Prioritize Your Zone:

From the vantage point of my rented kayak, everything was in perspective. One mile wide, ten miles long and 472 feet deep of clear glacier water as my playground with the glacier peaks in front of me. I paddled on the silky smoothness of the lake surface heading toward one shore looking for the eagle’s nest, then across the windy middle to explore the sunny shore on the other side. 
 
Though I would normally be up for a great workout heading up the lake, the shore ahead that I had all to myself beckoned me and all I wanted to do was pull up in the sand, lay back, and fall asleep soaking in the sun. Lapping crystal clear water, 80 plus degrees in Glacier National Park, Montana, in May, and silence. It was a recipe for rest, rejuvenation, and inspiration. 
 
This is one of my zones. Silence. Water. Solitude. I can love the buzz of a crowd while listening to musicians, a hard day’s labor on the land, writing an inspiring piece, an uphill ride in the desert, conversations into the night with friends, a long meditation, playing in the energy of elevation with my clients, and the exhilaration of sailing on a single tac all the way down river. All I wanted to do in this moment was be still, soak in the silence and let the sun press it into every cell.
 
Whatever puts you in the zone, your zone, puts you in a state of flow, creativity, openness and calm where, as the Taoist says, you do nothing and everything gets done. Prioritizing this way of life isn’t well understood in the mainstream where productivity and the rules of external stimulation, even what looks relaxing, are god. 
 
But of course, you’re not looking to follow the crowd. You want access to your ever-evolving extraordinary self—physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually—to the core. Zones and flow states are studied and practiced by athletes as well as executives where they lose self-consciousness and move into the mastery of their craft. 

With your life as your craft—business/job/volunteer/parent, relationships, health and vitality, finances, artistry—your zones will take your life far beyond a mindset or anything you could effort or strategize from your brain. Cultivating a flow-state that feeds each part of your life means:

1. Discovering and knowing what your zone feels like. 
2. Discovering and knowing what puts you there. 
3. Seeing the value and potential of this state.
4. Having the courage to act on it.
5. Being willing to prioritize your life around your zones.
6. Being willing to become the greater self you become in this place.
7. Knowing Yourself, Loving your life and being the extraordinary human being that you are!

I fell asleep in the sun with the kayak as my bed, the majesty of the glaciers watching over me, one foot dangling in the clear water rocking me as it lapped on shore, and the beach to myself. As much as I make time for solitude, it had been a long while since I’d had this deep kind of stillness. When I woke, the ideas were flowing. I grabbed my phone, which had no cell service, to take down my notes. Flow.
 
We need deep zones and time away as well as every-day zone-spaces that make our lives ever-more fulfilling, effective and full of love and inspiration.
 
What are your zone spaces? How will you begin to discover them? Or if you know them, how will prioritize them in new ways?

Here’s to more of You in this world, 

Shelley