Water is found in all living things but it is never contained. Somehow, somewhere it will escape and flow where it wants. To find true happiness you must allow your mind to escape and flow like water.

It was once thought that all life on earth needed 3 things: light, warmth and water, but today scientists have found living organisms deep within caves that never receive light and even bacteria buried deep in the sub-zero ice caps of Antarctica. Life doesn’t need light or warmth but one thing is now known to be essential: water.

Water cannot be contained. Sooner or later it escapes and travels on a journey of its own inclination. A river flows, not in a fixed route, rather it follows the contour of the land and, if the landscape changes, the river changes course. The river follows the easiest route, the path of least resistance. Its course may change many times, it may even reach an impasse and form a lake, but eventually it finds its journey’s end: the sea. Even man-made waterways, such as canals, don’t contain or control water. Glass contains water but cannot keep it. If you ever look at a truly old piece of glass you can see that it has lost its smoothness: you can observe that the surface has what appears to be ripples, like ripples on a pond. The ripples always follow one direction: downward, towards gravity. A pane of glass will actually form a droplet of glass that eventually drips; it just takes a couple of thousand years to do so.

Your journey of self-improvement, to be successful, must be like that of a river. The yearning to improve your inner self is the spring from where your wide river of self-fulfilment will come.

Along the way your journey will take many turns. You’ll encounter what seem to be insurmountable obstacles that loom like mountains, but like water you’ll find the valley or canyon to flow around the obstacles. At times the river will disappear, deep underground. You’ll lose sight of it, perhaps for a long time. But, it must resurface eventually, as all rivers do before they reach journey’s end.

Your journey will not always be a smooth one. You’ll encounter rapids and you may even have to take enormous leaps of faith before tumbling down to where you want to be: but like a waterfall, when you reach the next step along the journey your power and energy will be many fold. You will also experience many stagnant pools along that path where the flow of the river is almost imperceptible. But flow the river does and it will flow freely and cleanly.

The journey will be a rewarding one. Your spring, that tiny step toward self-fulfilment, will turn into a river, perhaps even a great, mighty and wide one. And you won’t be alone. A river is not a single entity; rather it is formed by a meeting of many springs: a meeting of minds. Your journey’s end will be a confluence of water.

Don’t try to constrain your river of self-development. Don’t build canals to take the river where you think it should go, or aqueducts to take you over obstacles. Let the river of you journey find its own route. Can the greatest man-made canal ever compare to any river. A river moves, changes, adapts and grows bigger. The water in a canal moves slowly, the course it follows never changes, and it never will grow bigger or wider. Do you want your journey to be that of a canal or a river?

A river follows the path of least resistance. This isn’t laziness: it is just expending energy where it is really needed. Your journey must explore every field, valley and wood. Don’t expend energy on getting to your destination; spend your energy on exploring the world around you. All rivers eventually flow out to the sea. They all reach journey’s end and you will too.

Robin O'Brien
www. selfimprovementtechniques.com