Change is all about flow, isn’t it?

Some time ago I closed my psychoanalytic practice in New York City, bought a 17-year-old Airstream motor home and a bright blue Mini CooperS and drove my new rig off into the sunset.  It was somehow the obvious next step, a step I took at my own live edge, where I was growing, where I was willing to take risks, and where I was most alive.

It’s not the obvious move for a psychoanalyst which is partly why I’ve come to share this with you.  It turned out that I was not the kind of psychoanalyst who continues to do what I was doing.  No matter how involved I felt with my patients, sitting in the same small, dark room had begun to feel stifling.  I needed to move around, to encounter whomever and whatever came around the corner.  My many entrepreneurial interests were really just a source of entertainment for my professional friends.  I had to seek new outlets for my energy.

Many of us, the members of the human race, spend a lot of time trying to do the right thing or trying to continue to do the right thing.  We keep on trying to mold ourselves into something we see in our minds or, bless our hearts, in the minds of others.  What had been right for me was no longer right.  My guess is you’ve had similar experiences.

Here’s the point:  Even if you feel trapped and you’ve lost your imagination, to stay alive inside you have to move toward the edge of your competence, your awareness, toward what attracts your interest.

Why?  How?  What the hell am I talking about?  Ask any neurologist, any student of behavior, any high school kid who tried to memorize all those vocabulary words for the SAT.  You don’t easily learn the stuff that’s not relevant, you won’t remember “suzerainty” unless you follow foreign affairs or know someone named Susan.  You won’t grow wings if you don’t have wing stumps.  You don’t love unless you’re strong enough to long.  And you don’t sit still if your body wants to move.

I have trained at some of the best schools in the country, worked and done research at the most advanced institutions.  I’ve spent many years with patients and have read deeply and broadly in the ways of the heart and mind.  It still comes down to the same thing for me.  Learning to live at your edge, following your internal flow.  (It’s just a coincidence that recently I married a man called Joe Flower.  I think.)

So this work here is about that, about learning your edge, how to find it, move with and involve others in it.  It comes from your psychological grace and strength, the kind you were born with.  It’s natural.  And it’s also something you can learn more about.  If you make space for it in your mind, in your life, at least every now and then, your life will be a lot easier, more of the blessing you’ve heard it can be.

If you’re interested, stay tuned, subscribe.  It may not be predictable.  But that’s the point, isn’t it?

Jennifer Flower, Ph.D