Flow From page 29
getting, and that the ultimate in creativity is being in touch with your undiluted desires.)
What don’t I want? (Sometimes using the process of elimination can be a less intimi- dating way to inch forward than naming your desires outright. Desire and yearning are powerful forces!)How can I be gentle with myself in this situation? (We can all benefit from asking this many times a day)
4. Allow: To allow is simply trusting that, by connecting, feeling, and inquiring, you will hear or see or feel or sense what your next step is—and only your next step.. Allowing is not about belief: it’s about noticing your experience, and opening to your next step, allowing love, allowing inspiration, allowing knowing to come into your body and heart, to inform and direct you.
5. Apply: Action is how you taste the fruit of this path and where the practical and results- oriented parts of you get their due. Without action, without decision, you remain in possibility, which is safe and beautiful but eventually enervating and boring. That doesn’t mean eating the whole elephant in one bite; small steps aren’t just okay; they’re en- couraged. Taking small actions of trust builds your “trust muscles.”
30
Life Organizing in the Moment in Action
It’s mid-morning, and several minor crises have already derailed you. Your plan for the day is in shambles, your to-do list feels like a boulder around your neck, and all you want to do is hide. You’re reaching for a Diet Coke in the hopes that it will give you the energy to decide which item on your list to tackle. Then you remember that there’s another way. You make the choice.
You feel your feet connecting with the ground beneath you. You take a deep breath and reach your arms overhead, exhaling with a huge sigh. You put your hand on your heart and recall feeling balanced and flowing, trusting the flow of life. Yu gently ask, “What choice feels the easiest in this moment?” You visualize yourself bringing this question into your heart, and take a breath or two to infuse it with flow and peace. Perhaps a brief image of your sister comes to mind. Or maybe you hear a refrain of an old song, and when you focus on it, you realize it reminds you of your sister. Or perhaps you remember the feeling of your sister hugging you. You call your sister, have a lovely chat, and when you get off the phone, you have new energy —enough to move you forward to the next task awaiting you. Do you begin to see to get the picture of how this approach
Aug/Sept 2011
flows with life? I’m not proposing you sell your worldly possessions and move to the woods to live in an unheated yurt. I’m not recom- mending you consult crystals or the I Ching before moving a muscle. What I am saying is that when you think you’re lost, overwhelmed, and without direc- tion, you do “know” what to do to restore your balance and your direction– but it’s a different kind of knowing, one you already pos- sess, and need only be reminded of how to access.
Jennifer Louden is the bestselling author of The Women’s Comfort Book and four other books selling over 765,000 copies worldwide. She has appeared on Oprah, is a columnist for Martha Stewart’s Body & Soul Maga- zine, and is releasing her Life Orga- nizing system through her newest book: The Life Organizer: A Woman’s Guide to a Mindful Year. You can share a cup of virtual tea with Jennifer at
www.jenniferlouden.com and www.
lifeorganizerbook.com.
Based on the book The Life Orga- nizer: A Woman’s Guide to a Mindful Year © 2006 by Jennifer Louden. Printed with permission of New World Library, Novato, CA. H www.
newworldlibrary.com or 800-972- 6657 ext. 52.
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