I wasn’t really paying attention to the game that night. Sure, it was great to be at a professional sporting event in the city. Unfortunately, the Celtics were having another bad night during their mediocre let down season. It was a fun night though; I was catching up with an old friend. You know how those conversations typically go. They’re all over the place. Nothing stood out about any of them until he said, “I just like to go with the flow”.
My internal mental barriers instantly went up, as if they were to prevent me from even loosening up a tiny bit. If you’re anything like me, ‘free spirited’ people make very little sense to you. “How can somebody just go with the flow? Don’t you need to be self disciplined and focused one hundred percent of the time? How are you not experiencing the constant negative feelings of sadness and failure that I used to? Are you satisfied with mediocrity? What if that flow is pushing you towards a place you don’t want to go?”
Before we explore my thoughts on “going with the flow”, you should understand why my internal mental barriers went up in the first place.
My life began to take a drastic turn for the better when I stopped feeling sorry for myself, identified the causes of my failures, and implemented a self growth and rehabilitation plan. In order to execute this plan, I needed to enforce extreme self discipline, focus, and abide by certain principles. Some self imposed rules were straight forward, others may come off as extreme.
In the past, repetitive bad habits prevented me from becoming the type of person I wanted to be at the time and I was making backwards progress towards pursuing my goals.
To improve, I felt I couldn’t deviate from my self growth and rehabilitation plan, even for an inch.
Ultimately, I understood that in order to get different results, I needed make thoseIt’s drastic changes.
When your new way of living starts to produce positive results , it’s easy to begin to believe that your new way is the ‘right way’. You can easily fall in the trap of believing that it is the ‘only right way’ and begin to preach it to others. In worst cases, you stop evolving and allow your life principles to confine you out of fear of falling back to where you used to be.
A conversation with an old friend, alongside many observations, and self reflection, allowed me to finally realize something.
There is a fundamental difference between continuing to go down a certain path and going with life’s flow.
We each go through life by heading down numerous paths at different phases. Most paths, we willingly or mistakingly, choose. Some, we inherit. The circumstances of which those paths are in are often pre-set in the early stages of our lives. However, along each path, we are given the freedom to make the choices that determine how we go down that path or how we pursue a new one.
We often look back and reflect upon the different paths we took in life, pin point the exact changes we made to get off a ‘negative’ path, and express how grateful we are for the lessons we learn and the people we meet along the way.
I have come to realize that the level of difficulty we experience along each path can be impacted by whether we choose to go with the flow of life or not.
Yes, life does have its fair share of struggles. It also has many unique opportunities for all of us. These opportunities are in abundance but not equal in quality. Great ones do not always approach you when you are necessarily ready for them. They may also be way out of your comfort zone.
There will be opportunities that you turn down. Some, because you deem them to be unfruitful or incompatible with the type of person you’re looking to become. Others, you may turn down out of fear.
Missing out on certain opportunities can disrupt life’s flow.
We all know someone who is older and has nothing but regrets. Regardless of how many times you attempt to converse with them, their only tales derive from their ‘hay-day’.
Becoming that person is a big fear for many young people. No one wants to become ‘that person’.
I am not an expert on how to not become that person. However, there are a few common negative reasons that people pass on opportunities, which leads them to going against the flow.
Some people turn down opportunities because they are out of their comfort zone. Others turn them down because they lack confidence in themselves.
Some fear the distance of the leap. Others surround themselves with people who advise them to never leap.
Some refuse to be burned for a second time. Others are tired of getting up the tenth time after being burned nine times.
Some are weak. Others cannot recognize how strong they have become and their new potential.
Some have short term vision. Others can be too busy looking into the distance to recognize what is right in front of them.
Some casually navigate life without any principles and any regard for life’s flow. Others, have too many principles which limit them.
Some allow their ego and fear to serve as the ball and chain that drowns them. Others don’t just trust that the universe will make sure everything is alright.
My new personal advice is to set a few core principles and go with the flow.
Every person should have a set of core principles that they believe in and abide by. However, make sure these principles evolve with you as you evolve, rather than limit you. From there, navigate life with the understanding that you cannot always determine where life will end up taking you.
Think of the flow of life like swimming down a river.
When swimming down a river, going with the current gives you options. Doing so may lead you somewhere special, some place new, better, and/or somewhere you want and/or need to be. At the very least, it may buy you enough time to plan your next move.
Sometimes, even the strongest people drown when trying to swim against the current.
Would you rather drown, or swim down a river long enough to see where it takes you?
Just go with the flow.
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