I was really damn horny one night back when I lived in Nashville, so I downed some drinks and went out to my personal Hell: Broadway. Hunting for a pretty 21-year-old tourist down to be my girl for the night.
These girls weren’t biting. I didn’t even want to fish for them.
I ran game on a fuckable girl at one bar – observational indirect opener, looking her in the eyes. Getting a comfortable conversation rolling, testing the waters.
She was a bit into it, but we both viscerally knew – I didn’t desire her enough. Even if I thought she was objectively pretty. Maybe if we were both lonely and needy, we’d hook up that night, but she wasn’t feeling the right fire coming from me, so she stayed cold despite me knowing how to hit all the right attraction triggers.
I didn’t want her badly enough.
I’ll try being more playful next time, I thought.
“What’s your favorite color?” I half-assedly asked a girl on the dance floor of another bar. We were packed in there like sardines, only a few inches of room between us.
“Blue.”
“Cool. Mine’s red.”
I don’t want to fucking talk to this girl. She’s cute, but I don’t want her badly enough.
On my way out of the next bar, I spied a gorgeous blonde girl in a tight blue dress crossing the street.
Tension pulsed through my body. I was firing on all cylinders. On rails, I caught up with her and got her attention.
“I love your look. You look like an old-timey actress,” I opened her, smirking. Desire flowing out of my eyes.
“Yeah, I look like a Southern Belle tonight.”
“Where are you from?”
“New York.”
“I was gonna say, I could tell you were from New York.”
“How come?”
“Cause all the prettiest girls are from New York,” I smirked.
As I kept seducing this bombshell, her friends sadly dragged her away into a bar, even if she was starting to melt for me. But I still gave her as much fire, as much teasing and touching as I could.
That experience inspired me to check out an acting class, to try something new with myself. I wanted to meet another girl with that old-timey actress look, and bring out my high school theatre kid side for the first time since I’d graduated. I audited a class soon after, where my flow state, the feeling of dancing through life like Shiva returned. I tried registering as a student there, but the studio never answered me.
My craving for exploring my creative edges has never faded since.
Gentlemen, I’ve been obsessed with the topic of Flow States all year.
I’ve talked about these in the context of dating and meeting women, but now let’s zoom out.
Let’s talk about your life’s purpose, and how to find it. It’s easier than you may think, BUT it requires you to burn down your false idols. It requires you to face painful truths about yourself. It requires you to stop forcing your life to happen, and to live with no regrets. It requires you to stop seeking mortal guidance, even “signs from the universe”, and to look within for God’s direction.
You exist for a purpose, dear reader. And this is a far deeper, far more joyful purpose than keeping your body healthy, paying bills, having sex, having kids to keep your genes in the pool, being productive, then dying.
You become aware of your purpose by following your Flow States. Your body will tell you when it’s doing what it’s built for, and it will viscerally notify you through pain and resistance and neediness when you’re forcing yourself down a path you’re not built for.
You may be productive, earning money, keeping yourself in shape, dating around a bit. Improving your mindsets. Doing the inner work. Seeing your successes. Doing things you enjoy. But PRODUCTIVITY IS NOT FLOW, even if you’re good at what you’re doing. You can work hard and smart on a valuable task, and still not be possessed by it. You can just be sitting, relaxing, chilling, and be in Flow all the way through.
Hell, I was in an intense Flow State last week when I was eating a sandwich.
Flow is not a productivity hack or a self-improvement tool or a mindset. It’s an abundant energy surrounding you every moment of your life. When you’re in alignment, you’re tapped into it. When you’re out of alignment, doing something contrary to what you’re built for, Flow is out of your perception.
So, dear reader.
What are you built for?
I won’t give you a listicle of advice or questions you can use to logically deduce your purpose. This would lead you astray.
Feel into your heart. Forget all the motivational word salad you’ve been reading. Forget your needy fantasies, and simply ask yourself what you’ve been built for.
A bowl is in alignment when you’re eating cereal out of it. This is what it was built for. You could drum on this bowl. You could pour dish soap and vinegar into it, and make it a fruitfly trap. You could wear it as a hat. None of this changes what the bowl was built for, and you’re the same way.
A coffee mug was built for – you guessed it – coffee. You could eat cereal out of it while drinking coffee out of the bowl. This would feed you and caffeinate you, but wouldn’t it be far easier, far more ALIGNED if you drank the coffee out of the mug and ate cereal out of the bowl?
Now.
What are YOU built for? What are your body, your sex, your head, and your heart built for?
