Going with the flow
What does it mean to just go with the flow?
We all love the idea of going with the flow, but what does that really mean? If you are driving a manual car and you are going down a hill, sometimes you just like to put it in neutral and let it roll down. You’re not accelerating—you just let it go.
In the same way, when you go with the flow in life that means you conserve your energy. You don’t interfere, you don’t block the natural flow. Basically, to go with the flow means to not think. You don’t think, “Oh, I’m not sure what to do with my life,” or “Oh, I don’t like that person.”
When you are thinking, you are interfering with the flow of life.
Sometimes in sport they call that being ‘in the zone’. I have watched basketball players make seven three-pointers in a row, and the commentator will say, “He’s in the zone! He can’t miss! I can’t believe it—every time he throws, it goes in.”
For that basketball player, there are no thoughts in that moment. There are no thoughts of, “I hope I don’t miss,” or, “I have to get this in because we are behind on the points.” There are absolutely no thoughts. They just have this feeling that if they throw the ball it’s going to go in. They are in the zone. They are in the flow.
If someone passes the ball to that player again and the player misses the shot, the commentator will say, “He’s not in the zone anymore.” Why? Because he thought about it. Most likely the thought was, “Will I get the next shot in?” And that thought caused him to miss it.
If you want your life to flow, you want to not think. It goes against everything we are taught. It’s like we believe that our brain will shrink if we don’t think. No. When you don’t think you basically become a saint. You become a Jesus, a Buddha. You become happy, and your life will flow.
How can I actually let go of the thinking and the planning and the organising, so that I can be in the here and now, trusting that what needs to happen will somehow happen?
It’s just a retraining out of the habit of thinking.
In the same way, when you’ve been walking forward most of your life, and suddenly you have to walk backwards everywhere you go, you need a lot of practice to be able to do that properly.
So it just takes retraining. We have picked up the habit of thinking a lot, so all we have to do is develop a new habit of not thinking a lot. That’s all.
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