Flow

Flow represents actions in play.

Let’s look at solar panels as an example again. From 1970 to 2003, many small actions continued to build and improve solar panels. Yet large-scale adoption didn’t start happening until roughly 2004. What changed? Flow! China began aggressively subsidizing its domestic solar manufacturing and production in 2004. Solar panels are expensive to produce; China’s 10-year subsidy program to sell panels at cost helped create a surge in solar panel adoption.

This is where timing becomes more interesting. Potential can sit quietly for years. Flow is what happens when the pieces begin moving together.

You don’t have to create every current in life. Sometimes the wiser action is to recognize a current that is already moving and learn how to work with it.

Flow isn’t always about pushing harder. Sometimes it’s about releasing what is no longer working so you can move with what is actually happening.

Willingness to Engage

Timing also requires engagement. If you don’t engage in life events in a timely manner, you get what others make. Willingness to engage means you are ready to take a risk; it means you want to grow and improve your position in life.

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”
-English proverb

Casey Insight #2: Waiting to time things correctly isn’t the same thing as doing nothing. Learn to understand the difference between wisely waiting (pausing to gather information) and fearfully avoiding action. This is why learning how timing works matters when navigating crisis moments in life.

Casey Insight #3: Waiting for the perfect moment can become another form of hiding. There is rarely a perfect moment. There is only the moment you have, the information you have, and the choice you make with them.

“Do not wait: the time will never be ‘just right’. Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.”
-Napoleon Hill

Potential without engagement remains potential.

Flow without engagement passes you by.

Serendipity

Serendipity is an unplanned, fortunate accident or lucky discovery. Horace Walpole coined the word in 1754 to describe discoveries made by accident and sagacity. In other words, serendipity isn’t merely random luck; it involves being able to recognize something valuable that you weren’t originally looking for.

That distinction matters. Serendipity requires two things: something unexpected happens, and you are awake enough to recognize that the unexpected event might matter.

You can never force serendipity. When it happens, you embrace it and play, or you move on.

You can train yourself to notice serendipity in action by pausing, expanding your awareness, and taking small actions to experiment and play in the moment when opportunities arise around you.

Casey Insight #4: You cannot manufacture serendipity, but you can make yourself more available to it.

“Chance favors only the prepared mind.”
-Louis Pasteur

One of my all-time favorite songs, Taking Care of Business, is a perfect example of serendipity. The original song came together during a gig to fill in time. Many of the words for the song randomly came together on stage. Then, during recording, the piano part was added through pure serendipity. The piano part was scribbled down on a pizza box, and the band grabbed a random person in the studio for a few minutes to record one last take. Norman Durkee happened to be in the studio and was the person Bachman-Turner Overdrive (BTO) grabbed; without listening to the song beforehand, he recorded the piano part in one take and literally ran off to take care of his own business. The song was a hit. People have told this story in different ways over the years. What matters to me isn’t which version is perfectly accurate. What matters is the pattern: people were in motion, an unexpected opportunity appeared, someone recognized it, and someone was willing to participate.

One lesson I want to focus on is that the smallest of events can have huge impacts on our lives. Being in the right place, at the right moment, when potential is present and flow is uplifting, can create a new life and options for a person. The same moment, when flow is negative, can derail the best of ideas or intentions.

Casey Insight #5: Luck isn’t waiting for something good to happen. Luck is being awake when something unexpected happens and being willing to do something with it.

We do make our own luck.

• If you refuse to believe in serendipity, you will miss amazing moments of connection.
• If you work against the flow, you get pushed away from important connections.
• If you don’t tap into the potential around you, you burn out from depleting yourself in trying to make something real.
• If you don’t engage in your actions, nothing happens.

But an important fifth lesson hides beneath these four aspects: awareness.

• You need awareness to see potential.
• You need awareness to recognize flow.
• You need awareness to know when you are willing, or unwilling, to engage.
• And you need awareness to recognize serendipity when it walks through the door with an opportunity.

