, rest, it can lead to wear and tear then eventually injury. Proper training includes rest. There is no difference with our mind.
4. Are you just pushing through without adjusting your goals? When we meet obstacles that require us to push through, the best thing to do is to pause and ask the value of what we are trying to achieve. Is this something that requires more or less effort? When I train clients in the studio I often tell them to not use more effort than is required for any given move. Some things just need more push and many things don’t. This might seem like an unpopular approach to the method of no pain no gain of the earlier century, but it works. What I notice is if you use the right effort when the real push comes you are ready and not already exhausted. Life is like a marathon and we have to pace ourselves.

All of these things are a good indication of whether you need to work on getting into your flow. But one thing I have discovered that for me is the biggest indication if I am in flow is my reaction to my circumstances and my environment. We’ve all heard the saying to “roll with it.” My days are pretty planned with clients, kids, work, life. On more than one occasion something comes along to derail my plans. These hiccups can be small and others can be colossal. How you respond to these events is a big part of flow. Do you overreact? Do you freeze? Do you panic? Try to take a deep breath, pause and adjust. There is always opportunity if we allow ourselves to see it. This is something that you can continue to work on because life gives you lots of chances to practice it.

So I keep working on achieving my flow. I work a little less and try to find more time to be open. I know when I am in it because I have space, I sleep, opportunities show up for me. Flow is also a state of mind. You have to choose to be in it. It is a practice like anything else and there is nothing wrong with a little grinding. It’s all part of a bigger picture of working towards that self-actualization and our full potential.