All I Ever Wanted Is To Flow!

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All I ever wanted is to flow. Flow with my thoughts, flow with my emotions, flow with my work. I wanted to enjoy doing stuff, live and process emotions rather than spending time in planning, scheduling, etc.

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I’ve had a tough time in trying to achieve this mindset and I haven’t reached even 10% of where I wish to be. I took some steps so that I could achieve what I wished for and there’s been some progress. The 2nd phase of lockdown-like restrictions has had a great deal of impact on me. As soon as the 1st phase of lockdown was relaxed I started with an offline internship in a full-time role. It occupied more than ⅔ rds of my day. I was busy to my teeth. I was loving everything that was happening around me. I had 5 months of intense learning and life-changing experiences but suddenly the 2nd wave hit, cases rose quickly and we were instructed to shift to an online role for our last month. It was a sudden change in my routine. I was slowly getting used to my offline role and then suddenly I was back home.

I’m having a tough time coping up with this sudden change of routines. I am writing this in the present tense because I still do have a tough time. To add to this, there were a lot of restrictions in place which had to be followed which acted as a twist to an already tough tale. I spent days cursing myself, questioning myself, scheduling tasks but couldn’t even start them let go of even completing them.

I decided to do something about this. I started to notice the pattern of what was happening to me, what happened and why did it happen, what were my afterthoughts, was I being too hard on myself, do I need to do a reality check, and so on. I started to get some insights and over a period of time, after refining, I had 3 conclusive insights. I feel that these 3 insights have the power to change my world upside down. I’ve already started implementing those and I can already see changes which I am very happy and proud of!

The 3 insights are as follows – 

• Pleasing Attitude – I come from a business family. We meet loads of people every day and that takes most of our time of the day. The same did come into my genes. I was always fascinated with the thought of knowing new people, interacting with them, forming a connection, and learning from them. I loved connecting with people from diverse backgrounds. A mistake I made was that in the quest for connections, I had changed myself from relating to people to just pleasing them. I couldn’t create a boundary between the two. It was drowning. I was losing my uniqueness but now I know the problem and pretty sure what the solution is.
• Perfectionism – I’ve always wished that whatever I did, I put in my 100% and achieve the best possible result. But in the quest to do so, I got into the habit of having everything in perfect order to do so. Rather than helping me achieve the best possible result, it has made me less and less efficient. I started journaling a few months back. I did it religiously for 4 months straight but then some cracks started to appear. I kept on journaling but not consistently just because on some days I felt that the environment is not conducive, I am not in the right frame of mind, I am tired and done for the day, and many more reasons.
•  Trying to be different – Right from childhood what I’ve seen and consumed is that people appreciate those who they think are different. They are different from the world, they have the power to change the world, they stand out with their opinions, they have the power to challenge the social stigma. Unknowingly, I got into this. This went so deep into me that there came a point where I would suppress my opinion just in order to be different. I had crossed the boundary where rather this being a good thing and helping me put out a real and unique personality of mine it instead started to take my uniqueness away. 

The 4th insight that I got was when I was writing this blog. I’ve been doing self-reflection for a while now just to be aware of my emotions and process them in the best possible fashion. What I did not realize was me being in the process of self-doubting. I used to see everything I did from the perspective of whether my actions were right or wrong. I started questioning my actions and my inactions and by the time I knew, I had started questioning every small thing. I even started to question the moves of the people around me.

It was a change of routines that led me to go through those stressful times but it also acted as a blessing. It made me realize my triggers, helped me understand my thought patterns, and gave me a roadmap to what I should not do. I would have never realized this if there weren’t a sudden change of routines. I’m glad that I went through this because it certainly has made me stronger and has helped identify my flaws.  

[blockquote text=”Everything is temporary : Emotions, thoughts, people and recovery. Do not become attached, just flow with it.” text_color=”” width=”” line_height=”undefined” background_color=”” border_color=”” show_quote_icon=”yes” quote_icon_color=”#4285F4″]

– The Mind Journal

I do know that now I am one step closer to what I wished for, which is to flow. These insights and the action points from these insights are going to make me better equipped to deal with my thoughts, my emotions, and everything that I do and will help me in my journey to FLOW!