Are You in the Flow of Success?

Flow is a key to your abundance, good decision making, happiness and peace of mind.  In fact, the word “affluence” which we think of as relating to money, is a derivative of the Latin "affluere” which means “flow forth freely.”

Lao-Tsu, some 3,000 years ago said “To find one’s fountain is to learn the true secret of Heaven and Earth. Life asks only that you flow with it – that you do not resist it bubbling forth, that you do not crawl into dark corners of insufficiency and erect barriers.”

Wow, this is challenging.  I spent a lot of years in feelings of insufficiency and being blocked.

Let’s start with the obvious: ever heard of cash flow?!  Without a strong sense of inner flow, you will always be dealing with sporadic cash flow and financial stress.  When challenged, you may get fearful and resist doing new things, taking risks, doing good bookkeeping, and creating solid goals. Without these in place, we continue to focus on “lack,” which only creates more fear and resistance.

Oh, resistance.  Here's the BIG barrier that blocks your flow.

In my early years of business, I had nothing but resistance and barriers, but didn't know about it until I started exploring my core beliefs learned in my very early years about money, abundance, deserving, etc.

Of course, I tried to “fix” it.  Unfortunately, I was fixing my problem with the exact core beliefs that were creating the problem to begin with!  I learned  “Nothing worthwhile is easy.” ( Oh, yes, let’s go against the flow and make it harder.)  After all, “the harder you work the more successful you’ll be.” Or “sometimes you just have to suck it up and make yourself do terrible things you hate.”

This creates a path of no flow.

Ralph Waldo Emerson commented, “to….flow, you must unlearn the wisdom of the world.”  That means that while business/career planning, strategy development and goal setting are awesome tools, (and I use them all the time), they must be subservient to your inner sense of flow.

The good news is that your flow never goes away; you just lose connection. There is a rhythm that runs through your heart, mind and spirit and body every second, every minute.  When you're quiet, happy, content, you feel it.  It doesn't generally happen at the computer,  on your I Phone, or when you're jammed busy.  You know when a decision feels stressful. (Indicator of Bad decision.)  Sometimes all your programming and core beliefs kick in and tells you to make the bad decision anyway, but if it’s not easy and in the flow, you’ll be dealing with repercussions of that for awhile, and it will erect those barriers to real ease and flow.

That’s why going to the mountains and reconnecting with the flow, getting near nature, taking some deep breaths and re-assessing the need to control vs. the freedom of the flow might be one of the best business decisions one can make.