You can't fight the flow of life

Around the same time I spray painted the second ever LIVE A GREAT STORY in San Diego, I spray painted another quote.

“All great stories have ups and downs”

I had recently moved to S.D. and life wasn’t great.

Finding a real job was wayyy harder than expected. I was working a shitty front-door / ID-checker job at a bar. I was dealing with surface-level relationships that are Southern California. I was far away from home.

It just wasn’t great.

However, I knew that was part of the route, the journey, the experience.

That’s why I spray painted LIVE A GREAT STORY on an abandoned building that I walked by all the time.

It was a reminder to keep riding the rollercoaster…

…through the ups and downs.

…don’t fight it, just keep riding the flow.

Around that same time, I got into a relationship. She was amazing, an incredible person. It was just one of those “I knew it immediately” moments when I checked her ID at the door. It just clicked.

But the flow of life, my timing, wasn’t right.

At 24, I wasn’t ready for a real relationship. She was a few years older, which compounded the situation considering that women are always a few years ahead of guys… add that reality to the age gap and it just exacerbated the situation.

It fell apart, and I shoulder a lot of that responsibility.

I felt it. I knew it. I wanted to change it but the flow of life just wasn’t flowing that direction… and trying to fight it just made it worse, like paddling into a riptide.

I knew one day it would be right, that the flow of life would catch up at just right the time for the right girl.

I trusted it. I didn’t force it…

And it happened at just the right time: I was ready.

Years of working on myself, practicing communication, unraveling my faults and weaknesses, learning to purposefully tweak and adjust character traits to move towards a higher version of myself.

Same with business: trust the flow.

I’ve been working on LIVE A GREAT STORY for six years… that’s a long flow.

Practicing, honing skills, taking risks, learning lessons and pushing forward.

Am I wildly successful with a full bank account and the business of my dreasms? No.

Not yet.

That’s not part of the flow… yet.

But it’s coming.

I can feel the flowwwwww moving me forward, taking me to the next step.

Am I ready for a family yet? That part of the flow is coming.

I know it’s on the way, but it’s not here yet. The flow will take me where I need to go.

And a recent realization is that sometimes the flow requires a more conscious and focused input. There’s the intuition but success happens when opportunity meets preparation.

The opportunity is the flow, the preparation is the focus, the planning, the execution, the grit, the consistency, the tenacity.

The flow works, just not entirely on its own. It’s an indicator and a force, but it can only take one so far on it’s own.

Over the last couple months, I’ve been tuning into my flow. Most recently I’ve been purposefully giving my flow space to flow, to be free, to show me the way.

Part of that flow was being confused, uncertain, unsure. I had to sit in it.

And the flow is rewarding that patience, that space, that calm with the next milestone.

It’s not quite here yet, but it’s coming.

And when it hits, it’s going to flowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww