‘Where There Is Water, There Is Life.’
“Where your mind goes, energy flows.” (Tony Robbins)
‘Where there is water, there is life. You are mostly water. Tend to whatever keeps you flowing.’
It is one of the first things we look for anywhere. On a distant planet, in a desert, in the ground beneath a new home. Find water, and life becomes possible. No water, and everything dries up and stops. It is the simplest law there is, and it turns out it is written right through us.
You Are Mostly Water
Your body is made up of around 60% water. Think about that for a moment. More than half of you, right now, is water. It is no wonder when you don’t drink enough, everything slows down. Your body drags, your mood dips and your thinking becomes foggy. We treat water as an afterthought, when we are mainly water, walking around in a body.
A friend of mine, a fitness trainer, is passionate about filtering his water. He came to visit me one day and told me he felt physically ill and drained of energy. I asked him what had changed lately. He had just moved into a bigger house and had not yet set up his water filter, because he had run out of time to get the plumbing bits to hook it up. That was his ‘aha’ moment. A week later he called to say he felt like himself again, simply from filtering his water again. What we put into the flow matters as much as the flow itself.
It Is Not Only the Water in Your Body
Here is where it gets interesting, because you are not the only thing that is meant to flow. Your energy is meant to flow as well. Your emotions are meant to flow. Your days, creativity, connection with people, all of it is meant to keep moving through you, the way a stream keeps moving through the land.
And you can feel the difference between water that moves and water that does not. A running stream stays clear and alive. A pond with no way in and no way out goes still, cloudy and eventually stagnant. We are exactly the same. When we hold in the hurt, sit too long in the same worry, swallow the words we needed to say, or stop doing the things that make us feel alive, we dam ourselves up. And what does not flow in us starts to go stagnant.
Stagnant, or Flowing
This is really the whole map of my book in one image. When our energy stops moving, we drift into ‘The Tip,’ the cluttered, heavy, stagnant place where everything pools and nothing clears. When it flows again, we find our way to ‘The Garden,’ where there is a gentle, moving stream running through it, keeping everything alive.
As I picture it in the book, your daily energy is like water in a bucket. You wake each morning with the bucket full. Every worry and every held-in feeling is like a small hole letting the water leak out, so that by the middle of the afternoon you are running near empty. Tending to what keeps you flowing is how you patch the holes and keep the water in. As Tony Robbins put it, where your mind goes, energy flows. Point it well, and the flow follows.
Tend to What Keeps You Flowing
So the invitation is a simple one. Notice what keeps you flowing, and tend to it on purpose. For the body, that might be good water, real food, movement, and proper rest. For the heart and mind, it is letting feelings actually move through you rather than damming them up, saying the thing instead of swallowing it, spending time with the people who lift you, and returning to whatever makes you feel most alive.
And please hear this as no judgement at all. We all get dammed up sometimes. Life happens, and the flow slows for everyone. This is not about doing it perfectly. It is about gently noticing where you have gone a little still, and opening one small channel to let the water move again.
A Question to Sit With
This week, take an honest and kind look at yourself and ask:
‘What has gone a little stagnant in me, and what one thing would help it flow again?’
Where there is water, there is life. You are mostly water. Tend to whatever keeps you flowing, and watch how much more alive you feel.
Have a great week,
Michael
📖 Where the F*ck Do Our Minds Go? → Get the book