You Don't Need to Force It - You Just Need to Flow With It

In this episode, we

1. Get clarity around what ‘flow’ & ‘force’ actually mean so there are clear indicators of whether you're living in force or flow,
2. Look at Some of The subtle ways we try to force things that we don’t realize,
3. Understand the Deep, Mental, Emotional & Energetic Drivers of Force & Flow, &
4. Activate Living in Your Flow with a Few Powerful Questions & Shifts so You Can Start Manifesting & Receiving More Right Away!

Thank you so much for joining me from wherever you are in time & space!
Every step you take for yourself, you also take for everyone else <3

XoXo
Lauren

Transcript

Lauren (00:00.664)
Hello, my loves, and welcome back again to another episode of Native Growth. I'm so grateful you're here joining me today from wherever you are in time and space. Today's episode is all about the difference between force and flow, and I have felt so called to create this episode for the last couple of weeks, but I really feel like it was just super harmonious today given everything that we talked about in the last episode and you know how I love to flow from one episode to another and share some of those similar concepts. 
So today we will talk a little bit about specifically what I mean when I talk about the difference between force and flow. I'm sure you already have a pretty good idea, but we'll talk a little bit about that. Most importantly, we'll talk about the subtle ways that we do try to force things that we don't often realize we do. We'll talk about the mental, emotional, and energetic drivers of force and flow, and we will definitely include in this, you know how I love to be problem -solution oriented, so we'll definitely include some great ways that you can get more into your flow and have more peace while achieving and receiving more out of life.

So I'm gonna talk about force first because again, we're problem solution oriented, right? And so if we're looking at force and what it means to live in a life from a place of force, living in a way that is more forceful, I thought it would be really helpful to pull some dictionary definitions and a couple of them really stood out to me. The first one is physical coercion.

Which I feel like in the way that we live our daily lives is actually a lot more like mental -emotional coercion. Although when it comes to a lot of the things that we try to force to happen in a certain way, right? We try to force certain outcomes for certain things. We do it all the time, right? That definitely...

Lauren (02:17.816)
equates to what starts as a sort of mental -emotional coercion into a physical coercion, right? We're not necessarily talking about a physical coercion on a person necessarily, more on a situation and outcome, right? The second definition that really stood out to me is power to control, and this is... this is that definition right there, right? We try to have...

power over our situations all the time. We try to control our situations all the time. We are continuously forgetting how little control we actually have. We have influence, certainly, especially when you consider, you know, that you attract what you are and in that spiritual sense of creating your reality, we have influence. We have a lot of influence.

over the way that we create and design our reality, but we have very little control over what happens, how it happens, and when it happens, right? But these are the things that we try to control the most all the time, right? Even in the smallest sense, like when you're meditating and you are trying so hard to force your mind to be clear, or even for that matter, if you are trying to force yourself to meditate while in...

a stagnant position, you're sitting or you're laying down and you're trying to force yourself to meditate in that stagnancy. And you're just too uncomfortable, right? In these situations, it's, you know, it's not only forcing the meditation, we're also really trying to force ourselves to have some level of inner peace in that moment, right? Or when we're trying to force ourselves to believe that we're okay, or that it's all good. When

It's really not, and when we've actually been suppressing some of our thoughts and feelings and maybe using things like TV or our phone to distract ourselves from them. Right? Here's one that I think happens pretty commonly, right? Is when you try to force yourself to work out or to eat a salad or to journal or to have some kind of a personal or spiritual practice.

Lauren (04:42.36)
right, in an effort to be healthier. And I think a lot of times when we are forcing these new sorts of habits, we're, right, we're trying to force our manipulation over our current psychology, our physiology, our programming, our energy. We're trying to force those things to shift. We're trying to force ourself to want to do those things.

And of course, again, big picture, we're really trying to force an outcome, right? We're trying to force our body shape to be different. We're trying to force manifest something. We're trying to force some kind of personal spiritual development, but often because we have some kind of end goal in mind when we're trying to force those things, right? We notice how, as we're forcing these,

different kinds of things. One of the common underlying threads is that they all have a very specific outcome as opposed to just an intention, right? They're not process driven. They are product driven, right? How about when you've ever, you know, been with your toddler and your toddler's doing something and then you're trying to force your toddler to do something else, but they were already doing something and so they're not cooperating. They're not going with you on that one, right? We're really trying to...

force your toddler to act according to your current perceptions or your current needs in the moment and to move on your timetable as opposed to maybe being a little bit more flexible and going with theirs. Right? Here's another one, and this one is sneaky. I think it kind of, it creeps up on people when they don't realize it, and I know that I used to do this a lot because I am, I would say, recovered.

By now, I'm a recovered people pleaser. Obviously, it's very much within my heart and my soul to serve others. And if you're listening to this, I'm sure that you also have a huge heart and a huge soul and you desire so much to serve others too. And so this, the way that we try to force people to take our advice or we try to force...

Lauren (07:04.748)
people to see things from our perspective. We try to force people somehow some way to see a viewpoint that we can see from the outside or to feel better in a certain way because of a perspective that we can see that maybe they can't at that point in time. Right? So those ones, right? They sneak up on you because you have good intentions. Truly. Right?

When we're trying to force things, we know that we don't always have super good intentions. But definitely in this case, we have good intentions. Our hearts are in the right place and yet it just, it creeps up in you. And that's one of those cases where we just want the best for somebody, right? And so we can see maybe some...

clear pathways to that joy, to that ease, to that flow, and we just want the other person to see that too, and they just can't, and it goes back to that old saying, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink, right? Now the problem, the, we're gonna talk about this in layers, the kind of surface level problem, right, is that when we get in these modes, in these moments where we are trying to force,

an outcome. We are trying to force something to happen. We very often leave very little time for any kind of result to happen, right? We are just impatient. And we're probably trying to force because we're feeling impatient, right? Have you ever, have you ever, I know this is like, I was just thinking about the example I gave of toddlers, right? And

something that I've noticed a lot of especially new parents do is they're trying to force them and their kid to like hurry up and get ready and get out the door in the morning. And they're trying to force their kid to get their shoes on, but kids are little and they are not yet proficient at tying their shoes. And so they just think like, come on, tie your shoes, come on, tie your shoes, come on, tie your shoes. So then there's like this like, okay, hurry up, hurry up, hurry up. And then that kid is like, you know, and then it's like.

Lauren (09:14.392)
then they extra can't tie their shoes. And so the parents like, forget it, I'll just tie your shoes for you, right? It's just this super mode of like impatience that we get in, right? And this need that we have to keep talking, keep yelling, keep forcing, keep moving, keep doing something until something happens. Like whatever we want to happen just isn't happening fast enough. We're not seeing those results.

fast enough. And oftentimes when it comes to things that are going on more in our inner world, right? We oftentimes find that that leads to us even beating ourselves up. Like the example with we're trying to be healthier, right? We're trying to force ourselves to work out. We're trying to force ourselves to move our body, to eat healthier, to have a salad, all those types of things, right? We're like...

We can't eat faster, we can't work out faster, and so our brain transmutes that energy of it's gotta happen faster, but it can't happen faster. It transmutes that energy until I'm just gonna beat myself up until the results do start happening, or until the results happen more quickly, or more effectively, or whatever it is, right, that is operating on a very subconscious level. But energy is never created or destroyed, it only changes.

forms, right? So not only do we find in a lot of these situations that we might be beating ourselves up, we might be being very judgmental towards ourselves in a lot of these situations, we can see that there's an awful lot of other constrictive energy that just generally happens, right? And sometimes it escalates quickly and sometimes less quickly, but

the longer that results go unnoticed, results of any kind, right? Either it's going to happen or it's not going to happen, but the longer that results go unnoticed, the more constriction we feel because the more pressure we feel to make something happen. And I notice a lot that when it happens,

Lauren (11:26.904)
where it's you involved with another person, there's multiple people involved, a lot of times this results in arguments, right? Even arguments with your toddler, right? But they happen. Like we just, we have these arguments with people and, you know, they're trying to force something to happen and then those, that, that lack of congruency,

between the two people and the two ideas and what should or shouldn't happen. And that argument, right? And then soon that argument is then both people are feeling irritated and frustrated and then angry. And like those flames of anger and irritation start rising and that just creates, it just chokes the energy so much. It just creates so much more constriction as time goes on, an increasing amount of constriction and, and whether...

whether arguments are involved in the forced situation or not, I think we can all agree that the more things that we try to force or manipulate on a regular basis in our day -to -day lives, the more exhausted we feel. We are literally pulling our own energy out of our body, out of our heart, out of...

mind, right? We are pulling from our own pool of energy and using that energy to try to make things happen, whatever that is. And more often than not, it's in vain, right? More often than not, we wind up with a whole bunch of really failed expectations. And then we're even more exhausted, right?

we're feeling even worse about ourselves by that point, right? And the supporting layer underneath all of this is that the reason that you took that action in the first place, maybe it was planned or unplanned, but the reason you were trying to force something to go a certain way in the first place is because you thought that it would help you fill some

Lauren (13:55.544)
kind of a current void, right? Maybe, especially in that case of people pleasing and really hoping that that your loved ones would take your advice and see your perspective and do what you're telling them to do, right? We have this need for love. We have this need for belonging, right? We're feeling a void in our heart chakra of some kind and...

very often at the same time we're also feeling some level of grief, which also sits in the heart chakra and takes up space in the lungs, right? We just so badly want to know that we are loved and we also want our loved ones to know that we love them so much as well. And we're feeling like there's some kind of disharmony there, there's some kind of mismatch. And so we keep trying to...

force our advice and force our perspective and force things to go this way because we keep trying to fill the void of love there, right? A lot of times when we're trying to force things, especially when it comes to our fur babies, our human babies, other circumstances, we have this need for power. Deep in our solar plexus, we have this need to feel like we are an authority.

like people see us as a person of authority and of power and like we have our shit together, right? And oftentimes this is actually not the root of the problem. When I talk about like our chakras system, I think of it as a hose, right? And the water actually flows upward.

through the root chakra first, then the solar plexus, then, I mean, then the sacral, then the solar plexus, then the heart, and so on, upward, right? So when we feel this void in our solar plexus of this lack of power, the hose, the energetic hose is actually kinked farther down in our root chakra, right? So when we're feeling that lack of power and authority, that lack of confidence,

Lauren (16:11.352)
We're also feeling very much in our sacral chakra that lack of trust, primarily that lack of trust from others. For some reason we are feeling like other people can't or won't or just don't trust us with certain things and that's why we're not seen as a person of authority in a certain area. But again, even farther down in our root chakra, really it's a fear, right? It's a fear that we

are not who we think that we are. It's a fear that we might actually be less important than we would like to be. It's a fear that we might actually be irrelevant, right? And so when we look at these fears and these voids that we have, a lot of them are actually not based internally. They're based on

feedback that we're getting from our external environment from the people that we spend the most time with. So the real problem here is that there's no trust. Right? There's no... there's no real trust. We keep trying to force things because we just... we don't trust, right? We... we in big scale...

We don't trust that creator or the universe or god or whoever you want to call him. We don't trust that creator has our back and is co -creating our life with us every step of the way and that creator truly is doing creators best to create our life in a way that is as good or even better than

we are trying to make it or that we can even imagine that it can be, right? We just don't trust that creator has our back, right? Instead we just have this deeply seated belief that what we want to happen would never happen on its own. And so we have to make it happen. Like you and you alone have to make it happen, right? And in so doing,

Lauren (18:27.096)
I'm sure that when we take a moment and bring awareness to this, you can already be like, whoa, yeah, you know? And then when we stop a moment and feel what that feels like, we can feel the disharmony that creates deep within our soul for who we truly are. And it creates a very disharmonious relationship between us and creator, right? All relationships are built on trust. If we can't trust creator, why would creator trust us with bigger and better things, right?

