3 Ways to Find FLOE

Freedom. Leadership. Organization. Engagement. FLOE.

These kind of things can feel so out of reach on the other side of a life-altering event. The world has been turned upside-down. All the pieces of learning and experience dumped on the floor, waiting to be put in some semblance of order again, but mixed in with new, complicated pieces. How to put the puzzle back in order?

Six and a half years ago—right after I birthed my first baby—I published an article here on Medium titled, “how I’m getting back on track after life got crazy.” The piece closed with this line:

This is why I write: because I’m lost if I don’t.

Postpartum with my fourth now, I return to my own advice. I’ve come here to write.

To build an audience? Perhaps. To make a little money? Probably not much.

I return here to write…

To find myself.

To find FLOE.

To find Freedom through Leadership, Organization, and Engagement.

Freedom

Freedom is something that looks very different to me now than it did a decade ago when I was single and alone—yet more different than 12-year-old me imagined a decade before that.

Freedom is…

an ability to be at peace even when the children are loud…

creativity set loose to be seen by others and responded to…

self-granted permission to go with my own flow, do what I know is right…

But… How?

1. Through Leadership

To be truly free I must first lead myself well.

It has been said that the truest leader is actually the first follower. Picture this: a concert in the park, people sprawled on blankets and sitting in lawn chairs enjoying the music. One of them leaps up and starts dancing. Until another person joins him, he’s just the crazy guy, but when that second person a few yards away joins in—that’s when things start flowing. Soon half the people are up on their feet moving to the music.

The first guy to get up wasn’t a leader. It was the first follower who actually led the movement.

Becoming a great first follower has been the most influential piece of my own journey to becoming a great leader. I’ve spent my share of years being that odd one out—the outlier marching to the beat of her own drum.

Now I’ve found my focus, a freedom to follow. A freedom to be first follower and lead a movement.

2. Through Organization

I’ll be the first to admit, keeping things in order is not the strongest skill of this neurodivergent brain and body of mine. But putting them in order? Finding the patterns no one else noticed? Arranging and rearranging? That’s where I shine.

Freedom is not being confined to rigid order. Freedom is fluid forward motion, unobstructed. Freedom is flow.

All of that requires a certain organization—the ship must have a crew of sailors who know their roles in order to catch the right current and find their flow.

Whether it’s the autist in me thriving inside an established routine, or ADHD spontaneity seeing a way where no one else could, organizing myself so as to channel my strengths is what will power the freedom to find flow.

3. Through Engagement

As a content creator and online marketer for 20+ years, the word “engagement” means finding a strain of gold.

Engagement is the proof that I’ve captured someone’s attention, and attention is the currency of this generation. It’s the way we connect meaningfully and influence each others’ lives.

“the attention has the leverage — everything else is commodity”

—Gary Vaynerchuk on X [source]

I’m not actually interested in “social media.” I’m interested in attention. It just so happens that social is where attention is today. The platforms have shifted from when I gave this keynote back in 2019, but the framework remains the same. Whoever follows the attention wins

—Gary Vaynerchuk on X [source]

In this post-lockdown world, the greatest engagement happens not through likes, comments, or even shares. It happens across the table—the real, physical table. It happens in a shared room where we meet together in person. And it happens in the private conversations before, during, and after the times we spend together face-to-face.

Finding freedom to flow together is powerful. That’s the kind of thing I’m craving and I doubt I’m alone.

So I write

Since my dad designed me a blog for my 12th birthday, writing for a distant online audience of strangers-yet-to-become-friends has been my modus operandi. It’s how I take divergent thoughts and use them like bright swatches of contrasting and conflicting colors to create something beautiful.

Yes, Journaling is a powerful means of self discovery. It’s grounding, peace-bringing. But publishing…

Writing and putting my words out there is how I’m pushing through to Find FLOE. Freedom demands Leadership. Leadership requires Organization—people falling into a certain order. And Organization requires Engagement—those people responding and joining the flow.

Will you join me in Finding FLOE? I’m gathering a waitlist of creative, entrepreneurial types who are ready to bring people together to Find FLOE.

Let me know if you want to learn more and if you’re not already doing so, follow me here at Find FLOE.