That's Life

You don’t have to be in the Flow to go shopping. Whether you want to go shopping or not, whether you’re in the mood or not, whether you spend the whole shopping trip complaining about how you’d rather be hiking or playing the piano or watching Netflix, if you actually pull what you need off the shelf, put it in your cart, pay for it, and take it home, you will have done the shopping. The end result, as far as what ends up in your refrigerator and pantry, is more or less the same as if you’d been in the mood to shop.

Of course, there’s more to a shopping trip than what you bring home. There’s who you meet while you’re at the store, and what you say to them and what they say to you. There’s what you find easily and what you have to hunt for, what you forget and what you remember that you hadn’t put on your list. And then there’s what you think, and what you see, and the memories triggered by the music on the PA system. Finally, there’ simply how you feel moment to moment, the actual living experience of being anywhere doing anything.

It’s easy to think shopping is more about what ends up in your refrigerator and pantry than the people you meet and the thoughts you think and certainly how you felt while it all happened. The point of the shopping trip was to get the milk and corn flakes and sugar and eggs, wasn’t it? Isn’t that why you went to the store? All that other stuff is just life happening while you did what you had to do.

This, I believe, is why so many people find writing “difficult.” I simply can’t write until I’m in the mood to write, until I’m in the Flow, until I’ve dropped any resistance I might have to sitting in front of a blank page, and opened myself up to where ideas come from. Until I’m in that creative state of mind, no writing happens. For me, it’s impossible. It would be like trying to shop for groceries in my back yard. Nothing I need is there.

And to be in that writing frame of mind, I can’t think about the result of my writing, of simply getting it done. The only way to have a successful day’s work is to care about the actual experience of writing, to care about my frame of mind, to care about what I’m thinking and, most importantly, how I feel. For me, this is non-negotiable. And it has led me to care, bit by bit, less about what I pull from the shelves while I shop, and more how I feel while I’m shopping. That’s life, after all, how I’m feeling in that very moment. That’s life, and if I don’t care about that, what is there left to care about?

If you like the ideas and perspectives expressed here, feel free to contact me about individual coaching and group workshops.

Fearless Writing: How to Create Boldly and Write With Confidence.
You can find William at: williamkenower.com