You can guess what kind of “go leap off a cliff” look I gave him. When you’re blue, it’s hard to hear any kind of pick-me-up talk, even from people who care about you.

You see, I’ve been feeling passed over a lot lately, like the dish at the picnic that no one tries. The kid not picked for the team, while all her buddies pick each other. The girl waiting to be asked to the dance, while all her best guy friends ask someone else. Rejection is an experience that comes early and the sting stays, no matter how old we get. Psychology Today has a good article that explains why it’s necessary that we carry around such deep emotional responses to rejection.

As professionals and adults, we still encounter it when we’re passed over for a job, or when the person we’re dating kindly lets us know that we’re not “clicking,” or when the bank rejects your loan application, or in any of a myriad of other situations. “What’s wrong with me?” we ask ourselves.

What does the Flow tell us about this? Why are we overlooked, or snubbed, or passed by or not chosen? Let’s take a moment to acknowledge our feelings, first:

To begin with, we have the emotional response. This is the pout, the hurt feelings, the ego that says, “But why not me? Am I not [insert any word here: 'good enough,' 'talented enough,' 'smart enough,' etc.].” The emotional response is based on biology, and it’s actually necessary for our survival. But we don’t have to let it dominate.

This is where the intellectual response comes in, as we try to rationalize the rejection: “Maybe I just wasn’t exactly what they were looking for. Who knows what criteria they really have. Maybe the fit really wouldn’t have been right.”

But finally, there’s the Flow response, and this is where you involve trust. It’s true, trust is hard to come by on the heels of hurt and disappointment, but if you steer your thoughts back to your Flow, you can release both the emotional and intellectual responses, and feel peace again.

When you’re rejected, your Flow is saying: “Listen up! You wanted a great fit, right? You wanted happiness, satisfaction, fulfillment, expression and reward from this thing on your list, right? Well I’m telling you is that this path wasn’t it. You thought it was, but you need to consider whomever or whatever it was that rejected you as a cog in the machine, spinning you into a different direction–one that’s better for you. You can’t see it yet, but someday you will. Trust me.”

Think about this for a moment: What areas of your life right now are flowing freely, where you’re experiencing very little rejection? And now, in which areas are you encountering rejection?

You see, some areas are wide open for you now. Think of a toll road: these are your fast track lanes. If you want to get stuff done, drive there. Those areas may not always be on “fast track.” Take up the opportunity while you can, instead of looking at those lanes where you’re stuck behind the slow moving trucks while the other drivers are honking at you and making rude gestures.

We often take for granted the lanes that move for us, particularly if they’re a lifelong. Maybe you’ve always had an easy time in your career, but never with love. Or vice versa. And so we dwell on what we don’t have, rather than on what we do. The obsession to fix the “delayed” or “dysfunctional”  or “non-flowing” areas can become overwhelming.

But, Flow thinking says, “Trust.” Just let go and trust for awhile. Trust isn’t for wimps. It’s one of the very hardest things to do. So allow the areas where the rejection is roiling to settle and cool. Then return, and begin feeling around the area again. Things are always changing; people, jobs, health, everything. So release it, trust, and return to the game. Consider your time spent on other activities the equivalent of time at the batting cages, warming up. Rejection, as my friend says, means you’re still in the game. At some point, you will be chosen.

Let’s start with #1. For many years, I’ve been in a position where I’ve offered some excellent business ideas to someone. These are ideas that will really make her business take off—and likewise I’ve told her where she’s made some pretty obvious business blunders. The problem is, my friend never actually asks for my opinion, and this is hard for me, since I think I have such good opinions to give (sound like anyone you know?), and I know her industry well. However, lately I’ve finally had to face the idea that to her, my ideas are always lead—not gold. This hurts me. It hurts that she doesn’t think I can offer her anything of value. It hurts my self-esteem, since somewhere along the way I realize that I’ve tied some of my self-esteem to what she thinks of me. This is because I care about her, and want her to think well of me.

This has probably happened to you, too, somewhere in your life. Someone you care about (it could be your mom, brother, friend, or even your boss) doesn’t value your opinion, and since you judge your own value based on what they think of you, you always lose out. What can you do about this? What can I do about this?

This brings me to #2. Sometimes our ideas are clunkers, but often they aren’t. They may just need a little tweaking to get them right. Or they may need a lot of effort or resources. But if you have an idea and you have the passion to fulfill it, then who, really, is to stop you? You might say that you need help. You need the authority. You need funding. You need emotional support. Your list can get very long of all the things you think you need. You can look at any one of the big obstacles in your life right now and create a nice list of all the things you need to fix it as well as all the ideas you had to fix it that were tossed out. The bottom line is, sometimes you just have to pick something a go for it, and stop thinking that anyone else has to think it’s a good idea too. True, you could be wrong. The idea could be lead. But your only other option is often paralysis—you don’t go for what you think is right because you aren’t supported or are told you can’t and on and on.

