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.