3 Keys to Step into the Flow of LIFE
Energize your decisions, habits and actions to experience the journey of manifesting your vision.
The Journey You Experience
In my blog The 7 Steps of the Creative Process, I explained that the steps can be divided into 3 parts - The Destination You Envision, The Company You Enjoy and The Journey You Experience. The Journey You Experience includes the last three steps, which are focused on decisive action.
These last three steps are focused on your physical experience, your journey, by aligning your actions and your being with your vision to manifest the life you have imagined. The steps are as follows:
Step 5 - Intuit Your Aligned Action
Step 6 - Express Your Loving Vibration
Step 7 - Receive Your Harmonious LIFE
These steps energize your decisions, habits and actions to accept, allow and receive your abundant health, energy and resources. Because you may not have thought of everything, it’s good to add “this or something even better” to your vision.
Step 5 - Intuit Your Aligned Action
Use your love and compassion to guide your intuitive understanding toward wisdom. Brainstorm ideas to the depth of your intuitive wisdom to discern right action aligned with your vision and values so you can create your harmonious life.
Your Vision Already Exists
Realize that your vision already exists, just as an oak tree already exists within an acorn. You just keep taking steps toward your vision to let it unfold naturally. One of the biggest challenges to achieving your vision is your own brain.
You have a triune brain, which you have varying degrees of control over its parts. The first to develop was the stem and the autonomic systems, which control your most basic physical functions, over which you have almost no control. However, you can usually adjust your breathing rate and depth. You can also impact the rest of your autonomic system indirectly through your thoughts, emotions and behaviors.
Which leads you to your next part, the limbic system, which controls your emotions. You have a little more control over your emotions. Through deepening understanding and wisdom, you can decrease your fear-based reactions and increase your love-filled responses.
The final part is your prefrontal cortex, which is the intellectual part that controls your human intelligence. You can control this part the most by constantly learning and by continuing to work toward your expansive mindset by shifting your belief system.
You are a steward over your own thoughts, emotions, words and actions. The more you control them, the more you can focus your attention on achieving your vision. You can control your response-ability and make your contribution to the world.
Align your mind, heart and body with your vision. Take consistent action as though you were already the “you” in your vision. Be it till you see it.
Levels of Wisdom
Knowledge is the foundation of wisdom. All the information you retain is knowledge. Rote memorization is knowledge, but does not mean that you understand the information. Seek as much knowledge as you can to make understanding and wisdom more attainable.
When you put the information into useful patterns that make sense to you, you have gained understanding of the material.
Understanding material does not guarantee that you will make the best decisions. Understanding tempered by love results in true wisdom. Wisdom is not just understanding the patterns; wisdom is using them for the benefit of all.
Next Steps
My clients usually start with a 3-year vision, which is long enough to not know exactly how to achieve it, but short enough to provide a motivating sense of urgency. Once you have your vision for your relationships, occupation and health and wealth, you can decide on annual benchmarks, which can add depth and assurance to your vision. Now you’re ready for aligned action.
Center into a calm, peaceful state by focusing on your breathing. With your vision and benchmarks clearly in mind, brainstorm what you would like to achieve in the next three months in each area of your life. Do not edit your list at this stage. Allow your intuition to run free, and capture every idea that comes to mind, whether or not you understand it. Brainstorming works best if you stay with the process for a while. You could aim for a long list of maybe 50 items, or stay with the process for 20 minutes. Use what works best for you.
Once you have your list. Go through each item and note whether the idea has high or low energy for you. If one seems appealing but overwhelming, break it into smaller tasks. This will reduce stress to increase success. Choose which goals you would like to achieve in the next three months.
All play and no work is not productive, but all work and no play leads to burnout, which is also not productive. So be sure to choose some challenging tasks and some relaxing tasks, some work-related and some self-care. Be sure to schedule the tasks, alternating between challenging and relaxing. Release any unimportant, stressful tasks from your life as much as you can to increase success.
Create systems and habits to make it easy to start and move forward each day. Some people suggest that you tackle the most difficult task first; they call it “eat the frog” and it works for a lot of people to get past the fear paralysis. Others suggest that you start with an easy win. Checking an item off your list can motivate you to keep moving and checking more off your list.
I hope that none of your tasks is as stressful as having to eat a frog. I also know that starting with an easy win can lead to focusing only on the easy wins and never getting to the challenging ones. So I suggest that you determine which of your systems and habits already work and continue to use them. Change the ones that needs changed. And alternate between challenging and easy tasks throughout the day. You get to choose which to start with first. What resonates with you?
