We spend our lives being taught to go after what we want at all costs. Bust down doors, beg and plead, and work hard to get everything you want in life. But the truth is, sometimes doing those things moves you further away from actually creating the life you want for yourself. So, what’s the alternative? Well, sometimes, you just gotta go with the flow. In this article, we’re going to share how to go with the flow when the options you want aren’t available, at least right now.
How to Go with the Flow When You Don’t Have Other Options
1. Let go of control
A true Stoic understands that you can’t control everything. Accepting your lot in life can be a hard feat for most people though. When we experience trauma or hardship, we more often than not want to fight against what it’s done to our lives, as it destroys us to our core. We stay unhappy and miserable post these difficult circumstances, stuck in a moment in time, unable to move forward. However, when this happens, we unfortunately don’t realize that we’re destroying more of our happiness across a longer duration. Letting go of pain isn’t easy and we’re not trying to downplay it here. Learning to let go of what you can’t control is a life lesson that will pay off with time. Building yourself anew and stronger will allow you to move past any hardship you’ve faced, instead of ruminating on the same moment for the rest of your life.
2. Take baby steps
We often want what we want at the exact moment we want it. However, most things in life take time. Meeting the man or woman of your dreams will come to you when you learn how to show love and kindness to the wrong people. Sometimes, you just need a bit more practice before coming across that one person you’ll live happily ever after with. Same with promotions at work. You’ve got to learn how to manage people before you get promoted into a role where that happens. Sometimes, the things you want will only come to you once you’ve taken the initiative to do those things automatically first. Then, once you’ve mastered it, those opportunities you’re looking for start to open up to you. So, if you can’t control something, go with the flow by taking those first few steps in the right direction.
3. Understand you’re not the only decision maker
Those who resist going with the flow fail to realize that you’re not the only decision maker out there. Throughout your life, you’ll have to allow other people to have a say in what you do and when. From whether or not you get promoted to the timeline of when you say I do, there are constantly other people around you who will have a say in how things flow in your life. You can’t force people to do what you want as there’s often other stakeholders and considerations before deciding on something. You need to learn how to be flexible with how things work in life. Just as people will add resistance in your life, there’ll be times you tell people to hold their horses too. Understanding this balance is crucial.
4. Meditate
The meditation app Declutter The Mind allows you to take some time to meditate each day with new meditations every day. When you practice meditation, you learn to regain control over your mind instead of getting lost in endless thoughts about things that don’t serve you happiness and inner peace. When you’re struggling to go with the flow, meditating can help you manage your thoughts instead of obsessing and ruminating over them. You can find balance in life with a daily meditation practice. If you want to avoid having negative thoughts, meditation will help change your relationship with them. After all, if you’re unhappy with how things are going, it’s probably because you’re overthinking too much.
5. Watch Forrest Gump
When you find it hard to go with the flow or are resisting the lot you’ve been dealt, it’s movie time. Watch Forrest Gump, which is a movie comparing Forrest Gump (someone who goes with the flow) against people who don’t. In the movie, there are two characters who go through trauma and resist what’s happened to them. One goes down a path of drugs, the other person becomes miserable to be around. However, the movie isn’t dismal. Even those who experienced traumatic events in the film eventually find their happily ever after by coming to terms with what’s happened to them. The movie showcases their journey from being stuck in their trauma to learning how to accept it. If you find yourself struggling to go with the flow, this movie will inspire you to realize that sometimes going with the flow brings you so many great things in life.
6. Don’t be stuck in a story
We all have a story we tell ourselves about how things actually are. However, it’s important to realize that the parts of your story don’t automatically guarantee a specific outcome. As the author of your life, you can change the ending in a myriad of ways. You can give yourself a happily ever after ending or a sad ending. You can be the victim of your circumstances or you can use your suffering to pivot in a whole new direction. Understand that you’re not stuck in a story, you can change the direction you take your life in at any given moment for better or worse.
7. Avoid setting timelines
One of the best practices you’ll want to follow as you learn how to go with the flow is to avoid setting timelines on things. They say when goal setting having a timeline to follow can ensure you actually achieve a goal. And if the goal is something within your control and no other people are involved, then by all means set a timeline. Where things get tricky is when you create a timeline and other people are involved. You can’t align yourself to other people’s schedules. When there’s other stakeholders, you need to understand that timelines won’t always work out as planned. And when you don’t meet your goal by your timeline, you might do something irrational that actually moves that timeline even further away from you. Having flexibility in your timeline will help you inch closer to what you want, though it may seem counterintuitive.
