Some weeks go like this: everything falls apart, nothing goes as planned, and what we’ve been trying to pull together, organize, or make sense of absolutely refuses to cooperate or be pigeonholed. This is one of those weeks for me and maybe it is for you too. It’s a week where nothing lines up or goes as planned. New ideas are nowhere to be found and the words won’t come. Everything feels ridiculous, fuzzy, ungrounded, or just plain boring. And no matter how hard I try I just can’t seem to get it right.

During days or weeks such as these, as much as we may want to, is not the time to run in the other direction. It isn’t the time to fight it either, or control and manipulate what’s happening or not happening. In fact, it is time to do just the opposite and go with it. When every move we make is only met with pushback it’s time to be in a different flow. I’ve been hearing these words a lot lately, almost as much as let it go. When there’s that much repetition I try to lean in and pay closer attention, because obviously some connection is not being made.

This not knowing exactly what to do is exactly the place where being and flow become invaluable. Finding a new groove and responding to what is instead of organizing, reorganizing, refusing to accept what’s happening, or wanting to control the outcome is how we let a little more being and flow seep into our lives. It’s a time of being honest about what life’s handing us and answering with more flexibility. Of course, this can be infinitely tricky and trying. We’re not used to reorganizing our plans or altering our expectations to accommodate what’s unsettling us.

But for sanity’s sake we might want to rethink our strategy and see what happens when we do.

When we are finally brave enough, or have had enough, to let go of what we’re trying so hard to control or create that still refuses to materialize, and genuinely release our expectations we can finally take a deep breath. Then something a little miraculous happens, in rushes spaciousness and all that irritation, anger, and confusion begins to recede, even if only a little. That’s because we’ve stopped forcing our agenda and move from thinking it has to happen in a certain way to letting it happen in a way we never saw coming. Trust me, this is a big chasm to cross, but sometimes the old ways we’ve been doing things are no way at all. It’s hard to remember in these moments of exasperation that what’s been our go-to or usual operating procedures aren’t always able to take us where we want to go next. We have to be willing to find a different approach.

Arriving in the discombobulated mess that is this particular time in our lives with an open mind and an open heart is often enough to do the trick. Even though it may seem like it, the trouble won’t last forever. But what is certain, is that the more we try to push what we want to happen the farther away it slips. We think we know for sure, even when life is telling us differently over and over again. This is the perfect time to be in the flow, which means letting go of our plans and starting to acknowledge what’s really going on instead of clinging to what we wish was going on or what we planned would be going on. What is and what we want can be two very different things. We have to be able to readjust and re-envision our lives and our problem-solving style.

And again, this is where patience, being, and flow come in to save the day. It’s how we learn to move in ways we don’t normally move, think thoughts we don’t normally think, or wait it out until life becomes clearer and settles down and we find a new way forward. What we learn from the times in our lives that have us stumped can change the whole course of how we deal with adversity.

Sometimes the best we can do is flow with what is and see where it leads us.

kb