When the world around us feels chaotic, a natural impulse is to seek out order. We fantasize about a tidy world, one of neat grids and everything in its place, a world where the rules are clear and everyone abides by them. We create elaborate systems, routines, and organizational schemes, believing that if we can just impose enough order on our world, we’ll finally feel secure and at peace.

But this drive for rigid control often backfires. Our carefully crafted schedules crumble when unexpected events arise. Our firm boundaries strain against the messy reality of human emotions and relationships. Our meticulously organized spaces become another source of stress as we struggle to maintain perfect order amid personal and global turbulence.

This drive toward order is fundamentally a resistance to chaos, requiring constant effort and energy to maintain. Yet there’s another way to find comfort amid uncertainty that doesn’t demand such exhausting vigilance. That way is flow.

How to Find More Flow In Daily Life

In Chinese tradition, flow represents the optimal state of chi, life’s vital energy. This concept is embodied in feng shui, which derives from words meaning “wind” and “water” – elements that naturally demonstrate the physics of flow. Originally used to determine ideal locations for homes, farms, and burial grounds, feng shui recognizes that places where wind and water move too rapidly create chaos and destruction, while areas of too-slow movement lead to stagnation and decay.

This ancient wisdom offers a powerful metaphor for modern life: attempting to resist chaos by imposing rigid control exhausts us, like trying to dam a river. Instead, we can learn to guide turbulent energy into smoother channels, creating sustainable patterns of flow in our daily lives.

Recently, I’ve begun each morning with a simple question: How can I create more flow today? This shift in perspective has revealed countless small ways to enhance flow in my home, work, relationships, and daily routines. Here are some practical approaches you can try.

Clear Your Entryway

A cluttered entryway disrupts more than just physical movement — it creates an energetic blockage that affects your entire home-life flow. When shoes pile up behind the door or unopened packages and mail accumulate, these obstacles create subtle daily stress, weighing you down each time you transition between the outside world and your sanctuary.

Rather than tackling your entire home’s organization at once, focus your energy where it matters most: your entrance. Start with small, practical changes that enhance flow. Install hooks for coats, designate a basket for mail and keys, secure your doormat with a proper rug pad, and keep a package opener handy. These simple adjustments will transform your entryway from a source of friction into a welcoming space that eases your daily transitions.

For more ways to create more flow in your home, revisit our guide to cleansing your home of negative emotions.

Expect Ease

Last fall, I began to confront a deeply ingrained belief: that meaningful work must be difficult. Our culture celebrates the struggle, glorifying those who push through obstacles while dismissing easier paths as shortcuts for the lazy or uncommitted. This mindset had convinced many of us that choosing ease somehow diminishes our achievements.

For years, I had worn exhaustion like a badge of honor, pushing myself to physical pain because I equated struggle with virtue. But as I examined this belief, I realized how it undermined my relationship with work I genuinely loved. The very language I used — always emphasizing the difficulty — was transforming enjoyable tasks into dreaded obligations.

What would happen if I expected my work to be easy? What if my priority wasn’t pushing through but finding flow?

So I experimented with a radical shift: embracing ease. Each morning at my desk, I began affirming “I expect my ideas will flow easily today.” When tension crept into my muscles or frustration clouded my thoughts, I’d step away for a walk. These walks became creative catalysts — after about fifteen minutes, ideas would begin flowing, and I’d capture them on my phone as I moved. Though challenges still arose, I found myself accessing flow states daily rather than rarely, transforming my work from a battle into a delight.

Notice where you choose difficulty out of habit. Begin to question whether struggle is really necessary, and see what happens when you allow yourself to choose ease instead.

Manage Energy, Not Time

Working with flow reveals that many productivity constraints are more flexible than they appear. Traditional approaches to getting things done focus on time management — squeezing more effort into fixed increments of minutes and hours. This mindset leaves us with only two options: work harder in the same time, or work longer hours.

Research shows that getting into a flow state makes us as much as 500% more productive. Flow state work allows you to accomplish more in two or three focused hours than in two standard workdays of regular effort.

To do this, instead of optimizing your time, you have to manage your energy. You focus on identifying the conditions that let you get into flow and then manage for these. It’s different for everyone, but it might include things like having an inspiring workspace, getting high quality sleep, preparing your mind by reading or listening to something just before starting work, eating well, or having music that triggers a flow state.

Move Your Body

The circulatory system offers a perfect metaphor for flow in the human body. During long periods of stillness, blood settles in our lower extremities, slowing our entire system. Movement is the antidote — raising our heart rate and breathing while flooding our brain with oxygen-rich blood that sharpens our thinking and alertness.

