What is a Good Life? #73
Embracing The Flow Of Life with Sunil Malhotra
On the 73rd episode of the What is a Good Life? podcast, I am delighted to introduce our guest, Sunil Malhotra. Sunil weaves together Vedic wisdom with the innovations of tomorrow. To unravel the mysteries of the human experience, he stands at the intersection of spirituality, technology, and design. Sunil is an author whose latest book, YOGAi: Interplays of Yoga and Artificial Intelligence, demystifies both 'technologies' in a bid to connect them in the context of the exponential times we are witnessing. He is also the founder of Ideafarms, a Design-in-Tech advisory and consulting firm.
In this illuminating conversation, Sunil shares his experience of letting go of questions and answers in his life, feeling and experiencing a much wider sense of life, and consequently recognising a flow that has emerged he had not previously known existed. He explains how through his latest book he forged profound connections with some of the most esteemed minds in spirituality and science, including luminaries such as Dr. Karan Singh, Ervin Laszlo, and Satish Kumar. While we also discuss the capacity to look at life with fresh eyes, think for ourselves, and recognise how everything around us is communicating with us.
If you are overthinking life and sense that you’re holding on too tightly, this conversation will offer you plenty of suggestions, anecdotes, and clues on how life can flow more effortlessly.
The weekly clip from the podcast (4 mins), my weekly reflection (3 mins), the full podcast (66 mins), and the weekly questions all follow below.
1. Weekly Clip from the Podcast
2. My weekly reflection
When I used to think of flow, I attached it to ideas of positive emotional states, maybe even the joy of creating something effortlessly in the moment. That was when I felt flow.
However, my experiences over the last few years have taught me something quite different. This isn’t about some positive mental reframing of moments. I often find myself laughing (eventually) when no words are arriving on a page, whether for a post, article, or book I am writing, and when frustration creeps in as I simply stare out the window or at the screen. A realisation comes over me that this is as much my process as when a thousand words come in minutes.
The more my acceptance broadens of what is merely part of life, the more I have found flow to be felt or acknowledged even in what we might perceive as resistance. I’m not saying it creates some magical sense of a flow state and beaming gratitude in a moment of strain, but rather that something else simultaneously exists along with the mental state—an awareness, really, I’d say—that gives some appreciation to the present experience. Without trying to cultivate, prolong, or trap the appreciation, it merely arises with the awareness.
The more I sense this awareness, the less it needs to be about changing states or getting desired outcomes, or even handling desired or undesired states in a “healthier” way. Whether it is resistance, acceptance, delight, or frustration that shows up in a moment, my reaction sits within a wider awareness or noticing of life, and I still feel a natural flow or rhythm to what is being experienced.
This allows me to appreciate something about the experience, whatever the experience is.
I have even experienced this in quite heavy emotional situations or when things really haven’t gone as planned. It doesn’t feel like a disassociation or disengagement from what is, but rather a non-resistance to what life is, even if resistance is what I am feeling. I see that by allowing myself to fully feel it, life will merely move on.
Just as the leaves of a tree will bud, grow, turn from green to yellow to brown, fall, and bud again.
This will go on and on whether you are telling it affirmations, reframing a narrative, or mentally trying to give the process gratitude. The process will go on.
You will feel all kinds of ways, and whether you perceive those emotional states one way or the other, one experience flows into the next.
When many people think of flow in life, they mostly consider the part when the tree grows its green leaves until just the point that they begin to change colour as their flow state or experience of flow. But the process of the tree is in constant flow, just like you and me, and just like life.
3. Full Episode - Embracing The Flow Of Life with Sunil Malhorta - What is a Good Life? #73
Click here for Apple and Pocket Casts
4. This week’s Questions
In what areas of your life do you sense you are getting in the way of its natural flow?
What part of your life could benefit the most from letting go of preconceived notions about what or how something or someone is?
About Me
I am a Coach based in Berlin, via Dublin, Ireland. I left behind a 15-year career in Capital Markets after I became extremely curious around answering some of the bigger questions in life. I started this project in 2021, for which I’ve now interviewed around 200 people, to provide people with the space to reflect on their own lives and to create content that would spark people’s own inquiry into this question. I am also trying to share more genuine expressions of the human experience, beyond the facades we typically project.
If you would like to work with me for individual or executive team coaching or executive silent retreats, or you simply want to get in touch, here’s my email and LinkedIn.