I normally talk about the Flow using a metaphor of water. Our Flow moves like a current of ease and bounty, never ceasing, always finding the path of least resistance, like water flowing to the sea. When we’re in sync with this essence of life, we find that the world opens to us and we can manifest our desires with abandon.  When we’re at odds with this medium for manifesting, we’re going against this current and finding ourselves constantly struggling upstream facing discouragement, debt, and despair.

Well a few weeks ago I happened on a new way of looking at it: I’m going to borrow two terms from science and rework them a little:  conduction and resistance. A copper wire conducts energy beautifully, and lets it move right where it needs to go. A rubber wire, on the other hand, is a terrible conductor for electricity. It’s a point of resistance. We have both in our lives. Imagine that we’re on a racetrack made of copper, but the bumper walls are made of rubber. We can bump against the resistance as much as we want, or we can get back on the copper track. Here is what happened to me recently that made this all so clear to me.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the things I really enjoy doing, and one thing I’ve found is that I like to develop creative projects and see them strategically through completion. I started searching around for what this kind of skill-set is called, and found that there’s field that’s generally called “strategic product development.” A few days after realizing this, I found myself on an airplane talking to the man sitting next to me, and it turns out he’s a consultant for product development to some big-name companies. He’s been in the industry for twenty-odd years, launching multimillion dollars products and campaigns. And he had a lot to share with me about how to envision projects and then see them through to completion.

This is a perfect example of conductivity. I had a sense of excitement about something, my Flow reacted to this, and it brought me a man who can help me understand more about my new interest. Like a copper wire carrying current, my Flow made it easy for me to find and get the information I wanted. I am in a super-conductive wave. My Flow confirmed to me, within days, that my line of thinking was in line with my essence. That is how Flow works.

So, feeling excited, a week later I find myself talking to someone I do business with about my exciting new idea. And you know what? I was completely rejected. Shut down. It was as if I had been cruising along a top speed, feeling completely as if my Flow was helping me hurtle toward something new and exciting, and hit a wall.

At first, I was mad. How can this be, I thought, when I’ve had such positive confirmation already? Did something change? And then I pulled back and thought, “This is interesting. I’ve hit a point of resistance.” This point of resistance happens to be in the form of a person that I often have to interact with. Did you know that a person can be a point of resistance in your life? Every time I interact with this person, they shut me down. This person’s role, in my Flow, is to close doorways. Their role is to show me where not to go.

So what next? If I had no understanding of Flow, I might continue to butt my head against this person, in that direction, since I think they hold the keys to the kingdom–at least in this particular aspect of my work. My Flow is telling me “green light” in one large overall way, but “red light” in this particular area. In other words, I’m being steered. This is great news, since now I know where not to waste my time.

Your Flow is always talking to you, responding to you, in terms of conduction and resistance. Conduction is where you’re moving in a direction, and it feels like everything unfurls around you, pushing you along, giving you what you need just when you need it. When I met the man on the plane, I felt eager, curious, delighted, and “in tune” with the encounter. Those feelings were conductive, and affirmed that direction in my Flow.

Resistance is the hazard sign on the road. It points where you don’t want to go. Resistance is when you encounter a person, situation or thing that appears to stop you or block you. Whenever you push for something and in response feel upset, wronged, shut down, rejected, misunderstood, angry, frozen out, or that it’s unfair, you have encountered resistance. Your emotions identify the resistance.

And here is where we make a mistake: Instead of saying, “Oh right, thank you for steering me away from this,” we instead get caught up in having to make what we we’re after turn out our way. So we get stuck trying to make someone believe in us, or do what we want, or see it our way, or agree with us, or get the account, or make him understand, or give us the money, or whatever it is that we have to force to happen. We bang our head against the wall of resistance, because we’ve been taught that winners don’t quit, or to get your goal you can’t give up, and so on.

Here is a new way to look at it: Winner’s don’t quit. But when they see a big black pit of resistance, they don’t hang around wondering how deep it is and how long it will take them to fall in and climb out. Instead, they turn around or turn aside and find a new route.

Do more of what works and less of what doesn’t. Resistance is the rubber walls of your copper current, telling you where not to go.

You will encounter many points of resistance as you move forward in your Flow, and in your life. After looking at it like this, I made of a list in my mind of people, situations, and things that almost always represent resistance in my Flow. And I know that I don’t have to bother with them now. I don’t have to thrash my way through them or past them. Instead, I am all about finding the points of super-conductivity. My Flow and my manifesting will wing me to right where I want to be, and even help me discover where that is, as long as I listen and react right.

So think right now: What problem have you been chewing on lately that has a point of resistance? Can you minimize your involvement with it? In my own case, I can’t avoid this person altogether, but I can keep our interaction to a minimum. Maybe you can do that too.

Then identify where you feel ease–where have things just been quietly working out for you? What area of your life is mellow and fulfilling? Who is involved in that area? They must be conductive to you. Sometimes we overlook the conductive areas of our lives since we take them for granted. But they are indicators of Flow there. How can you bring that Flow into the  troubled area? Maybe you can, maybe you can’t. Maybe you’ll need to start down a new road–and when you do, look for your Flow to respond by manifesting circumstances that hurtle your forward and bring you just what you need.   ###