Living with presence and flow

I have a client, who recently walked The Three Peaks in 24 hours.

I spoke to him before the event and his mind was racing in many directions.

“It’s like there’s an overzealous 'boss' in the mind that likes to be in control. It likes to think through all eventualities. It plans, and it often worries.”

“What if I don’t make it? What if I’m tired? What if I get injured? What if I can’t keep up? What if I miss the bus? Do I have enough food? Do I have enough kit? Do I have too much kit?…”

The physical challenge is not really a physical challenge. It’s a mental challenge. It’s entirely an inner game. We either learn to not be captured by the mind and the challenge is easy, or we get consumed by the ‘boss’ and the challenge is extremely hard.

And our lives are like that too. All manner of events happen in the outside world (reliably), we either get consumed by our thinking mind, or we release ourselves from the noise and we operate in flow.

There’s two points that I’d like to remind you about:

1. The present moment

I want to remind you of how the mind works. The mind creates the reality that you live within.

So as I sit here now, it’s creating my experience of the computer, of the light, of the sounds. And it’s also creating my ‘story’ of the situation. And my story has a commentary with it. that brings - “it’s a good day” “I’m enjoying” “I’m frustrated”… it creates a stream, a dialogue that I’m immersed in..

And not only does it create ‘my story’ in the moment, it also has the capacity to not even be here now.

So I’m sat here in the moment now, yet my mind wanders off into the future. I imagine what might happen in a meeting tomorrow. Or I’m thinking about August and my holiday. And in that moment, I see myself on a beach relaxing.

The mind has this incredibly powerful ability to wander. It’s such an amazing ability, yet it can be very unhelpful. It stops us living in the now, right here right now.

But remember - the mind only works in the present moment. So when I pull the mind back to here and now, I start to experience the full richness of the present moment. And as I do that, I also stop the mind from spending too much time - worrying about what might happen, and imagining unhelpful scenarios.

My questions to you are:

• On what topics or situations or regarding which people are you over-thinking?

• Where are you spending too much time in the future anticipating or worrying?

• Where have you already decided what’s going to happen?

2. The boss or the automated factory line?

In your mind, you have a boss and an automated factory line. The automated factory line operates automatically seemingly without thinking. It just gets on with what it needs to do. You can do most of your life this way. We often call this ‘being in flow’.

And then there’s the boss. The boss is the part of the mind that thinks it needs to be in control and manage everything. It’s rational, it worries, it plans, it thinks ahead. It has some real useful qualities, but it has a fundamental problem - it over-thinks and overanalyses. Life doesn’t need to be as complicated or stressful as the ‘boss’ makes it.

• Where is your ‘boss’ too active in your work and life?

• What would it be like if you trusted flow more?

So in summary… I’m inviting you to live in the present moment and trust your natural incredible potential to do your life with ease and grace.

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