Living Life Through Flow Not Force

Living Life Through Flow Not Force

Wouldn’t it be nice to feel like you are living life through flow? How great would it be if things just fell into place, with minimal effort on your part? Imagine the peace, the joy, the gratitude of a life like this. Let yourself imagine it for a moment. Let yourself seep into that feeling of grace, ease and flow. And now, look at your current life… Is it flowing? It is full of ease and grace? For many of us, the answer will be ‘no’. Many of us are pushing, forcing and trying really hard which can lead to frustration, resentment, exhaustion and more. But, it needn’t be this way. You can create more ease and flow in your life. I speak from experience and, I’d like to share some tips with you. The first thing is to recognise if you are living through force, rather than flow.   Are you forcing life? See if any of these are true for you: You feel a lot of stress and heaviness in life You often feel like you are ‘pushing against’ something You feel overwhelmed by external situations, people and things You feel controlled by external situations, people and things You feel powerless in your own life You are exhausted You are frequently trying really hard You become resentful and unhappy You may feel like a victim You may get angry when things aren’t going your way It takes a lot of effort to achieve what you want When you get what you want, you often lose it again If you answered ‘yes’ to any of these, you are...
Honesty Equals Health and Happiness

Honesty Equals Health and Happiness

So many of us do not speak or live our truth with honesty. We might think that it’s no big deal. Sometimes it is OK or even necessary to put on a happy face, to keep your cards close to your chest, to just keep quiet and muddle on through for a bit. But, doing this continuously is ill-advised. “How are you today?” “I’m fine” Except, you’re not fine. “Let’s go for a drink tonight” “OK” But you don’t want to go for a drink tonight. “Can you lead this new project?” “Sure” But you’re already overwhelmed and overloaded. When we keep hiding how we feel, saying ‘yes’ instead of ‘no’, building whole careers and lifestyles around things that don’t really fulfil us, this causes a great deal of inner pain. In an attempt to avoid conflict outside of ourselves, we end up causing a war inside ourselves. Dr Gabor Maté’s book ‘When The Body Says No’ is full of case studies of people who were never honest about how they really felt or what they really wanted in life. And sadly, this led to much mental and physical illness for them. The distress caused by not being honest, by holding things in, by living a façade really does take its toll. It creates dis-ease. One of the top regrets on the death bed is “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me”. We also need to understand that what you suppress will express itself in perverse ways. Suppressed sadness can turn into a deep depression, suppressed...
Just Keep Going, Don’t Give Up!

Just Keep Going, Don’t Give Up!

When I look at many successful people in life, be they successful on the grand stage or in their private lives, whether they run a multi-million-pound business or they have the happiest and most wholesome marriage, one thing that they seem to have in common is this: they never give up. This is a big life lesson that I’m learning right now. If you want something, if you dream of something, if you have a vision, a goal, if you have a challenge to get through, a dark period to traverse, you simply cannot give up. I know it sounds so cliché. It always sounded that way to me, too. But, now I’m realising in practice just how important it is. As a life skill, a key element of resilience and a denominator of success, happiness and wellbeing. When things get tough, you may have to drag yourself along with your last iota of strength to take just one… more… step. To get out of bed for just one… more… day. To work for just one… more… hour. This is the totally unglamorous and often painful side of success in many areas of life. You just have to keep going. There’s also something about our ability to push ourselves further than our minds had previously decided we could go. It’s almost a ‘proving oneself wrong’, ‘surprising oneself’ and delighting in the discovery that you have more courage and resilience than you thought you did. It makes you realise how the mind and body can trick you into thinking that you’re done, when in fact, you still have a lot...
Satisfy Your Soul, Not Society

Satisfy Your Soul, Not Society

Satisfy your soul, not society – I borrowed this title; it was a quote I saw on social media and it really resonated with me. I think this is not only my life’s ambition – to satisfy my soul, but it’s also why so many people are not happy and healthy in their lives. They are living from the outside in, not the inside out. They are satisfying society, rather than satisfying their soul.   Satisfying society is exhausting Every day, you are dragged this way and that way. There is always another expectation to meet. How should you talk, what should you wear, what job should you do, what should you believe, how should you think, where should you go, who should you marry, how much money should you make, what car should you drive, what direction should you take? There are as many expectations as there are people, and if you keep looking out there trying to gather them all and meet them all, you will fall to pieces. It’s too much. And it’s not actually helping you have a happy, healthy or fulfilling life. It’s just exhausting and usually breeds resentment and regret.   Satisfying your soul is energising On the other hand, if you look within and ask yourself: ‘What do I want?’ you will start to energise from within. You could even experience excitement at the prospect of living your life, the way you want to live it. Imagine not worrying about what other people on social media are doing, imagine having the confidence to stand up to your parents and say ‘no’, imagine...
Do you hold yourself back in life?

Do you hold yourself back in life?

Many of us want to live fully. We want to express ourselves and taste the many delights that this world has to offer. Like an eager child, we want to go forth into the world, to explore, to experiment, to play, to dive in. But equally, many of us don’t actually do this. We don’t live fully. Instead, we hold ourselves back. We stay small, we dismiss our dreams and we play it safe. We ‘umm’ and ‘ahhh’, we hesitate and even retreat from the fullness of life, from change, from opportunity. Considering we have but one life (as far as I know) and it is fleeting, you’d think we’d go all in and make the most of it. But instead, we leave so much on the table. And unfortunately, this leads to a life of regret and resentment.   Why do we live this way? Why do we hold ourselves back? We’re worried about other people’s opinions Parents, friends, neighbours, colleagues, randoms on social media – what will they think about us?  Whether you want to know if they approve of your outfit or your career, you keep looking outside of you for permission to do, be and have what you want. I understand that. I do it too. This need for approval, belonging and acceptance is deeply baked into us all. It’s part of our survival instinct. But it also holds us back from our fullest, most brilliant and authentic life because we choose what others want, instead of what we want. Even though it’s us who must live with the consequences. We don’t like uncertainty Another...