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Intelligence: Flow

personal development

With truth, love, and power on your side, you work with the natural flow of life instead of struggling against it. This doesn’t mean that life becomes effortless. It means that your efforts are well positioned to produce the desired results. First, your goal are rooted in truth, so they’re wisely set. Second, you maintain loving connections to keep you motivated. And third, your actions are focused and productive.

Flow isn’t a passive state. It doesn’t mean letting go and simply allowing your life to happen to you, as if you’re gently floating down a stream being pulled along by the current. That isn’t intelligent behavior. If you live like that, you’ll eventually get washed out to sea. Animals in nature stay busy when necessary; otherwise they die. Your own cells also work hard to keep you alive; they remain active even while you sleep. Flow is a state of action.

You aren’t here to live in denial of your desires, to settle for an easy life devoid of purpose and conviction. The state of flow results from conscious thought and action in the direction of your dreams. Learn to satisfy your desires and fulfill your dreams instead of pretending they don’t matter to you.

Truth, love, and power are immensely practical principles. When applied diligently, they yield tangible results. These are the same principles that inspire all meaningful human accomplishment. Consider the first time men landed on the moon. The necessary knowledge and engineering was grounded in scientific truth. The people involved were deeply passionate about their work; and focused, disciplined action was required to make the mission a success. If even one of these principles was absent, the mission could not have succeeded. Consider any serious human achievement, including your own, and you’ll see truth, love, and power staring back at you.

When you maintain the state of flow—real flow that is, not the fairy-tale version—it will feel as if there’s powerful energy working through you, lovingly supporting you, and driving you onward. You know without a doubt that you’re on the right track as you make progress toward something meaningful and important. What inspires you most isn’t the achievement of any particular goal; it’s the endless flow of creative self-expression. You fall in love with the journey itself.

A feeling of peaceful centeredness is a natural by-product of intelligent living. This doesn’t mean you stop experiencing negative emotions; instead, it means that deep down, you know you’re doing the best you can. Knowing you’re on the right path will reduce your feelings of doubt, worry, and stress; and a deep sense of inner peace will arise in their place.

It’s comforting to know that truth, love, a power are the only guiding principles you really need. You don’t need to live by a complicated set of rules, laws, or values. Embracing these principles can greatly simplify your life by helping you shed the conditioning forces that have shaped your life in the past but that no longer serve you today. In order to make intelligent decisions, you need only steer yourself in the direction of truth, love, and power. The better your alignment, the more intelligent you become, and the more inner and outer peace you experience.

Peace arises naturally from the principle-centered path. You don’t need to achieve any specific external results to be at peace; you just need to be pointed in the right direction. Picture yourself driving home in your car. You’ve driven home many times before, and there’s a certain inevitability about the process. You know that if you just keep heading in the right direction and making the correct turns, you’ll eventually reach your destination. A principle-centered life produces similar results. You know in advance that reaching your goals is basically a done deal. And because of this, it becomes more important that you enjoy the journey instead of obsessing over the end of result.

* Source: Personal Development for Smart People by Steve Pavlina

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