How I Got a Free First Class Flight, the Best Vacation of My Life, Finally Started Writing My Book, and Experienced Utter Bliss!

I shared in my last post that I was writing it on my flight home from Cancun, Mexico. What I didn’t share was that I wrote it from my seat in First Class, which I had gotten free simply by asking and allowing.

Let me explain. I believe in the power of the Law of Attraction. Not because one can think a thing and then it appears, or that if I tell myself something enough that it will come true. But rather that I can produce a frame of reference, a way for seeing the world, where at a gut instinctual level, I have learned that I get what I attract and am responsible for everything in my life – if not the event, then my reaction to and perception of it.

I’ve used the Law of Attraction in serious ways to build my business and attract healing for my grief. I’ve also used it in playful ways to make a left turn when the traffic onslaught is unending or to rent my choice movie when it’s been rented clean out for days on end.

And I found, while vacationing in Cancun, that there is an entirely higher level to the process that I “tripped into.” For lack of a better term, I’ll call it Flow.

In Optimal Experience: Psychological Studies of Flow in Consciousness, the authors measure human effectiveness in life and business and consider the highest end of the spectrum FLOW while naming other areas of the spectrum, including “Apathy,” “Boredom,” “Arousal,” “Relaxation,” and more.

To find where you are on their spectrum, you measure your Challenges against your Skills. Challenge is measured on the vertical axis with Skills measured on the horizontal, both from low to high.

If you measure high on both challenges and skills, you find yourself in Flow, which is the most effective position to be in. If you measure low on both, you’re in Apathy. High in challenges brings you to Anxiety if you are low on skill, and being high in skill brings you to relaxation if you are low on challenges.

But how do we define what being in Flow looks like?

For me being in flow is when I feel most magnetized towards my desires, and most alive. Life holds a certain verve and electricity and I pay attention more. Because I pay attention more, I see more signs and synchronicities. I hear my intuition better and act immediately rather than overthink things.

Because of this my decisions are easier, simpler, and I act often on intuition. You would think this would land me in more mistakes, challenges, or hardships, but the opposite seems to consistently occur: I randomly meet the people I need to for a certain goal, almost as soon as it enters my thought process. I have a cancelled flight only to find out that I am then upgraded to first class for the first leg of my two-flight trip. Then I find a kind service rep named Keith checking us in at the gate who decides to again upgrade us for free to first class for the second leg of our trip.

All without me having to force or calculate for these things to occur.

How Do We Trip Into Flow?

This phrase popped into my head randomly about five days into my trip. I instantly fell in love with it. During this vacation, I felt as though I tripped randomly into this breathtaking, euphoric flow. I also knew that a lot of it had to do with stepping out of my daily life and taking a trip – an adventure.

So how can we plan to trip into flow? How can we allow and attract it?

• Step out of your comfort zone. Allow yourself to be uncomfortable and vulnerable. When I really started to experience flow during my vacation it was after a friend (out of love) cornered me into sharing the most painful experience of my life in front of two men that I had felt very threatened by previously. It was the most terrifying experience in my recent life and I was very upset at first that it even happened.Yet, the next morning, I was so grateful because it broke me open and allowed me to receive the kindness and support of these men I had previously been scared of.
• Add adventure into every day. Have lunch at a different place each day, or explore a different street or area of your city or town each day. Visit a different coffee shop to relax and do some reading or work. Just be sure to leap out of your routine each day. This seems to immediately put me in flow.I particularly love taking myself on a type of scavenger hunt where I have no idea what I’m scavenging for. I’ll simply take the first hit I get on a location or direction. I start to walk or drive. Then as soon as I get a hit to go left, I go left. If another location pops in my head, I go there. I stay aware. I pay attention to snippets of conversation or song that I hear, how I feel, and what I’m experiencing.I find very quickly I’ll come upon a random art show, or a live flamenco performance, or an awesome unadvertised shoe sale when I practice random acts of adventure. Give it a whirl!
• Create a mantra or ritual to call the space of flow into your life. I learned this from one of our speakers in Cancun last week. He told me to take a deep breath from the tips of my toes up to the crown of my head. As I exhaled, he had me say a word that resonated with my experience of flow. Exhaling the word out loud, I felt a subtle, energizing buzz take over my body. And I felt elated. Now, every time I need to move back into flow, I pause, breathe deeply, and exhale that word out loud. For me, the word is “Simplicity.”It’s worked every time so far!

I’d love to hear what you do to connect with flow in your own life.