8. Show yourself kindness
We all go through messy and complicated things multiple times in our lives. You can beat yourself up for all the bad decisions you and other people have made or you can accept that part of being human is being flawed. It’s so important for your sanity to show yourself kindness, even when you make a disastrous mistake that hurts you for years to come. If you had known better you wouldn’t have done that but you only learn things by making the mistake in the first place. Don’t spend a lifetime beating up your younger self for the pain you’ve caused. Learn the lesson, show yourself empathy, and move forward. Be kind to your mind.
9. Remember you’re not limited to one path
We often think of our path as a straight line, but no one ever is. And if it were just a straight line forward, most of us would find life to be a bore. Those curves and turns lead you to your destination. And in life, you can choose from many forks in the road. You have the freedom of choice at every turn. You can choose romantic partners, career paths, how you spend your money, how much you love or hate people, and more. Every decision you make can lead you down a whole new path with different options available to you.
10. Enjoy the journey even if there’s roadblocks along the way
One of the challenges of going with the flow is that sometimes we have no choice but to flow in a different direction due to unexpected roadblocks. When you’re shut out of certain options, it’s important to plan ahead so that you can jump over roadblocks, climb your way over them, or lean in another direction altogether. Roadblocks don’t mean you’ll never get what you want. It just means that the option you want isn’t available to you in the way you planned. Some people will have roadblocks that others get an easy path for. No two people walk the same path in life. But those roadblocks doesn’t mean that your life isn’t worthwhile, you can find meaning in so many other ways.
11. Learn to walk into open doors
How many times have you asked someone to let you into their world and been shut out? The longer you’ve lived, the odds are that the higher the number of times this has happened to you. As you learn how to go with the flow, the key is to walk through the open doors instead of trying to break down the locked doors. Those doors aren’t for you. The open doors into people’s lives can be enriching and meaningful. The open doors can teach you valuable lessons about love and kindness. Learn to see the value in what options are available to you in relationships.
12. Don’t compare yourself to others
No two people will have the same life path, no matter how similar they are. People’s life experiences vary drastically as do their personalities and talents. Don’t compare yourself to others because it’ll only make you unhappy or grow your ego. Ultimately, when you see someone accomplishing something that you haven’t, you’re not considering all the unseen work they’ve done in the background. Don’t look at someone’s highlight reel when you’ve never taken the first step. The two of you aren’t comparable. And by having the grass is always greener on the other side syndrome, you never work towards watering your own grass. If you want something in life, put yourself in a position to inch closer to it rather than daydreaming about it.
13. Recognize that the path you want could be bad for you
Sometimes, learning how to go with the flow is a blessing in disguise. You never know how bad the path you wanted could turn out. Maybe a job promotion would’ve led to a layoff in six months or a romantic relationship would’ve ended in divorce if you stayed together. Be willing to go with the flow because sometimes those things you want so badly for yourself aren’t what’s best for you in your life. There can be a hint of magic in the air guiding you closer to something you actually want. Sometimes, those hard life moments set you up for a better path in the future. A little rough messiness becomes a defining moment that forces you to choose a better road for yourself.
14. Sometimes the more scenic route is longer
One of the blessings of going with the flow is that sometimes you experience a more eventful life. The path forward as you march on towards your goals might take longer than someone else’s and that’s okay. The scenic route often is a longer road. Think of yourself driving on the highway to your destination, getting stuck in traffic, and honking the whole way through. You reach your destination faster but you’ve spent your whole time agitated. Whereas when you drive on country roads to your destination you’re in awe of all the views, how sunny the skies are, the cows in the fields, and you just breeze along. Life can be like that too sometimes. Enjoy the journey.
15. It’s okay to grieve and seek support
While we shared many of the benefits that going with the flow offers, we understand that some life events can knock you down to rock bottom. It’s okay if you need time to grieve a loss, failure, or trauma. You can find a therapist who will help you on your journey. You don’t need to figure out how to go with the flow the very second something unexpected happens. Not everyone learns it that fast anyways. If you need time to feel the anguish or pain of a setback, grieve as you need. Just know that when you’re ready to move on, that option is available to you, no matter how stuck you think you are.
Conclusion
Learning to go with the flow is a very valuable skill to master in life. It can take years of everything going wrong to learn how to do it. But once it’s learned, you’ll realize how some opportunities in life just fall in your lap when you’re not fighting so hard. Sometimes, we push ourselves away from our goals by being too stuck on a path. But when we surrender to the flow of life, we finally get the life we’ve always dreamed of for ourselves.