And in the same breath, we probably also don't trust others, right? Maybe we don't trust others to do what's best for them or what's best for us, or we don't trust people to support us when we need it most, right? Again, we're, we're however consciously or non -consciously creating disharmony in our relationships. And a lot of times I'm sure for all of you listening who are people pleasers, recovering people pleasers.

You know, in hindsight, that not only had the relationship been disharmonious, but this in fact is the root of the lack of authenticity that went on between you all and the lack of autonomy that you could feel within your relationships. The inability to just be completely and wholly, 1000 % light of the world who you are in all of your glory without being judged.

Right? Because there was no trust. There was no authenticity, no autonomy. Right? And lastly, you probably don't trust yourself. You don't trust that you can be who you truly desire to be. Again, you probably hear that calling of your soul in probably a very quiet little whispers. Right? You hear that calling of your soul reminding you that you're better than this and that you are powerful and you can create magic.

but you don't trust yourself to be that person, or you don't believe you're worthy of that much power or influence, right? So going down to the bottom layer, the real root of this very forceful life that some of us tend to lead sometimes is what we really want is to become, right? The real...

Lauren (20:56.216)
root layer is with our identity, right? We're trying to force ourselves to eat healthier and to work out because we want to be healthy, we want to be fit, we want to be viewed as someone who has perhaps a perfect body or a perfect life, right? We're meditating and we're journaling and we're starting a spiritual practice because we want to be peaceful.

We want to be masters of manifestation. We want to be masters of our reality, right? We're telling people what to do because we want to be helpful. We want to be loved. We want to be relevant and needed, right? That need to be needed, it can creep up on you and it can also be so incredibly detrimental. Please make sure that you and your loved ones are keeping an eye on that, right? But at the baseline,

we we feel our constrictions and we want to be free, right? We just want to be free. And as I was saying at the beginning of this episode, it's really all about the difference between force and flow, right? We don't have to force everything all of the time. We can fill all of our voids. We can have all of our basic physiological

mental, emotional, and energetic needs met. All of those needs can be met and we can do it without force. Not only can we do it without force, but in fact I think by the end of this episode you'll see that when you do step into flow it actually plays a huge role just by virtue of the fact that you are more in flow, in flow with the with the divine timing and divine circumstances of

creator of the universe, more in flow with your own nature and being being in tune and honest and receptive of what it is that you need, what your standards are, the minimum of what you're willing to accept, right? All of those things. The more

Lauren (23:16.408)
quickly and effectively you can actually manifest. You can actually become that master of yourself, that master of your reality, that master of manifestation, right? You can manifest that higher being, that higher self, that higher life. You can do all of that. You can have your cake and eat it too. You can do all of that so much more quickly and effectively when you just lean in, right? And...

Here's, here's what I mean, okay? Some questions for you to ponder while I'm talking real quick. What if you traded expectations of outcomes for intentions? Right? So in other words, what if you traded an end goal or product for a process? Right? What if you focused...

more on that process and less on the goal. What if you decided to focus on loving your body and your mind and your heart and allowing healthier habits to naturally unfold from that love?

What if you gave your toddler, or your dog maybe, choices and insights instead of because I said so's? What if you listened to your loved ones and asked them truth revealing questions instead of telling them what to see or what to do?

What if, before you take that job, give that advice, go to the gym, enroll in that class, engage with that person, what if, before you did that, you asked yourself, am I doing this from a place of force? Do I feel like I have to do it? Or am I doing it from a place of flow? Because it is

Lauren (25:25.016)
naturally a byproduct of the love that I feel like nurturing myself and my life with today. Which of my needs do I think this will meet? Do I need to do this to fill that need? Or is there a more loving way, a more productive way perhaps, to fill that need?

