Today I Choose to be Fluid – How to be Fluid

For decades, I resisted change — gripping routines, job roles, and plans with white knuckles so tight my engagement ring left permanent indentations on my fingers. I was the queen of contingency planning, the woman who had backup plans for her backup plans, who scheduled “spontaneity” into her calendar. Change felt dangerous, unpredictable, a threat to the carefully constructed life I’d built brick by methodical brick.

Then life did what life does: it laughed at my plans. Hurricane after hurricane, both literal and metaphorical, swept through my carefully ordered world. Helene, Milton, Curtis’s health crisis. Career upheaval. The kids launching into their own chaotic lives. Each storm left debris where my neat plans used to be, and I had to learn something I’d spent sixty years avoiding: how to flow with the current instead of fighting it.

The lesson came from the most unexpected place — watching water move around rocks in a creek on vacation. It was so profound, I filmed it as a reminder. The water never fought the boulder; it simply found its way around, over, through whatever obstacles appeared. It adapted instantly, naturally, without the drama and resistance I brought to every change. That’s when I realized fluidity wasn’t about having no structure; it was about having flexible structure, like bamboo bending in a typhoon while rigid trees snap and fall.

The Cost of Rigid Living

For most of my adult life, I wore rigidity like armor. My schedule was sacred. My routines were non-negotiable. Deviation from the plan triggered anxiety that made my chest tight and my thoughts race. I thought this was being responsible, prepared, adult. What I didn’t realize was how much energy it took to maintain that level of control, how exhausting it was to fight every unexpected current.

The physical toll was real. My shoulders lived permanently hiked up near my ears. My jaw ached from clenching. I got headaches when meetings ran long, when traffic was bad, when life dared to color outside the lines I’d drawn. My body was in constant low-level stress, always braced for the next disruption to my carefully orchestrated world.

The emotional cost was even higher. When plans fell through — and they always did — I felt like a failure. When circumstances changed — and they always do — I felt betrayed by life itself. I was fighting the fundamental nature of existence, demanding that the universe comply with my spreadsheets and timelines. No wonder I was exhausted.

Learning Fluidity Through Crisis

My first real lesson in fluidity came during Hurricane Milton. Curtis was stuck in a flooded hospital with the roads blocked, water was entering my house for the first time in 28 years, my fence, well it was just gone. Suddenly all my careful planning meant nothing. The water didn’t care about my schedule, my deadlines, my need to control outcomes. It simply did what water does — it found the low places and filled them.

Watchig the winds howl and the rain raining sideways, I felt something shift inside me. The panic I expected didn’t come. Instead, there was this strange sense of surrender. Not giving up — surrender. Like finally releasing a breath I’d been holding for decades. We were going to deal with whatever came next when it came next, because that’s all we could do.

The weeks that followed taught me more about adaptability than all my business training combined. When the electricity went out, we adapted. While Curtis was waiting to be evacuated, we waited.

Curtis’s Health Crisis: When Plans Mean Nothing

But the real master class in fluidity came when the water receded, Curtis was evacuated to HCA Trinity and I was finally able to see him.  Sepsis had set in and all my contingency planning, all my careful financial preparation, all my need to control outcomes — none of it mattered when we were sitting in a hospital waiting room at 2 AM, listening to machines beep while doctors spoke in careful, measured tones.

That night, I felt the rigid structures of my life dissolving like sugar in water. Work deadlines seemed absurd. Social obligations felt meaningless. My color-coded calendar might as well have been confetti. What mattered was this moment, this uncertainty, this complete inability to plan for tomorrow when tonight wasn’t even guaranteed.

I learned to flow with medical schedules that changed hourly. To adapt to new information that shifted our reality every few hours. To bend with the exhaustion, the fear, the way hope and terror could occupy the same heartbeat. My body learned to relax into waiting rooms, to sleep in uncomfortable chairs, to find peace in the spaces between test results and doctor visits.

The Water Around Rocks Metaphor

During Curtis’s recovery, I spent a lot of time thinking about that creek, watching the video of the water navigating the rocky streambed. The water never resented the rocks for being there. It didn’t waste energy trying to move them or wish they were somewhere else. It simply found its way around, between, over whatever appeared in its path.

Some days the water is a trickle, barely making it over the pebbles. Other days it is a rushing torrent that carves new channels entirely. But it is always moving, always adapting, always finding a way forward. The rocks provided structure, even resistance, but they don’t stop the flow — they give it character, creating pools and eddies that make the journey more interesting.

I started thinking about the “rocks” in my own life differently. Maybe they weren’t problems to be solved but part of the landscape to navigate. Maybe my job wasn’t to eliminate obstacles but to develop the fluidity to flow around them gracefully. Maybe resistance wasn’t always the answer; sometimes the answer was adaptation.

Physical Sensations of Letting Go

Learning fluidity changed my body as much as my mindset. Those permanently raised shoulders began to drop. The tension I’d carried in my jaw for years started to release. When unexpected changes occurred, instead of that familiar tightness in my chest, I began to notice a different sensation — like exhaling after holding my breath, like sinking into a warm bath after a long day.

There’s a physical pleasure in flowing with circumstances rather than fighting them. When a meeting gets cancelled, instead of stress, there’s this little lift of possibility — what might happen in that unexpected free hour? When plans change, instead of anxiety, there’s curiosity — what new opportunity might this create? My nervous system learned to recognize change as interesting rather than threatening.

