A flow of my own.
November 14, 2024
Just go with the flow.
That’s not bad advice right about now. It could even help someone get out of bed in the morning. In the category of words that drive me nuts though, with or without an unravelling world, they can be crazy-making. So is this:
Calm down, Robin.
Both expressions have been aimed at me interchangeably over the years when I’m off on a rant about a terrible wrong or really excited about a new project. Or maybe just super-charged over a new friend or colleague.
I feel patronized when someone lobs them at me, like they are trying to clip my sails. It’s not my fault that my energy level is set to high. (Until I crash, that is. Ask my husband Rodney what that looks like.)
Lately, I haven’t heard either expression. I’m hiding out in rural Costa Rica playing with my grandchildren. Someone may have said them to me. No comprendo.
I’m a lot more chill these days, reading less news, and limiting my use of social media. I’ve even managed to stay off marijuana for several months, although if ever there was a time to imbibe, that time would certainly be now.
I discovered my flow when I reframed its meaning. The meditation app Headspace defines it as “a sense of fluidity between your mind and body, where you are totally absorbed by and deeply focused on something, beyond the point of distraction.”
I love that. It’s simple and easy, a phrase I hear on my guided meditations about equanimity on Happier. Joseph Goldstein advises me to “just be with whatever is arising”. I hear you, Joseph.
Lately, that’s become harder to do. Flow has been a victim of a hit-and-run digital accident, knocked down and left to die. Phones, tablets, computers, and especially social media are the culprits. They all quickly fled the scene, blending into the background, protected by their ubiquity.
I used to have that feeling of being totally absorbed by something every day. I would look up at a clock and realize hours had passed. It came from writing.
Not quite as grand as the Nile or the Mississippi, my writing life has always been the source of my flow, the river running through my sense of well-being and contentment.
Every morning at the same time, I used to walk to my local library, taking a beautiful trail near our house in North Vancouver. The Internet would be turned off and I would work on whatever book I was writing at the time. I could sit for hours, breaking only to grab a latte at my local coffee shop across the street.
ChatGPT (a useful tool I still have on my phone) spit out a roadmap to flow for me. Turns out, I didn’t need one.
(1) Identify your most focused time of day.
(2) Commit to being distraction-free.
(3) Take regular breaks.
(4) Go for regular walks, especially in nature.
Unfortunately, AI couldn’t give me a pithy response to the librarian who booted me out of the quiet room once for typing too loud on my keyboard.
I also read flow guru Mihály Csíkszentmihályi’s seminal work on the subject, “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience”. A copy may be tucked away on your bookshelf. It was first published over thirty-five years ago. He’s since died, but his research and wisdom is still being extracted and shared on the Internet.
In the end, though, the game-changer came from a different source. I stumbled upon writing advice from the author C.S. Lewis.
Lewis certainly knew a thing or two about the subject. A prolific British author, he was well-known for children’s books like “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”. He also famously wrote about grief in “A Grief Observed.”
Anthony Hopkins played him in the movie Shadowlands opposite Debra Winger. Whenever I need a good cry, I re-watch it.
His advice was in reply to a schoolgirl in America back in 1959 after her teacher suggested she contact him. It was tip #4 in particular that resonated deeply with me.
“Write about what really interests you, whether it’s real things or imaginary things, and nothing else.”
After completing my cathartic memoir, I was looking for a new subject and initially settled on low hanging fruit. I would write a book about how Rodney and I built our family business, Maple Bear, into the largest global education brand in the world from our son’s old bedroom in our North Vancouver home, the one we risked to start the company when we were already in our mid-fifties.
I was convinced that writing a business book, full of real world personal lessons, would lead to better recognition of my writing. I would sell more books (maybe people would even reconsider reading my memoir) and I could build a bigger platform.
It was Rodney’s story, though, not mine. Moreover, I had decided to put my memoir in my rear view mirror and move on. A business book didn’t interest me at all. It certainly wouldn’t get me on that trail to my local library every morning.
The deafening digital noise in my head had led me astray. Social media was making me feel like a loser and distracting me with envy. I can’t speak for others, only myself, but all that digital drivel was making me think I had to conform to market forces. It shifted my mind away from my own values. Did I really want to become like that writer selling millions of books on Tik Tok? Actually, no.
My flow has been unblocked. By embracing digital minimalism, I have the silence in which to think. It came along at just the right time for me, too. I had always been interested in writing about technology. It’s never been more important a subject than right now.
All the counterproductive algorithms getting in my way have been deleted. A new writing day has dawned.
And guess what? I don’t need to calm down anymore. I’m just going with the flow.
**
In order not to impede anyone’s flow while reading my post, I offer up some useful links here instead of in the text.