Lauren (25:56.248)
Right? What a perspective shift. What a perspective shift. And I'm only sharing this because these are huge shifts that I've had earlier on in my life. And these shifts and many other shifts that I have shared with my clients that have made a huge difference to them as well. A huge difference in the way that they live their entire life from day to day. Right? Because we notice how much lighter and easier...

that already feels, right? How much better it feels knowing that you can have your cake and eat it too. No constriction, no pressure, no judgment, no beating yourself up, right? Notice how much more harmony is already created internally and then naturally can be created externally, right? Within your life, within your relationships.

just by having that perspective shift, right? And so I also wanted to look at some dictionary definitions of flow, because it's really, especially I feel like in the spiritual community, it's really easy to be like, in force and then in flow. And sometimes we just like throw these words around, but then we don't really give them solid definitions. We don't really give them solid meanings. And so then we...

maybe sometimes become unclear of what it is that we're aiming for, unclear of what our intentions truly are, and when the more unclear that we are of our intentions and our thought process, the easier it is to get distracted away from it. Right? We know this. So the first definition of flow I found that I really love is to proceed continuously and smoothly. Right? To proceed.

continuously and smoothly. So there's a starting point somewhere and it flows and it goes, but it's continuous and it's smooth. Notice how when we're trying to force things, there is energy that is obviously moving because it always is, but there are choke points, right? As opposed to a flow, it proceeds continuously.

Lauren (28:18.744)
and smoothly, no choke points, it's relaxed, right? Another one is to hang loosely at full length. And I love this one because that idea of full length, again, it encourages and inspires that level of autonomy and authenticity. When I am in flow, not only am I loose and relaxed and smooth and continuous, I am at full length. Isn't that awesome?

The third one that I found that I also really love is to proceed from a source. And that inspired more questions for myself and now that I have for you. And this one question is, what wishes to proceed continuously and at full length from within you?

Lauren (29:13.272)
Noodle on that.

Right? Because what we find when we're living in this flow, right, with this continuousness, with this smoothness, with this authenticity and autonomy at full length, right, we can see how naturally, natively, what flows from within us is from a place of love.

It's from a place of gratitude and it's done with the energy of mindfulness and with the energy of trust. Right? We can trust creator to have our back. We can trust ourselves to continue flowing, right? Because there's no pressure to try to be anything other than what we are right now, especially when we know that we already have set our intentions.

and our heart and in our mind and we've planned and we've started to take aligned action with those intentions. Right? The actions are aligned with our intentions, which is aligned with the trust and the love and the gratitude that flows from within. Right? It all naturally just lines up on its own. We didn't have to force it. We didn't have to create choke points. We didn't have to...

beat ourselves up about it. There had to be no judgment, no arguments, right? It just happens, right? That's being in flow. That is allowing instead of expending, right? That's allowing energy, which already naturally exists within and all around us, to flow through us.

Lauren (31:11.832)
as opposed to expending a certain amount of energy within us that ultimately exhausts us trying to force things to happen. Right? When I was diligently training in martial arts, we had this code that we would say, and one of the lines in it said, letting energy which wishes to exist, exist. Right? We are just, that's allowing. That's just...

allowing energy to exist and allowing energy to flow, right? And because we are just allowing and in that flow at full length with our authenticity and our autonomy, it also creates so much more space for us to take ourselves out of the situation.

Right? From an internal, like taking a personal type of perspective, right? We can take ourselves out of this situation in order to practice discernment. Right? When we're not so in it, then we can pull back a little bit and have more of that space to decide and discern what is flowing, what's...

happening within, what's happening without, and what we're going to engage with and how we're going to engage with it, right? And what is going to continue to encourage the current flow that is happening right now, right? So all of those...

Clear thoughts, clear decisions, clear aligned actions, clear intentions, those things that had already lined up, they continue to be lined up. It creates a level of sustainability with the alignment and with the overall flow. And the more that we do that, as I've said in different ways in other podcast episodes, the more that we do that, the more that we naturally become.

