A few weeks ago I decided to seriously take on the task of writing a book. Last week I decided I would publish a blog post once a week for 108 weeks connected to the writing I’m doing for the book. This forces me to complete ideas I come up with while writing during the week.

I’m going to give you an eagle eye view of the philosophy behind the book. The book will be titled “Flow to Your Dream”. The subtitle “A manual for living” is currently bouncing around in my head. My goal with writing the book is to create a no nonsense guide for living a life based on Taoist principles.

Flow to Your Dream

When fully broken down, the phrase “flow to your dream” completely embodies the entire philosophy.

Your Flow

There are three components to your flow.

1. Being able to “go with the flow” and work with the flow of life in different ways
2. The “flow state” (being in the zone)
3. “Life flow” which is workflow (processes, systems, tools, routines, etc.) applied to living

There is a lot of work that needs to be done to master these three domains of your flow. Deep emotional work, experiments to run, ideas to absorb, the list goes on and on. Mastering these isn’t something that can be done overnight or during a one week seminar. Your flow is something you continually refine over the course of your life.

Your Dream

There’s nothing fancy about your dream. Your dream is your collection of goals, wants, dreams, and desires.

These could be:

• short-term goals like cleaning your room
• mid-term goals like losing 10 pounds
• long-term goals like building a profitable business
• super long-term goals that might not be completed in your lifetime like fully colonizing Mars

The crucial part of your dream is making sure it’s in alignment with… “you”. Not the you your parents, your friends, or society wants to be. The you YOU want to be. Just like mastering your flow takes time, refining yourself and your dream takes time. As you unpack the layers of yourself, overcome personal trauma, and rediscover parts of yourself you may have forgotten about, the person you are, and want to be, will change and your dream will change with it.

Your Dream Informs Your Flow

This is going to sound kindergarten simple but…

There are things you need to do to get what you want.

I’m going to say it again…

There are things you need to do to get what you want.

When you have clarity about your dream you’ll have clarity about the things you need to do. When you have clarity about the things you need to do you’ll have clarity about the adjustments you need to make to your “life flow”.

The secret to making changes to your life flow is that you can’t change too many things at once. Often times what you thought was a simple change is really hard to do.

I’ll get into how to make these changes later, but what’s important to know here is that your dream will tell your flow what it needs to be.

Your Dream Becomes Your Flow, Your Flow Becomes Your Dream

This is the final form of the philosophy. Mastering the “life flow” of refining your Self, your dream, and your flow becomes your dream. At this stage you’re wielding two dreams simultaneously. You have your dream in the future which is informing your flow and the dream of becoming a master of flow.

“Live in the moment” is a statement that sounds good on paper, but lacks substance. “Flow to your dream” is a blueprint for living in the moment. Instead of making “living in the moment” the goal you make “effortlessly moving towards your goals” the goal. It’s a secret backdoor entrance to living in the moment.

If you want to master the art of effortlessly achieving big goals while “living in the moment” you want to master the art of flowing to your dream. There is a crucial difference between having big goals in consumerist thinking and having big goals Flow to Your Dream thinking.

Consumerist thinking sees your dream as something that will make you happier when you have or experience it which makes you sadder each day without it.

Flow to Your Dream thinking sees your dream as a tool to enhance the life you’re living NOW. Your dream is no longer something you’re waiting to experience to be happier. Your dream helps makes you happier TODAY.

As your dream and your flow become more and more aligned you become happier and happier until you realize…

Every day that you’re flowing to your dream is a day that you’re living your dream.

Throughout the process you’ll also learn the subtle difference between chasing happiness and cultivating contentment. Happiness is fleeting, contentment is forever.