8 Subtle Cues You're Out of Flow
Ok, conscious creators, we know that stress puts us on heightened alert like there’s a tiger in the room.
Did you know it also shrinks your creative bandwidth?!?
You LITERALLY don’t have time for that.
Recall the difference between the work you’ve efforted through versus what you’ve created from a state of flow.
Flow is your natural state. Much like love, we need not actively pursue it but surrender to it.
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” – Rumi
When you observe yourself exiting flow, you’re not called to fight it but to sink into presence—the only space inspired action takes place.
Consider the below your BAROMETER of cues that you’ve moved too far into your masculine/yang energetic as a woman.
Here are 8 subtle cues you’ve exited flow… and TOUCHPOINTS to drop back into your body & feminine energy:
Many of these “tools” and “techniques” are not revolutionary. They’re primal and instinctual and perhaps obvious… and yet, we often RESIST them.
We’re so accustomed to existing in the mind and shutting off our connection to our bodies and emotions — where our creative potential lies dormant — that we feed our bodies sugar and caffeine and *everything else* except the medicine we need to return to flow.
8 subtle cues you’re moving out of flow + remedies to root in your body to rediscover and access your inner well of limitless creative potential:
1. You feel loopy and ungrounded. Your head is too far ahead into the clouds.
Get outside. Put your bare feet and/or hands onto the Earth.
Bring nature indoors with woody essential oils that ground your energy. Notice the aroma—your senses are your gateway to being present.
Find stillness and sink your energy. Watch your energy melt into the chair beneath you and further downward.
Envision a red pole of light descending from your root chakra through the ground and deeper and deeper through the layers of the Earth’s crust until you connect with its molten lava center.
2. Your life has become a series of “shoulds.” Actions feel forced and obligatory.
Tune into your body and what would feel like PLEASURE. What do you want? What do you want to do?
Those are two different questions. Your body will tell you.
It’s probably going to be something that doesn’t seem productive or to produce results.
Do it and do it without guilt that you “should” be doing something else instead.
Rest assured that when you give yourself space from the one thing that feels burdensome (an obligatory action, like a “should”) it will turn into what you want to do, and your energy will be clean, fresh, and excited.
3. You feel anxious or overwhelmed.
Get out of your head and into your body. What would bring you to presence? This can be easily achieved by getting into your five senses.
Tune into what your mouth tastes like, the smells you are smelling, the fabric on your skin, what can you hear, and how far out into the distance, what colors are your eyes are seeing…
If necessary, go submerge in water.
Go on a walk. Go pet your pet. Get out of your head and into your body.
You can also write out a list of all the things you need to do. Acknowledge that you’re going to do them all, and pick the one that feels like the most fun or the easiest to do right now. Tick that one off the list first. Alternatively, do the one that feels like it will give you the most relief to do. That’s called eating the frog 🐸 and it’s sometimes the answer.
4. You feel contracted versus expansive. Everything is hard—even the little things.
At this point, you need to get into a state of NOT doing. If everything feels hard, STOP doing. If everything feels like a POINT OF RESISTANCE, go hermit.
This is where it’s good to BE with what’s true for you at this moment and what you’re feeling—to allow it to be and not try to change it. Be with the experience of your feelings. Do what you desire—and this MIGHT be behavior that other people would dub as escapism.
If you let yourself go into a hole when you need to, you will reemerge at some point. If don’t go into a hole, you’ll likely stagnate until you do.
5. You’re exhausted, and you’re not napping.
GIve yourself permission to sleep when you need it. Listen to your body.
***You don’t know who you’re going to be on the other side of that nap. You have no idea what will be true for you.***
Oftentimes you will feel so reinvigorated. Self love demands you care for yourself first.
6. You’re going against your inner knowing.
Well then life must be pretty hard. Take the easy road and listen to your intuition. Your gut compass will not steer you wrong.
Proceed to OBEY your intuition when it doesn’t make sense rationally. Do what it’s asking you to do. Know that the universe has your back, God speaks to you through your inner knowing, and that your internal guidance system is on point.
7. You’re not happy—in general, or in THIS moment.
You’re probably not listening to your internal guidance system or being true to yourself first. You’re putting everyone else’s needs first, and living from the outside-in versus the inside-out. You’re letting other people’s priorities guide your decision making.
At THIS moment… what would make you happy? Go do that. If your answer is RELIANT on someone or something outside of yourself—if you need someone else to fulfill your request—then we need to look at the definition of “happy” for you. Ask yourself, if I was currently the only person on Earth, what would I do right now that would feel good?
If that still doesn’t get you anywhere, go give to someone else whom you don’t know. Sign up to give at a food bank. Perform a random act of kindness.
Go to an animal shelter and spend time with animals locked up in cages. Give them love. Connect to someone beyond yourself.
If you’re perpetually unable to feel happy RIGHT NOW you’re too self-focused and not in a good way… your self-focus is in the victim mindset.
From a victim mindset, you feel a need to PROVE yourself. You need to control others’ perceptions.
You feel enslaved—to your work, to your boss, to your partner, to your LIFE. You turn other people or things into persecutors, experiencing yourself as a victim.
You’re also basing your value on what you produce. In an *effort* to generate momentum, you push forward, yet fail to make real progress.
You’re out of flow because you’ve based your identity on how productive you are being, instead of identifying your genius and accessing flow where productivity happens naturally with effortless ease.
You’re seeing yourself at this moment as SMALL, and really you are HUGE. You are connected to the Universe beyond yourself. Get OUT OF YOURSELF and outside of your norm—the people and experiences who typically surround you.
8. You feel like a taskmaster with an endless to-do list.
You’re focused on future outcomes, not grounded in your body in the present—the only place anything actually gets done. You’re also disconnected from your purpose or action based in purpose. You’ve likely become a little controlling.
Who around you are you controlling, or what aspects of your life do you think you’re unable to release control of right now?
***You’re letting your life OWN you versus owning your life in this moment.***
So throw away your list and what really needs to be redone will resurface. The rest is just a distraction….
Throwing away your to-do list can feel similar to if I asked you to go to your email inbox and archive all of your emails without replying. The important conversations will resurface again. You took on too much without tuning in to what was in alignment with YOUR greatest purpose. A better alternative to both of those options? Get an assistant.