So where does #3 fit in? That’s the concept that some things will flow for you, while others won’t. Golden ideas flow. The energy of life is behind them. Clunkers largely sink. Some bad ideas do seem to perpetuate themselves longer than you’d think is possible, but that’s always because they have an enabler involved. The enabler might be a big source of funding, a bad boss, a family member, or someone or something invested in them even as their project or job or relationship is crumbling. Bad ideas don’t heed the Flow, and if viewed correctly are allowed to wash away so good ideas can take their place. So, what if you have an idea for something (a new career, a new way of handling your relationship, or even new hobby you want to take up), but you can’t find support for it? If you were me, I’d go for it anyway. I’d begin to see what happens—do I get resistance or do I get opportunities? And what, you say, if your ideas are blocked? What if my boss or husband or someone who really counts is opposed to it?

If that’s the case, then step back a minute. Ask yourself, are my ideas habitually blocked? Is this a large source of frustration in my life? If the answer is yes, then pull back from your latest greatest idea and begin asking the larger question: Why am I allowing so much blockage in my life?

….and to answer that one, it’ll take a whole other post.

*To support your creative or entrepreneurial idea, I suggest the audio CD Flowdreaming for Enhanced Creativity and Success.

I took a yoga class this evening with a new teacher. We spent an entire hour doing what felt like a variation of the same standing pose, and the teacher was full of criticism. My butt was too high, my shoulders were drooping, and my feet were not wide enough apart. When I inadvertently stretched in between poses to unkink my aching arms, she scolded me, “We are not doing that stretch right now.”

Twenty minutes into the class, I wanted to leave. And twenty minutes later, I found myself thinking what an awful teacher she was, and how her rigid yoga philosophy was so unlike my own. Twenty minutes after that, I thought, “What is my Flow doing bringing me here?” and so I spent the rest of class thinking about that way I really disliked this teacher, while around her the other students were happily chirping that this was the best class in town, since you really got to learn each yoga pose so well.

Not long ago, I made the decision to finally begin teaching workshops in person. My biggest fear about intimate presentations and workshops is that I won’t give my attendees all that they come to learn. That somehow I’ll fail to communicate what I intend to, and they’ll be disappointed. I worry that they won’t like me. I will be like this yoga teacher with a half a dozen huffing, puffing, happy students doing headstands, and one sulky disappointed one like me.

I know this is silly. I know that some people just don’t energetically match up. And I think my Flow is bringing me into contact with a lot of people right now who don’t energetically match with me, just so I’ll be sure to get the point. It’s not their fault; it’s not my fault. We just don’t look at the world the same way, and the accumulation of experiences we each carry from our lives is so different that we have little to relate to each other with.

However, my Flow heard my desire to teach, so it’s bringing me experiences right now that will help my teaching become a smooth, enjoyable act. Apparently, I can start by watching other “bad” teachers and realizing that they are only “bad” to my way of relating to the world—the happy class around her reminds me that my judgements are only applicable to my own feelings.

Somewhere along the way of my life, I became a people-pleaser. And now I am unlearning that trait, because when I spend so much of my time trying to make that one or two sulky people happy, it means I’m ignoring (or not concentrating my energy) on those people with whom I do match, and who can learn from me, or with whom I can be a good friend, or a good employee to, or share myself with. 

It’s like in your family: if you worry constantly about that one person in your family with whom you don’t get along, then you’re giving over “X” amount of your energy—your precious moments of life—to that disharmony.

What about all the people in your family who do love you and want to have more good times with you? Like this teacher, don’t give all your attention and obsessive thoughts to the one angry student (or lover, friend, employer, coworker, teacher, parent, child, etc.) in your life. Some people just won’t like you, and no matter how you try to please them, or how much you rail about not liking them, your energy signatures will just never match up, and you won’t ever see the world the same way or look eye to eye.

Be choosy where you expend your energy—focus on areas of harmony first, where your Flow carries you effortlessly forward. These are probably areas that you habitually ignore—you overlook them since they are so mellow and easy. Maybe it’s your marriage. Or your relationship with a parent, or good friend. Maybe it’s a good customer or client, or some other aspect of work where you’re always rewarded. 

Stop trying to please everyone, and simply please those with whom you create the most mutual benefit. Take a moment now to think about the people who don’t like you, and the people who do. Now send the people who love you a little note or email telling them that you love them too: “I love you and I’m glad you’re in my life.” “I always enjoy doing business with you.” “I had such a good time the last time we went out—we should do it again.” “I love your class and think you’re great at teaching this material.” And so on.

