The more time I spend talking, writing, and thinking about Flow to Your Dream the more I realize how crucial the concept of lifeflow is. Lifeflow is to your life as workflow is to your work. If I remixed the definition of workflow for lifeflow it would look like this.

workflow | /ˈwərkflō/ | noun

the sequence of industrial, administrative, or other processes through which a piece of work passes from initiation to completion.

From Oxford

lifeflow | /līfflō/ |noun

the processes through which a life passes from initiation to completion of a dream.

These processes include every single aspect of your being which you have the power to change. Here are some examples:

• Your morning and evening routine
• Your daily habits for work, learning, exercise, relationships, and play
• Your diet
• How you respond to negative thoughts
• How you respond to emotions
• Your dream (goals) and how you refine it
• The tools and apps you use throughout the day
• Your organizational habits

Everything you have (your bank account, your material possessions, your relationships, etc.) and everything you experience (yesterday, today, and tomorrow) is a direct result of your historic lifeflow. If there’s something you want to change about your current situation odds are you’ll need to make adjustments to your lifeflow.

• Education to increase earning potential
• Making new habits or breaking old ones
• A change of diet
• Joining a gym
• Hiring a personal trainer
• Therapy
• Time set aside each day to hone your craft

Just like what you’re experiencing now is the collective result of your lifeflow over the past days, weeks, months, and years, what you experience in the future, a week, a month, a year, or a decade from now, will be a result of the changes you make to your lifeflow TODAY.

It’s important to remember that today isn’t just today. Today is tomorrow, the next day, the day after that, the following day, and all subsequent days. You have thousands of todays ahead of you!

The way you flow to your dream is by creating a lifeflow that automatically improves your lifeflow. It’s recursive. Once you make refining your lifeflow automatic life will gradually begin to feel effortless. This effortless feeling doesn’t arise because you don’t work hard. This effortless feeling arises for two reasons…

1. Hard work is ingrained into your lifeflow
2. Refining your lifeflow is a part of your lifeflow, you get better at getting better

I wasn’t planning on making this post personal and this is a story I’m certain I will share again in the future, but I’ll give you an example from my life about how hard work became effortless.

From Making the Bed to Running 3 Miles in the Mountains

Back in 2014 even the simplest things were hard work. I was living with my mom and grandma while recovering from a manic episode (I have bipolar 1). I’ve historically fallen into deep depression after being released from mental hospitals, and this was one of those times. At the time I wasn’t showering, shaving, brushing my teeth, exercising, or even making my bed.

I tried jump-starting my life several times with the, what I thought was, simple goal of making my bed every day but I always failed to make it a habit. What finally got some momentum was asking my brother to be an accountability partner. I started checking in with him each evening to let him know if I made my bed or not.

After going 50 days straight without missing a day, I added brushing my teeth, then I added showering, eventually I didn’t need my brother to check in with anymore. Then I added running, meditation, and practicing the taichi form.

Over time I refined my lifeflow and I refined my methods for refining my lifeflow. Fast-forward to today and I meditate, journal, write, and run 3 miles every day. I do these things effortlessly. 6 years ago making my bed was hard to do. Today running up a mountain is easy (to do).

Recounting this story just made me see the subtle difference between hard work and hard to do. Hard work becomes effortless because it’s easy for you to do. Making my bed was easy work but because of my state of mind it was hard to do. Running up mountains is hard work but because of my state of mind it’s easy to do.

Refining lifeflow trains our minds to make hard work easy to do. It makes hard work effortless. There’s a quote from a Greek poet which came to mind while writing this.

“We don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.”

Archilochus, Greek lyric poet, c. 680 – c. 645 BC

When the level of training you fall to is one where you’re always on the rise, completing your dreams become effortless and inevitable.