What makes who we are? Our genes, our past and the environment.
Our genes are already cast, we can’t change them. The same with our past. The environment of today will shape our stories and identity of tomorrow. Everything we can do to change our future is all about what we surround ourselves with and how we react to it.
A healthy attempt of strategic conscious improvement can only have one direction – Outward and one place where it happens – The Game of Life. You cannot improve your Game of Self by force and trying to do that can be counterproductive. Тhe only meaningful plan is to change and improve everything around us.
We need to be in Hunter mode, that leads to Love, Freedom, Empathy, Meaning.
So we need one main thing from our environment – structures that help us open up. Humans interact internally and externally only with two types of structures:
- Flow structures – they move things and bring endless change, like rivers.
- Box structures – they divide space and time, and obstruct flow, like mountains.
Boxes and flows are categorically different, do not complement but rather destroy each other. How to differentiate a flow from a box?
- Boxes have boundaries, limits and borders. Flows – don’t, they flow in every direction where no box blocks them and mix in beautiful, transcendental ways.
- Boxes are defined only by other boxes! Flows are defined only by other flows!
- Boxes can be measured. Flows – not, but you can feel them growing stronger. There is no way to compare flows. This is why comparing yourself to others is counterproductive.
- Divide a box in two and you’ll have two smaller boxes. Divide a flow in two and you’ll have two flows, each of them as strong as the initial one.
The world is full of things you can do and some of them elevate you to flow states of being, which brings you in Hunter mode and in the Outward direction.
You have both boxes and flows in your mind. However, the boxes are in you. The flows are you. This is why creativity (a flow) is universal. If you feel creative in something, you feel creative in everything.
Boxes cannot bring true long-term happiness. Flows can. The very definition of these structures tells us which are good and bad for us. Flows open us up. Boxes close us in.
Why does our brain engage with so many boxes? It’s first evolutionary and then cultural. The first creatures had three goals in life – survive, eat and reproduce. Finding food and eating required a process-oriented brain. Not being eaten by something bigger required a fluid, intuitive brain that had a general awareness about the world and the creature’s place in it. So focus and general intuitive awareness have to coexist. And this is how the brain hemispheres evolved.
Early humans already had a massive advantage thanks to their highly developed left side of the brain. Thinking and planning in a world of scarcity was key for both survival and the slow steps for science and development of the human kind. However, life then changed for the better. The odds are now in our favor and we want more than survival. We want happiness. But we collectively forgot happiness is a flow and it’s pointing outwards.
The problem is, left brains and boxes took all the credit for the progress. And we subjugated our right brain via our culture and abysmal education system, suppressed our intuition and forgot flows exist.
We need strong flow to destroy the boxes but they are in the way of any strong flow attempts. So we need to gather all our self-love and desire for freedom, take a deep breath and start with a leap of faith. There is no other way. Baby steps won’t do this one. This process is popularly known as “letting go”.
You should let go of your lousy job or stale relationship because they represent boxes in your mind. True life-changing work can happen outside of the “job” box just as unconditional love can exist outside of the “relationship” one.
The real problem is not the lousy boss or girlfriend/boyfriend. The real problem is the boxes that represent them within. And I can assure you that those boxes are there, because for the people without them it would be extremely improbable to end up in your situation – they would rather be unemployed for a while than have a lousy job and would rather be alone than with someone they don’t truly love.
Without flows even if you quit the job, you’ll end up in a similar one (another box). Even if you break up, your next partner is very likely to be similar (another box). Only flows improve things and true letting go is not exchanging one box for another. It’s embracing flows and ditching all possible boxes.
If your left brain is always on top of your conscious thoughts and decisions, you will be able to serve (yourself) but will not find any meaning and happiness. Because you need flows for them.
The right brain with its awareness, intuition and creativity is actually a wonderful master but a terrible servant. The relatively safe and comfortable life of the modern human needs flows and meaning more than boxes and thinking. But instead of letting our brain learn gently to the right, we push it to the extreme left with everything from school to jobs to our whole society, based on too many rules.