Thank you, yoga teacher, for reminding me that I won’t like everyone, and they won’t like me, and that’s perfectly okay.

But I promised listeners of yesterday’s Flowdreaming show that we would continue this conversation about worth—especially self-worth. My own self-worth has been rocked pretty hard lately. And you know how things seem to happen at once? Well, I have news: they don’t just seem to—they do. That’s a perfect instance of Flow in action—whatever you begin to experience “moves forward” energetically, like the wake that precedes a boat in the water—to contaminate (for good or bad) your future experiences. What you feel in response to your present  will condition or “mold” what will occur next. So if you feel crummy about yourself, you can bet a gang of things will come in to support continuing that experience. If you’re feeling a streak of low self-worth, you can bet that a slew of stuff will come to you to reinforce this feeling. This is what you call “going from bad to worse.”

Things do shift, of course. Every flow peters out. Winds change. Your mood changes. You beliefs change. And then you swing back on course again. You get a compliment. Someone tells you they love you. Someone lets you know you helped them, or that something you did was really good. Your self-worth peeks its head up from the dirty clothes pile where it’s been hiding, and you gulp and say, “I can manage one more day.” You have confidence once again.

This is, incidentally, where our economy is at right now. We’ve gone from bad to worse, not because anything about us has changed, but because we’re in a state of collective, paralyzing fear. We think, “What if I don’t have a job tomorrow?” And so we don’t spend money, instead stockpiling for that rainy day, or trying to finally address that mountain of debt we’ve been pulling along.

And businesses are doing the same thing: the men and women who run them are thinking, “People aren’t going to be out buying stuff.” So they lay off people, order less, or let stock dwindle. Less output means that the people who make the stuff they sell, lose their jobs. And on it continues. It’s a crisis of confidence. Business confidence, economic confidence, internal confidence—all the same thing. When we live in fear and feelings of low confidence, our lives reflect this scarcity. When economically, our business leaders and banks feel this way, our economy reflects the scarcity. It’s not about money, actual money. It’s about human feeling.

Money in itself is just an energy condition. Money isn’t just paper currency or coins, or IUOs or mutual fund valuations. That is just the physical “body” of money, like your body is not really the “you” of you. Money is a unit of value that we totally make up! It helps to think of money like this—like a person—with both a body and a deeper spirit or essence. So ask yourself, What is my relationship to this person like?

When you think about money, do you always feel fearful? Do you think it will leave you, like a spouse running out on a 30-year marriage? Do you mistrust it, thinking it is fickle and unreliable? This feeling shows you exactly how you relate to money. And if money was a person, how would it react to these feelings from you? If you’ve been sending it your hurt, doubt, frustration, or fear for a long time, chances are it wants to stay away from you.

You have also probably tied this relationship to your income or work into your own internal sense of self-worth.

So few of of were ever brought up to to think that we, ourselves, were intrinsically of high value. And we should be treated as such. So we value ourselves based on all kinds of outside criteria. Sometimes I get caught up valuing myself on the coolness of my job, or my paycheck. But if both were gone tomorrow, would I be any less? I hope not. Because this could happen. Anything could happen. Where will your Flow lead you next? What new adventure will you be off on? Your sense of internal value shouldn’t be tied to anything so transient in your life as a job or paycheck. These will always come and go. Money as an energy, however, as a friend, will show its constancy to you, if you are a friend to it—if you treat it well, spend it well, tell it you love having it in your life. It will find a way to get more of itself to you, like a friend who wants to spend time in your company.

Our economy, too, will rebound only when we begin showing it our faith. All of us—bank managers, business people, farmers and homemakers. But to make this happen, all of us must have internal self-worth and a feeling of “I’m good enough for this. I can make this happen!”

Remember, as I said on my February 3, 2009 Flowdreaming show today: You are a diamond. Let everyone see that value. And watch as life (and your Flow) begin reflecting all the facets of your brilliance back to you.

This Article is part of Flowdreaming.com’s free Online Learning Library.

If you’re looking for an explanation for why some things in your life seem so frustratingly difficult to manifest, then read on. It’s a long article, but contains valuable information. It begins with a story about something that happened to me these last few weeks.

I normally talk about the Flow using a metaphor of water. Our Flow moves like a current of ease and bounty, never ceasing, always finding the path of least resistance, like water flowing to the sea. When we’re in sync with this essence of life, we find that the world opens to us and we can manifest our desires with abandon.  When we’re at odds with this medium for manifesting, we’re going against this current and finding ourselves constantly struggling upstream facing discouragement, debt, and despair.

