I’ve saved this story for the end. If you have made it this far with me, we are now in this together. We are committed to waking up to the possibilities that life has in store for us.
After I came up with the recipe for FLOW, I was ecstatic. I was intrigued to see if I could live by my own words and what they would create.
Flow was a destination I craved, like all of us. I loved being in that unbounded feeling. I had felt it skydiving, in kisses and through achievement. I felt flow in my creative life as well, moments of time when time disappeared, and I felt no angst. I felt present and enthralled. It is the most pristine state of being I have ever felt. The idea that there could be a guide to more of that feeling landed like a revelation.
I was sitting at my desk in a state of flow, writing up FLOW as a system. How could it be explained? Would people understand what I was sharing? It was so easy, and yet so hard to translate at first.
I started questioning and second-guessing myself. How could something so simple feel so powerful? Was I overreaching? Who did I think I was? Then I saw it. FLOW is WOLF spelled backwards. WOLF is my last name. I had to look at it a few times to be sure. How had I never seen this? I felt dizzy with magic. It felt like this discovery was destined and I was in full alignment with my purpose. I felt flow.
I often talk about something I call the “breadcrumbs of your life.” I have read this metaphor in books and heard it from col-leagues; I am far from the first to use it. Breadcrumbs are little magic moments, conversations, meetings or incidents that help guide your course. They may show up in startling synchronicity. They may show up in the form of an animal sighting or a piece of garbage left on the ground with the exact symbol you needed to see—or the perfect anagram.
To believe in breadcrumbs, you need to believe in a little bit of magic, the kind we cannot explain. A hundred butterflies showing up to your wedding or a storm that canceled a trip that would have left your house to burn down from an electrical fire. (All breadcrumbs I have been told over the years.)
One of my favorite breadcrumb stories is the one about meeting my husband. I was living in New Orleans in an un-healthy relationship when I was asked to go to Mexico to film another show for MTV, the “Real World/Road Rules Challenge.” I had sworn o! reality TV, and I was conflicted, but I decided to go with the caveat that I would ask the other teams to vote me o! first. That way, I would get paid for my participation, I could have a fun trip to Mexico, and I wouldn’t have to be on the show.
I arrived in Mexico, and we filmed the opening sequences. I planned to share my request with the group that night at dinner, but in the afternoon, the producer came to our house and calmly said we needed to move to a safer area—a hurricane was about to hit the coastline.
It was the most devastating hurricane the area had experi-enced in over fifty years. The electricity was knocked out, bridges tumbled, and we were told to shelter in place. For two weeks, food and water were rationed, and we waited. We began to bond. We were no longer competitors; we were just a bunch of people trying to ride out a storm and survive. I fell in love with the people around me. We told stories over candlelight at night, played music, told jokes, and drank the plethora of tequila that seemed to have survived the storm.
When it was time to start filming, I didn’t want to go home. I decided to change my plan and let this play out. There was just one thing—I was the smallest, weakest person in the cast. I had not planned to compete, and now I was going up against profes-sional athletes.
The first competition was called Vertical Limit, a climb up a 150-foot rope using buoys attached every five feet. I had never climbed a rope, and I watched the most athletic people in the group barely make it. When it was my turn, I took a deep breath and hoped not to look foolish. Instead, I climbed the entire rope, straight up. I beat everyone. Even the camera operator sat with his mouth gaping open. What just happened?!
That win moved my teammate and me to the top of the leader board and there we stayed until, by what seemed a miracle, we won the entire show.
