I’ll be doing recaps every 12 days for this 108 and this is the first one! The idea originally came from reviewing the last 12 days of my handwritten journal to make it easier to reflect during the breaks. Since I’m building in public I figured I could do a public one as well.

Why Flowism (re)born? Flowism is an idea I came up with myself but it’s a multiple discovery. The earliest reference to Flowism as a religion or a philosophy online is from a 2005 entry on Urban Dictionary. After that it’s mentioned here and there but in 2015 it popped up in a bunch of different places. For me the idea started back in the early 2000s when I got my hands on a copy of my taichi teacher’s book “Flowing the Tai Chi Way”. Then in 2013 I came up with “Flow to Your Dream”, a philosophy for life and a personal development system (still in the works!) I didn’t mention Flowism online until March of 2020. It wasn’t until this last 12-day period that I really started taking Flowism seriously. You’ll read about that more below and there will definitely be more posts about it in the future.

The Embedded Entrepreneur

I started working through the Embedded Entrepreneur focused on creating something for “Flow to Your Dream”, the personal development system and life philosophy I’m working on. The book has been extremely actionable. I’ve gone through the two chapters on Audience Discovery and Audience Exploration and stopped there because now I’m discovering and exploring. I’m doing the majority of my discovery and exploration on Reddit right now. Once I pinpoint who I want to focus on I’ll expand my exploration into all of the different places on the web he talks about. Reddit has been an awesome resource for this so far.

Flowism

The time I’ve spent doing audience discovery and exploration led to me getting really focused on creating Flowism. It’s something that’s been in my mind for years and now I feel comfortable sharing it publicly. I’ve always assumed that I couldn’t have been the only person that had the idea to create a philosophy or a religion called Flowism and, I’m not, but there hasn’t been much discussion about it online. If you were to do a Google search for Flowism today you wouldn’t even get the full ten pages of results! It only goes up to seven pages right now (I tweeted about that).

Something I did was scour the web looking for any mention of Flowism. I have a document with everyone I found and I plan on reaching out to all of those people to ask them what Flowism means to them. I want to add their responses to version 1.0 of the book on Flowism.

Since I was doing my research on Reddit I decided to see what was at the Flowism subreddit (a subreddit is a discussion board focused on a topic). What I found was an empty page with a single post about Flowism being the next great political movement. After some clicking around I discovered that there was no moderator for the subreddit. There was just a link to request to become the moderator. I submitted a request and it was automatically granted. Now I’m the moderator of r/Flowism.

I’m planning on building this new movement in public via that subreddit along with posts here and on Twitter. There’s a pinned post where I’ll be sharing the progress I make in coming up with a good definition for Flowism. (“Let’s Define Flowism”)

Meditation

I’ve been meditating for an hour and 8 minutes every day since the start of the 108. In the beginning I would be pretty restless and check the clock once or twice per session. Now, less than two weeks later, the hour and eight minutes fly by pretty quickly (not that it should). I’ve also been having some interesting experiences.

One of the experiences I laid out in an Instagram post. It was basically this flow of thoughts that led me to a place where I asked myself the question “Is there a God?” and answered it with something like “There is a primal spirit and original consciousness that is labeled in different ways by different cultures and religions.” That response zapped me into feeling like I was that. After a few moments I remembered that I was meditating and brought my focus back to the breath. The meditation that I’m doing isn’t looking for those kinds of experiences. The opposite actually, but they happen from the natural paths that thoughts take when focus is lost. I’m following the guidance of the Thomas Cleary translation of “The Secret of the Golden Flower”.

Posts and Comments on Reddit

I’ve curated some of my posts and comments on Reddit. I’m creating a title for them that could work as prompts for blog posts or videos in the future. Not sure if this is a one time thing or if I’ll keep it up for the 108 days. We’ll see!

Taoism

• What Got You into Taoism? [OP]
• Don’t Be a Keyboard Taoist [OP]
• Yuanfen: Taoist Karma
• Favorite Beginner Books on Taoism
• The Tao of Physics
• Religious Taoism and LARPing
• How to Find a Taoist Teacher
• The Etymology of Zen
• Taoism and the Importance of Being a Good Person
• The Goals of a Taoist and How to Practice
• How I Connected Flowism and Taoism
• Taoist Dress Code
• Taoism is a Good Foundation for a “Chill” Religion or Philosophy
• It Takes a Lot of Effort to Achieve Effortlessness
• Using the Future to Stay in the Present
• Maslow’s Pyramid isn’t right for Taoism and it’s Far from Perfect
• How Do Taoists Use Social Media

Personal Development

• You Should Do New Year’s Resolutions More Than Once a Year
• Do One Small Thing Every Day to Battle Depression
• Using Tiny Habits When You Don’t Have a Lot of Time or Energy
• How to Exercise When You Don’t Have Time to Exercise:

Mental Health

• How to Handle a Bipolar Family Member Who Might be a Danger to Themself or Others