Well a few weeks ago I happened on a new way of looking at it: I’m going to borrow two terms from science and rework them a little:  conduction and resistance. A copper wire conducts energy beautifully, and lets it move right where it needs to go. A rubber wire, on the other hand, is a terrible conductor for electricity. It’s a point of resistance. We have both in our lives. Imagine that we’re on a racetrack made of copper, but the bumper walls are made of rubber. We can bump against the resistance as much as we want, or we can get back on the copper track. Here is what happened to me recently that made this all so clear to me.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the things I really enjoy doing, and one thing I’ve found is that I like to develop creative projects and see them strategically through completion. I started searching around for what this kind of skill-set is called, and found that there’s field that’s generally called “strategic product development.” A few days after realizing this, I found myself on an airplane talking to the man sitting next to me, and it turns out he’s a consultant for product development to some big-name companies. He’s been in the industry for twenty-odd years, launching multimillion dollars products and campaigns. And he had a lot to share with me about how to envision projects and then see them through to completion.

This is a perfect example of conductivity. I had a sense of excitement about something, my Flow reacted to this, and it brought me a man who can help me understand more about my new interest. Like a copper wire carrying current, my Flow made it easy for me to find and get the information I wanted. I am in a super-conductive wave. My Flow confirmed to me, within days, that my line of thinking was in line with my essence. That is how Flow works.

So, feeling excited, a week later I find myself talking to someone I do business with about my exciting new idea. And you know what? I was completely rejected. Shut down. It was as if I had been cruising along a top speed, feeling completely as if my Flow was helping me hurtle toward something new and exciting, and hit a wall.

At first, I was mad. How can this be, I thought, when I’ve had such positive confirmation already? Did something change? And then I pulled back and thought, “This is interesting. I’ve hit a point of resistance.” This point of resistance happens to be in the form of a person that I often have to interact with. Did you know that a person can be a point of resistance in your life? Every time I interact with this person, they shut me down. This person’s role, in my Flow, is to close doorways. Their role is to show me where not to go.

So what next? If I had no understanding of Flow, I might continue to butt my head against this person, in that direction, since I think they hold the keys to the kingdom–at least in this particular aspect of my work. My Flow is telling me “green light” in one large overall way, but “red light” in this particular area. In other words, I’m being steered. This is great news, since now I know where not to waste my time.

Your Flow is always talking to you, responding to you, in terms of conduction and resistance. Conduction is where you’re moving in a direction, and it feels like everything unfurls around you, pushing you along, giving you what you need just when you need it. When I met the man on the plane, I felt eager, curious, delighted, and “in tune” with the encounter. Those feelings were conductive, and affirmed that direction in my Flow.

Resistance is the hazard sign on the road. It points where you don’t want to go. Resistance is when you encounter a person, situation or thing that appears to stop you or block you. Whenever you push for something and in response feel upset, wronged, shut down, rejected, misunderstood, angry, frozen out, or that it’s unfair, you have encountered resistance. Your emotions identify the resistance.

And here is where we make a mistake: Instead of saying, “Oh right, thank you for steering me away from this,” we instead get caught up in having to make what we we’re after turn out our way. So we get stuck trying to make someone believe in us, or do what we want, or see it our way, or agree with us, or get the account, or make him understand, or give us the money, or whatever it is that we have to force to happen. We bang our head against the wall of resistance, because we’ve been taught that winners don’t quit, or to get your goal you can’t give up, and so on.

Here is a new way to look at it: Winner’s don’t quit. But when they see a big black pit of resistance, they don’t hang around wondering how deep it is and how long it will take them to fall in and climb out. Instead, they turn around or turn aside and find a new route.

Do more of what works and less of what doesn’t. Resistance is the rubber walls of your copper current, telling you where not to go.

You will encounter many points of resistance as you move forward in your Flow, and in your life. After looking at it like this, I made of a list in my mind of people, situations, and things that almost always represent resistance in my Flow. And I know that I don’t have to bother with them now. I don’t have to thrash my way through them or past them. Instead, I am all about finding the points of super-conductivity. My Flow and my manifesting will wing me to right where I want to be, and even help me discover where that is, as long as I listen and react right.

So think right now: What problem have you been chewing on lately that has a point of resistance? Can you minimize your involvement with it? In my own case, I can’t avoid this person altogether, but I can keep our interaction to a minimum. Maybe you can do that too.

Then identify where you feel ease–where have things just been quietly working out for you? What area of your life is mellow and fulfilling? Who is involved in that area? They must be conductive to you. Sometimes we overlook the conductive areas of our lives since we take them for granted. But they are indicators of Flow there. How can you bring that Flow into the  troubled area? Maybe you can, maybe you can’t. Maybe you’ll need to start down a new road–and when you do, look for your Flow to respond by manifesting circumstances that hurtle your forward and bring you just what you need.