Even my sleep improved. Apparently, trying to control everything is exhausting work. When I stopped fighting the current of daily life, I started sleeping deeper, waking more refreshed, feeling more energized throughout the day. My body could finally rest instead of staying perpetually braced for the next disruption to my plans.

Professional Fluidity: The CFO Who Learned to Flow

You might think fluidity and financial leadership don’t mix, but I discovered the opposite. The more fluid I became personally, the better I got professionally. Instead of rigid adherence to budgets that were obsolete the moment they were printed, I learned to create flexible frameworks. Instead of seeing market changes as threats, I began recognizing them as information that could inform better decisions.

My team noticed the difference immediately. Where I used to respond to challenges with detailed problem-solving sessions and multiple contingency plans, I began listening more, observing patterns, allowing solutions to emerge organically. This wasn’t being unprepared — it was being adaptable. It was trusting that intelligence and experience could respond appropriately to whatever arose.

The irony was delicious: the more I let go of control, the more effective I became at guiding outcomes. Not through force or detailed planning, but through understanding systems, reading currents, and making adjustments that worked with natural flows rather than against them.

Emotional Fluidity in Relationships

Fluidity transformed my relationships too. I stopped trying to control how conversations went, what other people thought, how family dynamics played out. Instead, I learned to listen for undercurrents, to respond to what was actually happening rather than what I thought should be happening.

With Curtis, this meant adapting to his energy levels during recovery rather than pushing my agenda for how healing should look. With our adult children, it meant flowing with their need for independence while staying available for connection. With friends, it meant being present to what they needed rather than what I thought they needed.

The quality of these relationships deepened remarkably. When you’re not trying to steer every interaction, you can actually participate in them. When you’re not defending your position, you can hear other perspectives. When you’re not forcing outcomes, you can discover what wants to emerge naturally.

Seasonal Fluidity: Moving with Life’s Natural Rhythms

I began noticing that life has seasons, just like nature, and fighting those seasons was as futile as demanding that winter skip straight to spring. Sometimes life calls for action, growth, expansion — those are the spring and summer seasons of our existence. Other times, it calls for rest, reflection, letting go — the autumn and winter phases that our culture often treats as problems to be solved.

Learning to flow with my own seasons has been revolutionary. When energy is high and creativity is flowing, I work with that current. When fatigue sets in and clarity dims, I rest with that rhythm. I’ve stopped treating low-energy periods as personal failures and started recognizing them as natural parts of a larger cycle.

This seasonal awareness extends to daily rhythms too. I’m more alert in the morning, so I tackle challenging tasks then. I’m more reflective in the evening, so I use that time for writing and planning. Instead of forcing myself to be equally productive at all hours, I flow with my natural energy patterns. The result is both more effectiveness and more ease.

Practical Steps Toward Greater Fluidity

Start with Small Disruptions

Practice flowing with minor changes before life hands you major ones. When the restaurant is closed, see what other options emerge. When traffic is backed up, use the time for a phone call or simply for breathing. These small practice sessions build fluidity muscles for bigger challenges.

Notice Your Resistance Patterns

Pay attention to your body’s signals when plans change. Do your shoulders tense? Does your breathing get shallow? These physical responses are data about where you’re still trying to control outcomes. The awareness itself begins to create space for different responses.

Cultivate Curiosity About Change

Instead of immediately labeling changes as “good” or “bad,” try approaching them with curiosity. What might this unexpected development make possible? How might this disruption create new opportunities? Curiosity is fluidity’s best friend.

Practice the Pause

When faced with unexpected changes, pause before reacting. Take three deep breaths. Ask yourself: “How can I work with this situation rather than against it?” Often, the answer emerges in that pause between trigger and response.

Fluidity and Control: Finding the Balance

Learning fluidity doesn’t mean becoming passive or abandoning all structure. Like the creek bed that gives shape to the water’s flow, some boundaries and frameworks are helpful. The key is holding them lightly — having plans while remaining open to alternatives, setting goals while staying flexible about paths.

I still plan, budget, and organize. But now these structures feel more like suggestions than commands. When circumstances change, instead of seeing it as failure, I see it as information that might call for adjustments. The plan serves the purpose, not the other way around.

This balance between structure and fluidity has become one of my most valuable skills. It allows me to be prepared without being rigid, responsible without being controlling, intentional without being inflexible. Like water in a river, I have direction and purpose while remaining responsive to the terrain.

The Ongoing Practice of Flow

Today I choose to be fluid not because it’s easy — old habits of control still surface regularly — but because fluidity has given me access to a quality of life I never knew was possible. There’s so much more energy available when you’re not fighting reality. There’s so much more joy when you can dance with circumstances instead of wrestling them to the ground.

Some days the current is gentle and I barely notice I’m flowing with it. Other days it’s turbulent and requires all my attention to navigate gracefully. Both are part of the experience, both teach me something about moving through life with greater ease and effectiveness.

That creek continues to be my teacher. I think of how it responded to whatever the day has brought — fallen branches, seasonal changes, the daily variations in its own flow. It never fights what is; it simply finds its way through. In that simple, persistent movement toward the sea, I see a master class in living.

The water knows something I’m still learning: resistance is optional, but flow is inevitable. The question isn’t whether life will bring change — it will. The question is whether I’ll meet that change with fluidity or fight it with rigidity. More and more, I choose to flow.