Realizing your vision already exists, remember to align your action to allow your vision to unfold naturally, using your intuitive wisdom to discern each step.
Step 6 - Express Your Loving Vibration
Choose to expand with love rather than contract with fear. Vibrate your energy at the level of abundance in the flow of generosity and gratitude. Invest your time, talent and treasure for your highest good and the good of all, so you can fully experience your vision of peace, love and abundance.
The Flow of Abundance
You can’t get the television channel you want without tuning into the right station, so change the station to the vision you want. If you have your thermostat set low, you’ll never warm up to the level you want, so raise your thermostat to raise your setpoint for the level of emotional energy you want to match your vision. Choose techniques to notice when you’re out of alignment and reset.
Set your attention on your intention to attract your vision from the matching level of vibration. Focus on love; release any fear. Practice centering into an attractive loving vibration by breathing in a calm peaceful state. Imagining your energy flowing freely, cycling through your body and connecting with the energy in the earth and sky.
Thoughtfully invest your time, talent and treasure in alignment with your vision and values. Focus on the most important things first.
Levels of Flow
The most contractive level of flow is believing that Murphy’s Law is normal. You expect bad things to happen all the time. “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” You settle for whatever you can get of anything.
Most people get to the level of flow where they believe that hard work and doing what you “should” will bring you success. You expect good things to happen, but only through hard work, lots of effort and pain and suffering. Nothing comes easily.
When you align with your vision and values, you expect good things to happen through aligned action. Not through pain and suffering, but through joyful action and intuitive effort. Even the most strenuous tasks are easier to follow through with joy, because the vision ensures it’s the right action and being mindfully present releases the stresses and pains of questioning whether or not it’s worth it. You know it is. Shifting your thoughts, emotions and actions to align with wanting to achieve your vision makes each step, no matter how much work, feel like a reward in itself.
Set State
Set your state mentally, emotionally and physically to align with your vision, and every moment of every day can be joyful, no matter what your current circumstances are.
Step into the flow of abundance, attract with your vision from a state of love, and align your thoughts, emotions, words and actions with your vision to live in a state of joyful intentional flow.
Step 7 - Receive Your Harmonious LIFE
Rest from trying to force things to happen in a certain way in a certain timeframe. Accept what happens and allow everything to unfold naturally.
Open to receive your vision or something even better. To achieve this level of effortless allowing, be like water, moving persistently forward and around any barriers, gently carving your path toward your vision.
Gratefully Receive Your Abundant LIFE
Your vision will naturally unfold in the right time and manner. Express gratitude for your fulfilled vision every day whether or not it has yet manifested. Maintain your attractive level of vibration. Align your action effortlessly with your vision.
Levels of Receptiveness
Kensho is growth by pain, gradual and slow, small and subtle, built up over time. This method requires significant effort or hard work. It feels more forced and difficult.
Satori comes from moments of sudden awakening. It’s growth by insight. They can seem to come to you almost at random. Aha moments. These insights can come from a personal growth program, a retreat, a seminar or a book. Satori is a pleasant, pleasurable form of growth. Insights can also come from unexpected places like a road sign or billboard, the casual words of a stranger or anywhere if you are willing to listen.
WuWei means to be like water. It literally means no action. The philosophers of early Daoism followed the practice of taking no action that is not in accord with the natural course of the universe. Rest from trying to force things to happen and allow them to unfold naturally. Be like water gently carving its path around and through even the greatest obstacles. Use gentle persistence and effortless action to enjoy your path.
Treasure Chest
Many people rush through life, just doing and checking off the boxes without slowing down enough to truly celebrate their wins. I invite you to celebrate all your wins, both big and small ones. Create a treasure chest of your accomplishments, your relationships and your abundance.
You can make lists and carry a postcard sized list of your greatest in each area to lift your mood whenever you feel negative beliefs and feelings sneaking into your day.
Wins often come with little souvenirs or awards. You can use physical reminders of your wins. You can even store them in a physical treasure chest. You can even use something as simple as three little glass drops of different colors to represent your most powerful wins and fidget with them for a few minutes. Remind yourself of how much you have already achieved, how many loving relationships you already have and how much abundance you already have. Soak in that powerful feeling!
Remember this is your life! Enjoy your journey by stepping into the energetic flow of what you really want, by vibrating your energy at the level that will attract what you really want and by allowing your vision to unfold naturally and effortlessly. Celebrate your life!