Our genes, our past and the environment makes who we are. We can only change our environment. A 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. We need to be in Hunter mode, that leads to Love, Freedom, Empathy, Meaning.
So we need structures that help us open up. Humans interact internally and externally only with two types of structures: Flows and Boxes. Boxes and flows are categorically different, do not complement but rather destroy each other. Boxes have boundaries. Flows expand in every direction where no box blocks them. Boxes cannot bring true long-term happiness. Flows can. Flows open us up. Boxes close us in.
The first creatures had few goals in life – survive, eat and reproduce. Finding food required a process-oriented brain (box). Not being eaten required a fluid, intuitive brain and general awareness (flow). So focus and general intuitive awareness have to coexist. This is how the brain hemispheres evolved. Now we want more than survival – happiness. But we forgot happiness is a flow. Left brains and boxes took all the credit for the progress. The relatively safe and comfortable life of the modern human needs flows and meaning more than boxes and thinking.
To restore the flows we need to gather all our self-love and desire for freedom and start with a leap of faith. This process is popularly known as “letting go”. Only flows improve things and true letting go is not exchanging one box for another. It’s embracing flows and ditching all possible boxes. 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.
Flows are: love, energy, creativity, curiosity, unobstructed time, nature, spirituality. Boxes are: all internal and external categories and labels, goals, plans, time slots, houses, rules, dogma, numbers.
There is a 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. When the hunter in you wins, flow patterns are strengthened, because you open up and there is space for them. We need an environment stimulating Hunter mode + Flow thinking.
Imagine you get lost in a forest, 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. The popular forests are easy to find and try, but a better solution are the 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. Unpopular forests are: getting lost, hiking in a straight line, sliding down a snowy slope, getting off a public transport just in time, sleeping on bean bags, walking fast in transport, walking fast in the crowd, writting open letters, e-mailing, making chaotic gifts, becoming a mentor, welcoming internal uncertainty, having no expectations, welcoming procrastination, spending wisely more, valueing your time highly, pricing your products high. 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.
