Untethered

“Time slows down. Self vanishes.
​Action and Awareness merge. Welcome to flow.” 
​~Steven Kotler
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Can there ever be too much summer? Even though the calendar says we have until later in the month, the start of September always feels like the end. We’d like a little more, but seasonal cycles prevail and the world returns to its regularly scheduled program.
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Sometimes, though, it can be tough. There is such a looseness to summer. Lengthy days, languid weather, a longer tether to normal routines.

Maybe there can be too much summer. We say we need to get “back in the swing” or “refocused”. We have to “regroup”. September feels like the right time to do so, but we feel scattered and untethered. Now, where was I???

Does this resonate with you? If so, perhaps summer has pulled you out of flow.

Flow, that hum deep in our bodies when we are in connected to what makes us come alive. Just like the stream that moves unimpeded, steadily, from its source.  It is a meeting of your life forces that can propel you toward the manifestation of what is most important to you.

This manifestation doesn’t need to be world altering, but it does need to have meaning for you. When you step into this flow, you allow your own life to be altered.

What is most important to you as you move forward into this new season?

It’s not just summer that pulls us out of flow. Life offers many distractions and externally imposed changes. When you feel detached to the important and are just running in circles with the urgent, your initial response may be to just stop everything. However, when you recognize that feeling, it might not be the best time to do nothing.

What generates flow and that lovely hum? How do you get reconnected to your purpose?

Here are five suggestions to help you ease into flow:

1. Check in with yourself and the activity or focus to which you want to reconnect. Make sure that it’s connected to meaning. We’re not talking about the car pool or leaf raking, but rather that something that makes your heart sing. That something that is on purpose and deserves your flow. Meditation, journaling and or small questions can help you with that deep knowing.
2. Physical movement- Get out of your head (and your chair) and into your body. Autumn (or spring in the southern hemisphere) weather is much friendlier for walking and gardening. Or, it could be cleaning out a closet or taking a shower. While you are in your body, the bits and pieces of fractured thought begin to coalesce. Ideas form, aha moments arise. The bigger picture may begin to emerge and show you to your next small step. And your next small step is all you really need to know to move you into momentum and flow.
3. Intentional exploration – Rather than go down the rabbit hole of the next great idea (and the next and the next), consider taking one idea through to an action step. Continue with it even though you’re not sure how it will pan out. Let each step determine the next. Be okay with what might feel like failure. Failure is necessary for all creative acts. In the words of Samuel Beckett: “Fail, fail again, fail better.” Stay with an idea until you’ve exhausted it, beyond the point where it is hard or something else catches your eye. It may have so much more to tell you. The act of continuing can produce a flow.
4. Mindful pauses – Instead of stopping because you’ve hit the proverbial wall, make an active decision to pause. During that pause let your ideas and thoughts go off on their own. Choose other activities that stimulate you. Come back to your idea refreshed.
5. Seek like-minded people – So much creative work - business, writing, art… all the work that connects to your essential self and provides a beautiful flow - is done alone. When you connect to others who are also called to express their passions, you will find a new energy. They will feed your idea, keep you accountable, be a sounding board and a witness to your work. They will accompany you out of your head and into action.

Do you need help with this? Some of us just need a nudge; some a witness. Others need a guide. Which are you? Contact me to learn how I can help.