(Paddling with my son Yesterday!)

A philosophical reflection on how we position ourselves in the flow of life

This blog is a long time in the making. It summarizes something I've been pondering and connecting to for many years, inspired by my lifelong study of philosophy (primarily through the eastern spiritual lens of Advaita Vedanta) and thousands of hours of coaching over the past decade, where I've had the privilege of exploring what is true for the leaders I work with, both in their work and how they can better relate to it in a more clear-minded, sustainable (and yes, successful) way.

This is not a thesis or manifesto. It's a work in progress that I've decided to move out of my journal and onto the blog. Take what you will from it and I welcome your comments...

This isn't a how-to guide or a productivity hack, but rather a philosophical lens through which to view your relationship with life (and your career!). There are essentially a few different ways you can relate to the bigger picture, and each one profoundly shapes your ability to stay engaged, optimistic, and genuinely present.

Let me walk you through them.

Life is Happening TO You

However, this is the default mode, isn't it? Your senses point outward, seemingly capturing data from the world around you and delivering it to your mind as truth (but is it really?). At first glance, this setup seems straightforward: you're processing information accurately, and therefore your feelings, thoughts, and level of success are direct results of your circumstances and your ability to handle them.

When you operate from this perspective, you become a micromanager of your environment. You work tirelessly to build the right business, hire the right people, live in the right house, drive the right car. You exhaust yourself trying to line everything up just so, because if life is happening to you, then changing your external circumstances is the only path to changing your experience.

This is the pathway of willpower and effort. It can lead to achievement, motivation, and ambition. But taken to its logical conclusion, it's ultimately futile. For example, a decade ago I went on what should have been a perfect vacation: a five-star resort, a bungalow over crystal-clear water, every detail meticulously planned. Yet a day of unexpected rain, or something as simple as a bug landing in my dessert, could shift the entire experience from blissful to disappointing.

No matter how sophisticated your lifestyle design becomes, you can never fully control your circumstances. And when you can't, you're left with only two options: hunker down and endure, or fight against the current. Neither feels particularly empowering.

The Stoics were wise to warn us against relating to the world in this way.

Life is Happening FOR You

I remember discovering this perspective as a child of 10 years old, reading a tattered green copy of The Power of Positive Thinking from my father's bookshelf. There was something immediately appealing about the idea that everything happening in your life is somehow reflective of you state-of-mind and can be tuned to your benefit.

This mindset is definitely an upgrade. Instead of shying away from difficulty, you can reframe challenges as fuel for growth. Hard times become learning opportunities. Setbacks become setups for comebacks. This perspective has real power, especially when navigating the inevitable rough patches in work, relationships, and life.

The recently popularized "growth mindset," positive psychology practices, and many coaches operate from this foundation. And you can see why: it's motivating, especially when circumstances feel overwhelming and you can't immediately see what action to take.

But as you sit with this approach, something may start to feel incomplete about it. If life is happening for you, what does that mean for everyone else? Does that make you the main character in a universe designed around your personal success? What happens when you run out of energy to reframe or prop-up a positive frame of mind? The more you contemplate this, the more you might find yourself drawn to a third way of seeing.

Life is Happening THROUGH You

What if, instead of being the beneficiary of life's unfolding, you are an vessel floating along a universal river that was flowing long before you arrived and will continue long after you're gone?

Stay with me here....

As a Minnesotan, water metaphors come to mind (it is the land of 10,000 lakes and the source of the Mississippi River after all!). Picture yourself as a canoeist on a river. The river is moving: it has its own current, its own direction, its own rhythm. You didn't create this river, and you're not its intended destination. But you're here, paddle in hand, navigating its waters.

This is life happening through you.

You're both an agent and participant in this journey. You can paddle forward or backward, hard or gently. You can choose to shoot the rapids with wild abandon or pull over to the bank for a moment of rest. You can work with the current or test your strength against it. But you're always in relationship with something larger than yourself.

What's beautiful about this metaphor is the freedom it offers. Your relationship to the river can be one of joy, rest, and delight. It can be one of struggle and strife. It can be one of wonder and curiosity. It can be one of sorrow, loss and sadness. That's entirely up for grabs: how you choose to relate to whatever's happening is within your agency.

You don't have to pretend everything is great when you're navigating rough waters. You don't have to force gratitude when you're tired from paddling upstream. But you do get to choose, moment by moment, how you want to relate to whatever the river brings. There's a reason this perspective is at the core of many ancient cultures and spiritual teachings, particularly the teaching of the East.

The Shadow Side

For ever outer Luke there is an inner Darth Vader...

Each of these ways of relating to the universe carries both gifts and shadows. I was going to stop this blog before talking about this but it is important to mention. The shadow is revealed when you rigidly apply a way of life as a rule, while ignoring what is True for you. The shadow can be tempting to embrace, and the Ego loves to justify it for being the right way to be.

When life is happening to you, the shadow side is a victim mindset. Whatever happens becomes a roadblock, a barrier, something that's creating your experience from the outside. This can lead to feeling like the world is against you, that you're powerless, that circumstances are fundamentally out to get you. It's a highly reactive and egoic state where everything becomes personal, and you're constantly defending against a hostile universe.

When life is happening for you, the shadow side is a different kind of ego trap. If you believe everything is happening for your benefit, you can develop an exploitative relationship with the world. You start seeing everything through your own lens, viewing all events and even other people as existing to serve your particular needs and growth. This self-centered worldview can set you on a dangerous course, especially if what you think you need isn't actually in your best interest or the world's.

And when life is happening through you? Even this perspective has its downside. You can become too passive, like a canoeist who stays pulled up on the banks of the river instead of shooting the rapids, observing but not fully engaging. You might use this philosophy as an excuse to avoid the full participation that life requires and responds to. There's a lot that's lost if you're not actively paddling, making choices, and engaging with the current through your full potential.

Each perspective, even the most evolved one, can become a trap. Understanding the shadow can help you know if you are venturing too far in that direction.

Fire the Micro-Manager

Despite these shadow sides, in my opinion the third perspective (life happening through you) offers the most helpful and freeing way to navigate life, particularly if you are up to serving the world and making an impact through your life and work. Yes, it has its pitfalls, but when you're actively engaged as that canoeist on the river, something shifts fundamentally.

From this perspective, both your successes and your struggles become less about personal achievement and more about the dance between your choices and life's unfolding. You're experiencing the full spectrum of what it means to be alive, not as personal victories or failures, but as the natural rhythm of a river being navigated.

This isn't about becoming passive or disengaged. If anything, it's about finding a different kind of engagement, one that's less exhausting because it's not constantly pushing against reality, and less fragile because it's not dependent on circumstances aligning with your preferences. There's also something profoundly freeing about stepping out of the role of life's micromanager and into the role of life's witness and willing participant. It's a subtle shift, but one that seems to make room for a different kind of presence in the midst of all the beautiful chaos.

I hope that my sharing these ways of engaging with life inspires you to reflect on your own relationship with reality, to find out what is true for you, and how you can be even more alive and well (and yes, "successful"!) in spite of it all.

So...What's your relationship with the flow of life?

How do these perspectives land with you?

I welcome your thoughts and comments.

...now, time to get back in my canoe!