As I’ve written several times in the past few months, I’ve been focusing more on tending my family and my self than on my businesses. I have found in the past few years that such a slowing down and an inward focus is normal for me in the winter. Sometimes the winter is a time of planning for me; at other times, it is simply a resting time after an active or stressful spring and summer. This year, as so often happens when I feel the spring energies rising, however, I find myself getting a bit restless, a bit bored of sitting around and “doing nothing.”[1]

Going with the Flow

For months, I have been content to simply be in the moment and live my life, taking each moment as it comes. During that time, I have been doing the work—and make no mistake, it is work, though of the mental, emotional, and psychological variety instead of the physical business that our society prizes so highly—of adjusting to aspects of my life that I have little to no control over. I think of this as a kind of survival mechanism, this slowing down and ceasing plan-making, when there is a lot going on that you simply can’t control, when you just tuck in and go with the flow.

When we are trying to find balance between being and doing, it can be difficult to know when to start moving and acting on our own again, when to start making plans. When to be a little more yang and a little less yin. When we are in tune with our intuition, it can be a little easier to recognize but can still feel daunting.

After months of having no idea how and when and where to move forward with various aspects of my life, I one day found myself emerging from an illness-induced mental and physical reboot with the barest inkling and glimmer of a plan. Glimmers and inklings hadn’t even been making the tiniest of “blip” appearances on my radar for a long time.

Time to Move Forward!?

On that morning, with a tiny glimmer in my mind, I took the opportunity to ask my guides for some advice on the best way for me to proceed that day, over the next week, over the next month, and over the longer term. For months—maybe even a year—the response to questions similar to this had been largely along the lines of “Hold steady; this is a time of rest and recuperation. Things will get busy, but now is not the time.” On that day near the end of February, though, the suggestions were far more “actionable,” and when I asked if there was anything else I should know at this time, the response was far more elaborate.

The response begins specific to me and references my own recent journey, but I’m sharing because I know from the interactions I’ve been having this winter that I’m not the only one who’s been feeling like I’m in a holding pattern, unsure how to proceed.

If you’ve found your way to this post, the message, at least in part, is also for you:

Do the best you can with the energy levels you have. Things will get better for you energetically. Remember you are susceptible to the things you can control but also to the wider energies of the world. Though you live apart, your nature is such that you are energetically connected to all, no matter how you shield yourself. Take care of yourself in the ways that you have been doing so all year [2021]. Try not to get discouraged when you seem to not be moving forward. Worthwhile journeys are rarely straightforward. Remember that when you see a road drawn on a map, it may look straight on the large scale, but if you look at it on a small scale, you will often see many twists and turns in it.

We have urged you often, especially recently, to go with the flow rather than trying to forge ahead, and now we urge you to consider the river. Again, see it look fairly straight on a map at large scale, but remember it loops back on itself, wends, winds, sometimes moving sluggishly, sometimes rushing. Your life is no different. The water of the river takes the path of least resistance and follows the well-worn path normally, but it sometimes is pushed or surged forward quickly because of external factors (high rainfall or snowmelt and spring thaw, for example). Strive for the river’s approach in your own life: move in the channel you are in, be watchful for new paths to take, and when situations in your life raise you up, move you faster, and seem out of your control, use your higher vantage point to watch for those opportunities where you can chart a new course and expand even further.

Does This Advice Help?

I’ve been following this advice—to the best of my ability, anyway—over the past few days and am in a better state emotionally and mentally. As is so often the case for me, once I relaxed into the flow—instead of resisting it because “this isn’t how I wanted it to be!”—and followed that advice, I received even more helpful advice: at any moment when I feel stymied, stuck, confused, overwhelmed, or even bored, I am to ask myself—and act on the response!—“What can I do right now to make my life better?”

Once I asked myself that question and actually stayed open to whatever response came to me—you know, rather than discounting it automatically and saying, “That’s stupid! I can’t do that right now!”—everything started moving again, after feeling stagnant for so long.

So I’m doing my best now to keep flowing like the river and asking myself in each moment what I can do right then to make my life better. Will you join me in the river?

Note

Of course, engaging in mental and physical self-care is hardly easy or inactive, as anyone who engages in it knows, but I still find myself struggling to overrule with the internalized cultural programming that tells me differently, that I should work—usually for someone else—then take care of my home and family, and then see to my own needs.

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