As I have mentioned before, flow also gives you the confidence to, well, follow your flow. When I was growing up I thought I had to please everyone and that everyone had to like me. It was very frustrating to meet people that didn’t get along with me — I thought I was the problem.
Over the years I learned that not everyone was going to get along with me and, depending on the circumstance, maybe no one would get along with me — mainly based on my views.
What I also found along the way was the people’s views were often etched in stone and they would make great pronouncements (in reality, condemnations) about how others should live based on their beliefs.
I was on a religious discussion board once and the subject of vegetarians came up. One poster repeatedly stated that the Bible clearly said vegetarians were the subjects of the devil and that only meat eaters would get into heaven. On the opposite end of the spectrum, a friend of mine knew this woman who was a diehard vegan (no meat and no dairy). She was so diehard she claimed that the Bible clearly stated humans should not consume honey because it was enslaving the bees.
Okay, how does this relate to flow? As a friend of mine once said, flow isn’t always easy and can, in fact, be a burden in society. When friends, family, and society make proclamations that are “etched in stone” it can create severe blockages for you. Take the common example of West Side Story. Tony’s flow was to fall in love with a person of a different ethnicity, as was Maria’s. But friends, family, and society said the opposite. I actually knew someone like this. When I met him he was dating a filipino woman and ultimately ended up marrying a second generation Mexican (he was white). Yet he took me aside one day and told me he was concerned that he wasn’t attracted to white women, and that was a bad thing!
The point is to always know your flow and don’t let external influences create any blockages, no matter how “this is the way things are” the argument is.