What function is your DNA’s innate code + its epigenetic alterations meant to serve for the human genome, for humanity as a whole?
Questions to ponder. Not something I can answer for you, certainly not in this article. I can’t tell you who or what you’re made for, but I can give you the right questions and models that’ll help you discover that for yourself.
We’ll all instrumental in the Symphony of Life. Or if you want to do another cereal bowl analogy, some of us are Life’s milk. Some of us are the cereal. Some of us are the bowl. Some of us are the spoon. Some of us are the table the bowl is on. Some of us are the drawer the spoon is stored in… All built for different purposes.
Remind yourself of this next time you feel insecure around someone who’s supposedly better than you, and next time you feel like looking down on someone who’s different than you in any way, including in vibration.
None of us is better or worse than someone else. Some of us are simply more in Flow than others are.
Are you on your EDGE?
I used to think Flow States were random and triggered by something outside yourself.
Now let’s re-think cause and effect. It’s not that you come across the right circumstances to change your life, then fall into Flow. You get a glimpse of Flow, then decide whether or not to invite more of it into you. The circumstances and successes and people you manifest into your life are a CONSEQUENCE of you being in Flow (or not), not its cause.
The difference between being in Flow and simply grinding is whether you’re on your Edge.
Your Edge is your central life purpose. It’s the reason you wake up every day full of energy and vitality. It’s the challenge you’re bravely facing every day of your life. It’s the mission all else in your life revolves around. It’s the “why” that motivates you to effortlessly crush all the “obstacles” in your way.
If you’re sluggish to define this, you’re not on your edge. If you think “well, I’m working a lot on my work right now, so I guess this is my edge…” your heart’s not into it. You’re not on your edge.
Maybe self-improvement is your current edge.
It has been for me.
I’d go to the gym in high school and in my first year of college firing on all cylinders. Even if I’d gotten shit-quality sleep the previous night, I’d still be a beast. Those days, my entire life – school, sports, my social life – revolved around testing my body’s limits and seeing what it’s truly made of. All my thinking revolved around my goal of building my body. Making it stronger, faster, healthier, as athletic and muscular as it could possibly be.
40 lbs of muscle later, this feeling faded. I decided there was more to my life than making gains. I wanted to be more than some fit, healthy young guy on the white collar path.
When I work out these days, I may be stronger than I was back in the day, but I don’t get that “firing on all cylinders” feeling anymore. I enjoy lifting weights. I enjoy going for runs. I’m intentional about what I eat and supplement. I still make progress in fitness, but it’s not my edge anymore.
My second year of college, meeting girls was my edge. My life revolved around reclaiming the power in my dating life and in my sex.
Those days, approaching a girl at a party, feeling the sexual tension, and testing the waters got me firing on all cylinders. Challenging a girl, claiming my frame, making her think of me as a sexual being instead of as a nice guy with a nice body was exhilarating… aaaaaaand this edge of mine faded too.
Now, I don’t get excited to meet random girls anymore. Talking to them is predictable. Attracting them is predictable. Doesn’t mean I’m not taking action when I meet a girl who really speaks to me, but I had to go through this edge of mine and grow out of it to LEARN WHICH GIRLS TRULY SPEAK TO ME and focus on them instead of just trying to get laid with any random girl.
If you’re insecure about your body or your lifestyle or your sexual appeal, then self-improvement is a worthwhile edge for you that’ll help get you in Flow. Working out, cleaning up your diet, putting yourself out there to meet girls and overcoming your fears around them, quitting your addictions and vices (including porn), will make you feel that sweet sweet tension and improve your capacity to carry it.
But don’t be the guy who majors in the minors.
Go down the rabbit holes, then get back up to Earth. Your deepest life purpose is NOT your semen retention streak, your inner work, going x days without alcohol, cold approaching girls, keeping your body in shape, or seeking wisdom about how life works.
When one Edge of yours stops putting you in Flow, it’s time you find a new Edge or live a stagnant, dry life in a Flow-drought.
(in fact, the boost of energy guys feel when they’re on Nofap is actually their body’s tension-carrying capacity rising. it’s one way they’re inviting Flow into their body)
If you’re still not sure whether you’re currently in Flow, I’ll give you a quick question that’ll answer that one.
Are you seeking distractions from your life?
Your soul always yearns for Flow. You’re magnetically drawn to it. People are magnetically drawn to those who are more in Flow than they are. This is why some people look up to celebrities. This is why boring, formulaic online self-improvement gurus who parrot the same basic shit the rest of them do can have significant followings, even if they’re not quite in Flow. Their followers are EVEN LESS IN FLOW than they are. This is why people obsess over TV shows and movies, and need the next episode NOW, even if they have work in the morning and have already binged 4 episodes tonight. Watching these fictional characters live their lives gets some people more in Flow than their own lives do!