Lauren (33:31.768)
Right? That higher level version of yourself, that more favorite level version of yourself, that version of yourself that is more aligned with who you know you truly are deep in your soul, you naturally become that person and you naturally circulate that energy, which by the law of circulation, it's called that for a reason, it comes back to you.

Right? It comes back to you and continues to validate that beingness, that new level of I am. Right? And the more that we do that, obviously, the more that we engage the law of attraction because we always attract what we are. Right? We always do, constantly. So the more that we practice being in flow, now that we know what that means,

the more we engage the law of circulation, the more we engage the law of attraction, right? And to the point that perhaps we made earlier, the more that we can be free because we're simply allowing anyway, but then we're also in the process becoming masters of creation and masters of our growth.

and our elevation, masters of our development, masters of love, right? Masters of peace. We naturally master these things over time the more that we just remind ourselves, wait, I don't have to force that. wait, the universe does always have my back. I don't have to worry about how or when that shit is gonna happen. I just gotta relax and know that it's already taken care of. It's already there.

in this quantum universe we live in, in which all possibilities exist simultaneously, it's already taken care of. It's already done. I don't have to force anything. I have to allow it. Right? Michael Beckwith says that we should stop seeking to get and instead start seeking to let. I don't have to get it. I don't have to force it. I just have to let it. I have to allow it. I just have to be open to receiving it, and I have to be open

Lauren (35:54.808)
the idea that I can receive it coming from a source other than the expansion of my own energy. I don't have to force it, I don't have to make it, I don't have to... I don't have to exert my own power over it or my own control over it, right? I just have to know what my intention is and align my action with that intention and align those with my being.

align those with the energy from which it originates and then allow it to flow continuously, smoothly, and at full length. It's already done. How awesome, right? I hope that this episode was just as awesome for you as it has been for me. Thank you again so much for tuning in. I so appreciate you taking all of the time.

that you spend with me. If you love this episode, please make sure that you subscribe to the channel so you get notified every time a new episode comes out. Please share it. Please like it. Please send me some comments. I turned on this really cool new feature. There's a link to it in the show notes where you can now text and I will get a text so you don't have to email or write a huge long thing. You can just send a quick text. It's super easy to do.

And I would just love that. I love to connect with all of you on any level that you would like to connect with me on for sure. and if you didn't catch it, the last couple of episodes, I recently did start opening up some, more spots for different kinds of coaching sessions. I have break the barrier, which is a two hour session with me where we.

do exactly that. We break your barriers to your highest self, your highest growth, right? To your highest elevation. And it's like a skyrocketing launch pad breakout session, right? And so it's two hours. It can be pretty intense, but it's amazing. People have loved it. And then my six month program I'm now accepting some more applications for as well. It is called Acorn 2 .0.

Lauren (38:13.432)
It's six months of one -on -one with me. It includes coaching, obviously. We meet every two weeks. You get homework in between and include some intuitive channeled messages. You get access to message me in between our sessions if you have questions. And it is the signature offering that I've had for many, many years that allows people to not only have access to the launch pad, they have access to

the roadmap, they have access to the fuel, they have access to everything they need to get from here to Pluto, they have access to everything that they need to get from here to even farther beyond, because I don't tell you what to do. You already know what to do. I give you the tools to discover what you need to do and you run with it, right? But having that access,

that ability for us to work together for six full months ensures that you not only get to where you thought you would go, but you already get farther beyond. And then by the time that our sessions are over, you confidently feel and know that you have the tools to continue growing, to continue elevating, to continue being and manifesting even higher and higher levels of love, of wealth.

of peace, of joy, of purpose, of fulfillment, of blessings on every single level, right? It's all part of life. It's not just money, it's not just your job, it's not just your relationships, it's all of it. And so we cover it all, right? It's beautiful, it's wonderful, and I can't wait to see you inside. So there's a link to the Linktree that has applications for both of those, and I just can't wait to see you inside.

Thanks again so much for joining me today. Always remember, you are meant for more. It's coded within you. Your wealth, your blessings, your native growth. I love you. Have a great day. Mwah.