Going with the flow

I remember a few years ago I was getting frustrated at certain areas of my life. While I can’t remember exactly what those things were I can tell you a funny story of how I have been learning to go with the flow. I’m not exactly saying I “go with the flow” all the time, but the sense of release that comes from behaving in this way is extremely exhilarating.

One day I was driving into town (which was a 40+ min drive away) and I had been speaking to a friend of mine about how frustrated I was and I think either him or I mentioned about going with the flow “bro”. I was needing to hear this because I was just frustrated at a lot of things that seemed to be out of my control. As I drove past the town’s hospital deep in my own thoughts I saw this particular van drive in the opposite direction and it was as if everything else in my vision was blurred and the sign on the van came into focus.

Photo by J V on Unsplash

The words on the van were “GO WITH THE FLOW”. It was a plumbing van and since then I have never seen that van again. However I was now getting the message plain and clear, that I needed to go with the flow. How did this impact my life? Well for someone who doesn’t like to sit still and wants to control things and make things happen this was the exact thing I needed. Not that it was welcomed at first.

However soon after this happened I realised every time I get frustrated with anything including my parenting, business, work, marriage, anything else that I can respond in a different way to the situation. The way I can respond is to realise that I am not in control of other people, I can not ultimately control how my children or other people behave and so the one thing I can control is me. And that is one of the first lessons I was able to learn through this process of “Going with the flow”. - Acceptance.

This made me realise that there are better ways to parent, communicate with my spouse, communicate with others and also try and understand people better. I mean just about everything we want to achieve in life usually involves other people so we better get used to becoming better at communicating and accepting them for who they are.

I’ve also recently had to use “Go with the flow” in other areas of my life. For example: business, going on an overseas trip, moving house, new job, children’s schooling. Through this ongoing, life long process it has made me realise that going with the flow is not necessarily removing responsibility or loss of control, but it is having better self management and control of myself. I look forward to sharing more on this in the future as it seems to be one of the ways to get into a more raw life. I have had opportunities come up that I would have never otherwise had happen if I wasn’t going with the flow.