Extended stillness also disrupts our mind-body connection in subtle but powerful ways. Our brain naturally tunes out unchanging stimuli, and when our primary source of novelty becomes the screen in front of us, our body awareness fades into the background. This disconnection becomes particularly problematic when we’re consuming distressing news while physically frozen — a combination that can trigger our body’s freeze response and amplify feelings of powerlessness.

The solution is surprisingly simple: move. Whether it’s a walk around the block, a few yoga stretches, or dancing to your favorite song, physical movement reconnects mind and body while activating our natural stress-relief systems. Just make sure you’re moving with your body, not forcing it beyond its limits. Think of movement as a reset button that restores your natural state of flow.

Take an Avoidance Inventory

We all have them — those seemingly simple tasks that keep migrating from one to-do list to the next: the overdue email response, the financial paperwork, the home repair project. These persistent items don’t just clutter our lists; they create invisible barriers to flow, weighing us down and preventing us from embracing new opportunities.

While I tell myself that I’m procrastinating these tasks because they are time-consuming or tedious, the truth often lies deeper. The tasks I perpetually postpone are ones that have some kind of emotional charge to them. Perhaps I’m feeling guilty about falling out of touch with a friend, anxious about my finances, or ashamed that I’ve neglected a part of my home for so long. I’m not avoiding the task. I’m avoiding the uncomfortable feelings it stirs up.

Try this: Create a separate list of all the things you’re avoiding right now and examine the emotion behind each one. What feelings surface when you think about that unanswered message or unopened bill? Understanding these emotional blocks is the first step to clearing them. Don’t pressure yourself to tackle everything at once — instead, choose one or two items each week to address, focusing not just on completing the task but on processing and releasing the associated emotion. Notice how, every time you clear one of these tasks, it creates a sense of spaciousness and flow.

Complete or Discard an Old Project

Unfinished projects scattered around your home — the abandoned painting, unframed photos, or half-completed DIY endeavors — can silently drain your energy and block your sense of flow. While we often hold onto these projects because we’ve internalized the belief that abandoning them equals failure, the opposite may be true. Releasing incomplete projects can actually free up mental and physical space for new inspiration. By giving yourself permission to discard what no longer serves you, you create room to focus on and complete the projects that genuinely matter to you now.

Say Something Unsaid

True flow in relationships often requires the opposite of what we might expect. While we think we’re “going with the flow” by avoiding conflict and suppressing our feelings, this actually creates emotional blockages that impede genuine connection. Each unspoken thought or feeling becomes a dam in the natural stream of affection between people.

These unsaid things take many forms — from unexpressed gratitude for daily kindnesses to unvoiced frustrations that simmer beneath the surface. When we finally voice our appreciation or respectfully air our concerns, we often find that the very act of speaking releases stuck energy and restores the natural flow of warmth and connection. Consider a relationship that matters to you and reflect: What truth are you holding back? How might expressing it, with care and intention, restore the natural flow between you?

Pass on a Gift

Lewis Hyde’s book The Gift challenges our Western understanding of gift-giving. While we typically view gifts as one-way transactions – something given and kept – traditional gift economies reveal a more dynamic pattern. In indigenous cultures and informal economies, gifts are meant to move and evolve. Sacred objects pass between tribes in yearly ceremonies, while family heirlooms and cherished recipes flow through generations. When gifts stop moving, they lose their power and meaning.

This principle of circulation creates vibrant, interconnected communities. Consider the gifts you’re currently holding static: the family silver carefully stored away, the garden abundance that could be shared, or the skills you’ve mastered but haven’t passed on. True gifts come alive through use and sharing — whether that’s bringing out the heirloom china for daily meals, passing treasured objects to younger generations while you can witness their joy, or teaching valuable skills to eager learners in your community.

Practice Outflowing

Chaotic times have a tendency to trigger scarcity mindset. When this mindset takes hold, we tend to grip tightly to our resources, whether money, time, or energy. This fearful hoarding — watching every penny, guarding every minute — might seem prudent in challenging times. Yet while temporary belt-tightening can be wise, chronically operating from fear gradually constricts our world and blocks the natural flow of giving and receiving.

The antidote, Shakti Gawain teaches, is practicing “outflowing” —mindfully sharing our resources from a place of joy rather than fear. This could be as simple as leaving a generous tip with genuine pleasure or spending an hour helping a friend move. While the returns may not be immediate or direct, these small acts of generous flow create ripples that eventually find their way back to us, expanding rather than contracting our experience of abundance.

Flow is a practice of small choices — clearing space, moving your body, speaking truth, sharing what you have. As you experiment with these shifts, you may find yourself navigating life’s challenges with more ease and less resistance.