Learning to go With The Flow

“Go with the flow. Force nothing. Let it happen…trusting that whichever way it goes. It’s for the best” — Mandy Hale

“Going with the flow is responding to cues from the universe. When you go with the flow, you’re surfing life force. It’s about wakeful trust and total collaboration with what’s showing up for you.” — Danielle LaPorte

I have always been the type of person that likes things to go a certain way, for things to be perfectly planned. If I had a busy day ahead of me, right before I went to bed, I would plan the approximate time that everything would happen to prepare for the day and make sure I was on time.

I would make a list of the things I had to get done and if I didn’t finish them or it would take longer than expected I would get stressed out.

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If plans had changed after I sorted everything out already, it would frustrate me because I put all that work in for nothing.

As you can see, I have not always been one to “go with the flow”. I like things planned, organized, and thought out.

However, I have realized that trying to make everything go perfectly is one, impossible, and two, more stressful than if I were to not be so strict about it.

Planning and organizing things is good to do for certain things but not to the extent that your whole life works around a planner.

Therefore, I am still learning how to go with the flow myself. However, I thought I could share where I am at with it and what I have been working on to not be so “rigid”.

I love to be organized and I love to plan things out. However, I have noticed that the more I try to plan things or force a certain schedule to happen the more things actually don’t go as planned.

For quite a few months I had been actively working on being more accepting of spontaneity in my day and not planning each hour out.

I was doing really well with it. Instead of saying I need this done by this time and that done by that time so I can do this and that, I began just making a list of what I wanted to get done in the day but not putting a time to it. That way, I wasn’t putting limits on myself and was able to just go with the flow of the day.

I would still be productive and get what I needed to do done. I usually plan to get things done earlier than needed, so occasionally I wouldn’t finish everything that I wanted to for a certain day. I have to admit this would make me a little uneasy but I would remind myself that it really doesn’t have to be done at that exact time and it’s okay to not get one thing done I planned to.

Like I said, I was doing really well with working on going with the flow. I didn’t feel as rigid in my life, I was less stressed, and enjoyed having more flexibility. I still had the same amount of work get done but eliminating a strict time limit made it feel like I actually had less to do.

Then one day I was feeling overwhelmed with everything and felt like I needed to plan the day out exactly so I knew exactly what was ahead of me for the day — like I used to. I was unsure about this because I knew I wasn’t really supposed to because I was working on not doing that and I was doing well without it.

Even though I had doubts, I felt like it was the best method for that day. So I thought, one time planning it all out won’t hurt.

Well, I was wrong.

One of the things I had to do that day was create a simple post for an Instagram account (which I have done 100s of times with no problem). It just so happens that a normal task that takes me 30 minutes (which is what I planned it to take) took me over 2 hours to do!

This made me very frustrated and grumpy, to say the least. I don’t get in the best mood when things don’t go the way I planned or when I can’t figure out why something isn’t working like it normally does. It turned out that the simplest thing was wrong and it could have taken me 2 seconds to fix. 🤦

It was not a coincidence that on the one day I decided to go back to my old habit it went the worst way possible.

This was a big lesson for me. It showed me how learning to go with the flow has really eliminated a lot of stress around trying to be perfect all the time. Plus it eliminated the occasional breakdown from something not going exactly as planned.

It has also taught me to become more aware of when I get frustrated that things don’t go as planned. I can recognize the way my mood changes and notice it’s because I am frustrated something has changed. At that moment, I work on talking myself through this frustration by reminding myself that this is what I am supposed to be doing right now.

From all of this, I have learned that you can’t force things to happen at a certain time because they happen when they are supposed to, not when you want them to, letting go of what you think is supposed to be will allow more opportunities to find you, and going with the flow is an act of freedom not a loss of control.

It’s all just a balancing act of understanding how going with the flow and having structure work together.

Going with the flow does not mean you have no control over your life. It means you are willing to work with the ups and downs of life and are willing to adapt to change.

Having structure doesn’t have to mean everything needs to go a perfect way. It can mean that you have a plan and goals for what you want to do.

This is a balancing act because things don’t always go as planned. It is important to have goals and plans for what you want to accomplish (short or long term) but be willing to adapt when the route you planned may not be able to work anymore. This is how you find that middle ground.

I went through a long process to understand this but my work is far from done.

Today, I am still very much working on learning to go with the flow and not force things to happen a certain way. I still have difficulty with it but it’s all a work in progress.

Sincerely,

Skylar Rae🌻❤️

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