The reality of our modern life is that We need and love flows but we Cope with our problems and confusion by inventing boxes. It’s tempting to introduce more and more boxes into our lives. Resist. Every time you feel the urge to put something in a box, Resist. The boxes make you weak and unhappy. You need flows, even if they bring chaos to your life.
The flows in our mind:
Love, energy, creativity, curiosity, unobstructed time, nature, spirituality.
The boxes in our mind:
All internal and external Categories and Labels, goals, plans, time slots, the boxes we live in, rules and dogma. All numbers.
Everything in your environment can be a flow! But how to restore the flows? There is a key relation between Hunter vs. Sheep mode, a biological spectrum, related to hormones in your body and Flow vs. Box thinking, which is a spectrum in our mind, related directly to the brain hemispheres and strengthening specific neurological pathways over the years.
Hunter vs Sheep mode is a mostly chemical battle of love-based and fear-based emotions and all our biological reactions to them… with our body as the arena.
Flow vs Box thinking is culturally and intellectually influenced but the main factor is the structured archive of all these Hunter vs Sheep battles and the actions they foster, which each change neurological patterns in the brain.
When the hunter in you wins, flow patterns are strengthened, because you open up and there is space for them.
Hunter mode + Flow thinking and Sheep mode + Box thinking are the two typical states you can find yourself in. And you already know which one you need for happiness and progress. So let’s construct an environment stimulating Hunter mode + Flow thinking.
To construct the best experiences for positive change, you need to know:
- how a human functions
- how you’re different
- all the options the world offers
Humans evolved to live in nature, not in boxes. Humans are meant to move a lot. Humans are social creatures. Humans are easily influenced by their peers so surround yourself with the best people you can find.
If someone around you is consistently toxic, you have the right to kick them out of your life. The quality of your closest human relationships is the most important indicator for health and happiness.
Seek unconditional love, a strong flow. Seek true friendships. They are both priceless. Unconditional love will not only benefit your love life. It will improve every single aspect of your life.
You need folks who you can trust emotionally and intellectually. One is not enough, you need both. You could listen to people who help you on the path to truth and intuition and inspire you for greatness. You can take external feedback on your behavior but never on your thoughts and feelings.
You should be aware of what’s happening in your life but if you try to analyze it immediately, you distort the picture. Leave things to settle. Time will clear the fog and make everything obvious.
If all of your days are the same you will not really develop broad self-knowledge. You need Diversity of experience – your reactions in different situations, some of them out of your comfort zone.
There is only one solution: the unique phenomenon of flow-demanding structures.
Imagine you get lost in a forest (assuming it’s safe, no dangers). You see no paths, no civilization, just you and trees and the sound of birds chirping. The forest is a box (as all places are). But if there are no paths, 100% of your possible journeys back to civilization are flows. There are no guardrails. No boxes to fit into. Just you and infinite possible directions.
The forest is a box, so you can plan on going into it. But then, you have to find your way back, which is a flow. The forest model is the only magical one that can strategically create a flow out of a box.
There are two types of forests – popular and unpopular. The most popular forest is dancing. It’s impossible to be unhappy when you dance. Never miss a chance to move it. The popular forests are easy and much better than nothing! And the world is on your side on this one. You have venues, trainers, art teachers, apps, Bob Ross, a master of flow. But there is a disadvantage – not a lot of foundational creation and no physical danger, real or perceived. So you will have to fight the boxes in countless tiny battles, many of them being hunter ones against inertia. Things can get better in time but you will need self-love, patience and persistence. A much better solution are the unpopular forests.
What are unpopular forests? All flow experiences that combine getting out of your comfort zone with committing not to go back in it until every road back is a flow. Danger perception, physical movement and sounding crazy are all advantages. Just remember all the stupid things you did as a kid – you need more of those again. Grow Younger!
The solution is to destroy the boxes as a foundation of your life and embrace flows. And the unpopular forests are your superpower tools for this.
The world has way too many boxes. Destroy their projections in you, embrace flows. Don’t think, just be. All the time, on every level, everywhere.
