How can you create on your own behalf and find flow? Start with emotion.

In the practice of Flowdreaming, you focus all energy on the emotion you want to feel when you accomplish your goals — not the goals themselves. Emotion is a universal language, understood across cultures and time.

Similar to lucid dreaming, Flowdreaming is defined as: “The act of moving into a connected flow state by using my imagination and guided daydreaming to create an intense emotional pattern surrounding a desire.” The feeling — the emotion — is the important part.

Today, we’re recapping the topics of mindfulness and Flowdreaming covered at 1440 Multiversity in the Flow Life Program with Summer McStravick and Keith Macpherson

What is 1440 Multiversity?

1440 Multiversity is best described straight from its website:

1440 Multiversity is a place to experience time differently—exploring what matters to you, while surrounded by fresh air, delicious food, wellness classes, many ways to unwind, and opportunities to connect with yourself and others. Whether you come for a program with world-renowned faculty or spend a weekend on campus taking 1440 specialty classes, you can look forward to the perfect blend of learning, vacation, and space for reflection.

Named for the 1440 minutes in a day, 1440 is founded on the belief that each minute is a chance to connect with what truly matters—both within and around us.

What is Flow?

Summer describes flow as: “The idea that a frictionless forward motion exists in which the dominant energies are ease, movement, and grace.”

Flow is the net or ocean of energy that runs over, under, around, and through everything in our universe. It’s an energy of information — a collection of data about everything that is, was, or potentially may be — that has its own intrinsic awareness.

The key is directing your flow. Flow travels the path of least resistance, so embrace life when things feel right or at ease. To direct your flow, you have to start internally. Your flow will match your exterior state to your interior state.

Starting internally means ruminating on emotion, not things. Say you want to have a successful business. Rather than spending time on the numbers, you spend time on how having a successful company makes you feel.

Getting into pre-action — which we’ll cover later — flow responds to emotion as if you were to drop food coloring into clear water. What you feel, your flow becomes. If you feel joy, your flow radiates that joy all through it, and the physical things that manifest in your future must somehow align or support that joy.

No, flow won’t always be easy sunshine and smiles. Emotion is energy flowing through your body: if you don’t let it flow, then it creates a block. Sometimes you need the contrast of experiencing a block to know when you’re heading in the right direction. For example, if you were writing with white chalk on a white board, you’d never know it. It’s the contrast between the chalk and the blackboard that allows you to see.

It’s about exercising your mind and emotions just as you would exercise your physical body. Think about it as having one leg that is the emotional or non-physical part of you and another leg that is your physical aspects. To walk — and eventually run — you need to use both legs.

Once you do that, you’ll realize that everything is happening at the right time. Everything is at ease, and you’re experiencing flow.

Shifting From Reactive to Proactive

Now onto pre-action and pre-sponse. Summer defines the two as: "The state of feeling an emotion prior to having any reason to feel it as a means of showing my flow/future what I want to have or feel in my life." When shifting from reactive to proactive (presponding vs. responding) you are creating an emotional blueprint of your future.

Keith and Summer explain that everything begins as an inner dream. The question to ask yourself is "are your thoughts building or beating you up?" When you’re beating yourself up, that’s your inner saboteur: the voice that tells you that you shouldn’t take a risk.

Pre-action focuses on knowing your emotional endpoint — the particular emotions you expect to experience as a result of something happening. How you get to that emotional endpoint might be different than you imagined, but hey, if you’re feeling the emotion what’s the difference, really? However, pre-action works both positively and negatively. If you tell yourself that you’re not going to be able to do something, the world will give you more of it. Focus on how you want to feel, fix the inner thoughts, and allow the outside to align.

Don’t stress about what course of action is correct. Go with it knowing that you’ll get there. Part of knowing you’ll get there hinges on listening internally to what you truly want.

What may stop you from staying in flow are lack thoughts (default patterns that what you want is impossible or hard, or that the worst possible outcome is the most likely) and core limiting beliefs that you are not enough, unloveable, unworthy, alone, or a failure. To get past that, you have to undergo an internal excavation process. Start with what’s at risk. Are you thinking that what you want is impossible? Then move into where you feel that thought in your body. Think,"is it true?" Usually the answer is no. Then think, "what is true?" Where do you feel that new truth in your body? Focus on the emotion and where you feel it. Poof! now you have a new outlook on the current situation.

Life can only give a response if you take an action. If you don’t trust people, the universe, or yourself along the way of completing your goal, you’ll block yourself from getting there.

Take control and think of your inner power. “It’s me that makes me.” When you give your power to someone or something other than yourself, you’re going against the flow. You’re expecting something to happen out of the blue as a result of external factors and anticipating the outside to align with what’s inside, rather than fixing the inside and allowing the outside to align.

Helpful Exercises to Stay in Flow

One easy way to stay in flow is through mindfulness practices. One fun exercise we did at 1440 with Keith and Summer was the Kalana Hula. It’s a Hawaiian mindfulness practice used to make space and focus yourself. There’s only one video I’ve been able to find to demonstrate the Kalana Hula. The video is absolutely terrible quality, but still worth a watch.

Another way is through future visioning — something we do often at Room 214! Write down where you’ll be one year from now. How do you feel? What’s happened in the last year? Putting this vision out there has a certain power to it.

In the same vein as visioning, you can also make a “by this time next year” list. By this time next year, I’ll hire Room 214 to do customer insights and create a rock-solid strategy for my company. You know, goals like that.

To blow the ceiling off of your expectations, you can make a “what if” list. What if I take a year off of work and sail the world on a private yacht? What if Room 214 wins the ColoradoBiz Top Company Awards for Digital Marketing Services for the second year in a row?

And, if nothing else, think “this or better.” Take a series of steps towards a goal, and if it doesn’t work out, take another series. Always be taking action.