“Our job as professionals is to show up and do the work. Not simply respond to incoming or do the chores, but to create and innovate. And yet, some days feel more conducive than others. There are moments when it simply flows. When the surf’s up, cancel everything else. Don’t waste it. Postpone the dentist, outsource the grocery shopping and leave your email for now. Make hay.”
Seth Godin
“Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can’t go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.”
Margaret Atwood
“If we want and need desperately to sleep, we are less likely to fall asleep. If we absolutely must give the best talk possible at some conference, we become hyper-anxious about the result, and the performance suffers. If we desperately need to find an intimate partner or make friends, we are more likely to push them away. If instead we relax and focus on other things, we are more likely to fall asleep or give a great talk or charm people. The most pleasurable things in life occur as a result of something not directly intended and expected.”
Robert Greene, The Daily Laws (Page 19)
“In yoga, the transitions between postures are a measure of grace as much as the postures themselves. I find myself applying this physical experience in minute ways in the more cerebral course of my working days.”
Matthew Stanford, via Becoming Wise (Page 72)
“Oddly, counterintuitively, in our culture of individualism and self-centered valour, it is by surrendering that we can begin to succeed. It is by ‘admitting that we have no power’ that we can begin the process of accessing all the power we will ever need.”
Russell Brand, Recovery (Page 27)
“I have made a great discovery. I no longer believe in anything… It is not the object that matters to me but what is between them: it is this ‘in-between’ that is the real subject of my pictures. When one reaches this state of harmony between things and one’s self, one reaches… a state of perfect freedom and peace—which makes everything possible and right. Life then becomes perpetual revelation.”
George Braque, Sunbeams (Page 24)
“Sophisticated foods are bittersweet (wine, beer, coffee, chocolate). Addictive relationships are cooperative and competitive. Work becomes flow at the limits of ability. The flavor of life is on the edge.”
Naval Ravikant, Medium
“All my attempts to control things should be abandoned, and I should just accept the ever changing, ever flowing nature of my life as a river. It turns out that this model can bring me peace no matter where I am, no matter what’s happening. If plans get disrupted, my day gets interrupted by a sudden crisis, information starts coming at me from everywhere, the pace of events starts quickening… I just picture myself as a river, with all of this stuff flowing through me. I don’t try to hold it, control it, freeze it, but I embrace the flow. I smile, I breathe, and I focus on one thing. Then the next. Not holding tightly to any of them, or wanting the river to be any certain way.” ~ Leo Babauta, Essential Zen Habits (Page 120)
“Things flow to you when you do your part first.” ~ Tony Robbins, Money: Master the Game