Finding Your Flow: Navigating Life’s Contradictions with Strength & Presence
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a process I love for my clients and rely on myself. Despite its name, ACT isn’t about giving in or giving up. Instead, it empowers you to accept that the sweetest life is one that is lived in its duality—joy, laughter, and light, as well as sorrow, suffering, and darkness. Acceptance comes from this understanding and willingness to embrace this in life.
What draws me in personally is the action-based nature of ACT. The process integrates my background in mindfulness, performance sport and emotional intelligence; in essence, it strikes the balance between mental discipline and emotional openness. I believe growth, learning and change become “stickier” when combined. And it’s not just about thinking differently; it’s about doing differently.
Think about this: maybe you’re grieving the loss of someone close to you while still finding the strength to bring joy to your kids. Or maybe you’re navigating the pain of infidelity while trying to balance the demands of a new promotion at work. Whatever it is for you, sometimes these contradictions can feel impossible to hold in tandem, but ACT gives you the tools to handle the hard and the good without losing yourself in either one. Accepting and holding these contradictions is essential to finding balance and satisfaction in life.
As I moved into September, a still, reflective season for me, I noticed contradictions bubbling up in my own life. Like everyone, I’ve got difficult things that are constants in my life, like solo parenting and raising a neurodivergent child—and sometimes it feels like too much. In struggling to reconcile how my life could feel joyful, fulfilling and purposeful, while also difficult and overwhelming, I learned a powerful ACT technique called the Sweet Spotl
Now, I’ve come to understand that the difficult things that will always be there are like. river flowing through a lush forest (my life). The river is always moving, sometimes fast, crashing against the banks with the extra pressure of a downpour. Other times, it’s a slow, peaceful trickle that is soothing as it passes. Either way, it’s always flowing. I can’t control the river, but I can learn to navigate it.
Here’s where we sometimes get stuck. When the tough stuff in life bubbles up, our instinct is often to resist or fight back. It’s like trying to dam up that river with rocks, thinking we can stop the flood by sheer force. This might look like the voice in your head saying, “Why am I always the one who has to handle this?” or “Why can’t anything ever go smoothly for me?” When we get caught up in those mental battles, we end up exhausting ourselves. And that’s when we turn to things that temporarily numb the pain—drinking, porn, gambling, whatever. But those distractions never last, and they don’t help us actually deal with the flow of our lives.
This is where one of ACT’s tools, “The Sweet Spot,” comes in. It’s a technique that helps you tap into a place in your mind where you feel fully present, calm, and alive. For me, it’s a river I crossed over a bridge while running and skiing at Stokely Creek Lodge.
I was introduced to visualization techniques early on, by a Finnish ski coach named Heiki. He’d have us “ski” the course in our minds before a race, imagining the perfect lap. It wasn’t about avoiding the challenge—it was about mentally preparing to handle it. The Sweet Spot exercise works similarly. I ask my clients to remember a place that brings them deep peace, to visualize it with all five senses—some people even sketch it. Then, when life feels overwhelming, you can recall that Sweet Spot and remind yourself of what really matters.
For me, just saying “Stokely” brings me back to that flow, reminding me of life’s beauty even when things are rough.
Curious to learn more about finding your own Sweet Spot? Reach out to me through the booking tool or DM me on Instagram. You can also check out this podcast with ACT psychologist Dr. Fiorilli to dive deeper into the concept:
I’d love to hear about your experiences with visualization. How do you handle life’s contradictions, and where do you go—mentally or physically—when you need to find your flow?
