I was reading an article on Noam Chomsky (he’s a radical thinker shunned by the right AND the left) and he was saying how he listens to talk radio to hear the callers, not the hosts. The reason is that many people calling into the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck are consistently saying they did ‘everything right’ and yet their lives are awful.
In other words, they did everything SOMEONE ELSE told them to do in order to be successful. Hey, I’ve been there. In 2001 I suffered the greatest financial loss of my life, mainly thanks to the dot com bust. Yet I did exactly (and I mean exactly) what everyone had told me to do down to the letter – I could not fail. Yet I did.
The component that’s missing with both these callers and my old self is flow. Now, this is not a criticism. We were all taught, probably from birth, to rely on others to tell us how to succeed. While it’s good to get input, the reality is everyone is unique and therefore has unique flow. This means when you rely on others to tell you your flow (what you should be doing to succeed) it creates flow blockages. And that’s where a lot of Americans are right now.
The most dramatic (and obvious) example of this is smoking. In the good ole days cigarette companies were allowed to say and do anything they wanted. I Love Lucy was sponsored by Philip Morris, and there were even televisions commercials featuring doctors telling people how safe cigarettes were.
Hell, even Fred Flintstone, a cartoon character, was promoting tobacco as being a great American thing to do.
But everyone knew the truth. You can even see it in old movies where the nanny/grandmother tells people not to smoke around the new baby. This makes no sense if cigarettes were so safe. Of course, millions of people are paying the price for not listening to their flow and listening to outside sources like the tobacco companies. Just like today, millions are paying for their listening to outside forces that may or may not have had their best interests at heart.
When you find your flow you’re able to easily discriminate between those things that will help you succeed and those things that are ultimately blockages that impede your success.