This is why you could be in a drought with women when you’re “in the trenches”, frustrated with your life and hoping it all pays off someday, then get female attention everywhere you go once you’re starting to “make it”.
When a guy gets a girlfriend and gets far more female attention than he ever did when he was single, it’s not that these women smell he’s got options, which is a false sequence of cause and effect some guys believe in – that you need to have girls or social proof to get girls.
Rather, these girls smell the Flow on this guy. It’s not that he has a girl and is thus “in demand”. He’s “in demand” because his girl has inspired him to open himself to Flow.
When that girl from your past dumped you and you got super down on yourself about it, it’s not that losing her made you lose your Flow. You lost your immersion in Flow, then she got frustrated with you for not having it anymore.
If you’re uncontrollably, compulsively watching porn or binge drinking or watching TV or treating the people in your life poorly, that’s because these activities are getting you closer to Flow, closer to sweet FREEDOM, ironically enough. I don’t recommend you force yourself to quit them. You’ll relapse harshly when you get sick of pushing Flow away. Rather, the more you get in Flow, the less you’ll want to escape your life or force it to change. Being in Flow makes quitting bad habits effortless.
You’re compulsively escaping your life because you’re off your purpose. You may be grinding, but you’re not living. Kicking these escapist habits means building a life you don’t want to escape from. Not kicking the habits, and only THEN living an abundant life.
You can find people off their edge packing bars every weekend for this very reason. An escapist night out gets them closer to Flow than their mundane life does.
Being on your edge is easy, but it’s not effortless. If you’re truly on your edge, you don’t feel like you’re forcing anything. Your alignment is effortless, but the effort of action needs to come from you.
I feel POSSESSED writing this one book I’ve had in the works since 2017. I’m obsessed with this story. (and I promised a buddy of mine I’d get it done by the end of September, so I’m getting cracking on it every day these days)
I identify with the version of myself who’s already completed it. I know that picking it as my current edge gets me in Flow. That I’m meant to finish it and publish it.
But I still need to take action and responsibility to get it done. Living an important life means taking responsibility for important things.
I still have to grind day after day and put the effort in. I still have to take care of my life and my needs outside of working on this thing; I’m not slacking on my fitness, my eating, my overall physical/mental/spiritual health and all the associated habits, keeping a roof over my head, my socializing, or my sexuality, even if they don’t quite get me on my edge. I understand that these things revolve around my edge, and that being on my edge makes the rest of my life easier and more joyful, but I’m not letting them be any less important.
It’s not that prior edges of yours diminish in importance once you grow through them. They just become smaller compared to your new ones. First, you build a small shed, then you build a three-storey house beside it, then you build a 10-storey apartment complex, then you build a 30-storey skyscraper. What’ll you build that’s 50 storeys?
Before we cut this article, I’ll give you a quick list of signs you’re in Flow:
- Frequent “deja vu” moments (you’re hopping timelines closer to the one your soul intended before incarnating on this Earth. that’s why you already remember it)
- Not giving a shit about your past or your future (if you’re stuck in the past, constantly reminiscing over a certain season where you had more abundance, it’s because you were more in Flow then than you are now)
- Feeling POSSESSED by a project or an activity, not simply enjoying it (keep in mind that you’re allowed to do things you enjoy for the hell of it, even if they’re not your edge!)
- Not looking up or down at anyone. Letting everyone be who they are instead of wishing you could change yourself or someone else.
- Being able to live on minimal sleep. Having so much energy pulsing through you that sleepless nights barely hold you back (get 8-9 hours a night though. I’m talking about the occasional sleepless night not holding you back, not you having a “sleep is for the weak” mindset)
- Everything in your life coming together naturally and at just the right times. Lucky coincidences happen to you frequently, if not daily.
When I started this blog and this business, I was just a young guy who’d dated around a bit, slept around a bit, looking to make some income off sharing his wisdom and helping men understand women better.
Now my holistic self is evolving. So should my coaching thing.
I won’t just teach you how to attract and date the women of your dreams anymore, though I’ll still teach you everything I know about that.
Rather, we’ll focus on getting you in Flow FIRST, because as I’ve learnt the hard way for years on end, nothing in your life really works until you get that in check first. Then we’ll work on the dating stuff, fitness/health stuff, and all else that’s necessary.
Ready to be my next client success story?
-Ben
