Going with the flow

How many times have you heard someone saying, " just go with the flow"? Have you ever wondered if this advice was valid or relevant? Did you ever think that when someone advised you to go with the flow they meant that surrender yourself to the situation? Well, Ikigai advises us just the same but the meaning of it is different.

When Ikigai tells us to go with the flow it clearly tells us the meaning of it. It tells us that we do not need to think about the past, we do not need to worry about the future. There is only present. We should live in the present instead of worrying about what had already happened or what may possibly happen. It asks us to embrace the present. By embracing the present we would be relieved from the stress of our past and worry of our future.

I felt this concept to be relevant. It did not ask me to surrender of myself but rather be mindful of what I am doing right now. It told me that I should focus on what I am doing right now so that I keep on improving myself and give my undivided attention to my work.

This understanding neatly guided me to another learning from Ikigai which advises us to have a clear objective and focus on it. We need to stay away from all distractions and focus on what we do. It tells us to avoid multitasking.

As someone who stays in Mumbai it is very easy to have distractions. Staying in a crowded and noisy area, distractions come uninvited. It could be the continuous honking in the traffic or the siren of ambulance. I know these distractions are completely out of my control. However there are certain distractions that I can completely control. One of them if the notifications. I try to keep minimal notifications for my phone as well as laptop. This helps me stay focused on the tasks at hand.

Again multi tasking is not something that I could easily get done. Right from the start of my career I had been constantly told that to be a better professional I need to multi task. I had been multitasking throughout my life. And it is difficult for me to give up on multitasking. But now I try to minimise my efforts at multitasking. I do not answer my emails while going through a report and responding to a direct message. I take my time for each individual activity. This way I feel I could do my work efficiently as well as I can dedicate my entire focus to the activity at hand.

Somewhere I believe that Ikigai and Atomic habits have an overlap. Which mainly deals with building up the ritual to promote living in the present to improve our daily activities. When I felt this overlap I realised that despite how many self help boss we read it is completely up to us to take the learnings to our day to day life. If we read and do not plan to implement anything then I feel we are wasting our time on the self help books. They will help only if we decide to implement even one percent of the learning from it.

I feel that I am actively taking the learnings from the self help books that I read and I can make a difference in my daily life. I can see that improvements are taking place in increments.

I hope these ideas help you to build your flow.