Without awareness, you cannot dance with timing to a better place.

I stress this because we all need a little luck in navigating the times ahead. I don’t want people thinking hunkering down is a good answer for navigating the challenges ahead. It’s time to make your life lucky: play with anything serendipity tosses your way, work with awareness of the evolving situations around you, and take action to make life better.

Timing of events for Autumn 2026

What caught my attention this month was tracking nine crises unfolding: an oil shock from the US-Iran conflict, Russian war expansion, AI disruption, the AI buildout bubble, the private credit bubble, bond markets in decay, overall climate change, unstable US politics, and finally the hottest El Niño on record. Each of these events could be historic. Rather than focus on possible outcomes, I began to explore how to navigate through the uncertainty, and that’s Tao, dancing with the unknown. As the dance unfolds, it reveals options to be a better you. I realized the deeper opportunity for the newsletter wasn’t any specific crisis or outcome of a crisis, but to explore the nature of timing that can arise from crisis.

Here is a reminder list of materials that contain important lessons for navigating any of the crises ahead.

• Being a Hero
• Changing World Lessons
• Changing World Handbook
• Don’t compromise yourself ahead in life.
• Expanding Your Awareness
• How to Plan for Your Future
• Living with Resilience
• Navigating Chaos
• Releasing Fear
• Releasing old Wounds that limit your options.
• Rising with Fierce Love
• Taking Action
• Taking Control of Your Answers
• Taking control of the games in play around you.
• Take Control of your Life’s Narrative.
• Working with Grief and Community

With so many different flows in play, the number of possible outcomes expands dramatically. So instead, I realized we should focus on what we can control: awareness, preparation, engagement, flexibility, and our willingness to recognize unexpected opportunities.

“In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”
-John Archibald Wheeler

One trap that will make you unlucky in the times ahead is to embrace a feeling of despair that this is all too big to change. Despair will only undercut your actions into doing nothing, and doing nothing gets you nothing. So, when you feel despair, you have to flip the despair into actions of experimentation and connection to stir up your luck and unexpected potentials you can build upon.

Casey Insight #6: Although these flows are negative in nature, they also open up opportunities. This means it’s a time to experiment until the opportunities become clearer to you.

Timing-wise, these crises are unfolding during a period that includes the United States midterm elections in November 2026. This means the next few months may bring more chaotic and unpredictable flows as different events interact with one another. Remember, luck is a dance, and as events unfold, pay attention and dance accordingly.

Hopeful Conclusions

Understand hope is a destination. If you don’t take action to get to your place of hope, you will get swept away in the flow of events.

Casey Insight #7: Hope without action becomes wishful thinking. Hope combined with action becomes direction.

Timing-wise, we are in the earliest stages of a new world being forged in real time, while we are also in the ending stages of the old world we grew up in. I believe we should be focused on the fact that we are at the start of a new world. Let’s work together to make it a new world we grow through, so we can live better. The difference in what we experience comes down to whether we’re willing to come together and, with hard work, push into a better new world, or take the easy way out by doing nothing and getting nothing.

When the world presents you with an option to do something unexpected in the next few months, seriously consider it. A totally random moment in Norman Durkee’s life gave him a chance to play the piano for a hit song once and only once; he took it, didn’t think much of it at the time, and yet it became one of the most recognized songs of the seventies.

And that brings us back to luck. We don’t control when the door opens. We don’t control who happens to be standing on the other side of the door. We don’t control every current moving around us. But we can control whether we are awake enough to notice the door, brave enough to open it, and willing enough to step through.

That is the dance of timing.

Potential tells us what might become.

Flow tells us what is moving.

Willingness tells us whether we will engage.

Serendipity brings us the unexpected.

And awareness lets us see the opportunity to make it a dance.

So, as we move into autumn, don’t wait for luck. Make yourself available to it. Pay attention. Experiment. Connect. Take the next step.

You never know when a pizza box, a chance conversation, an unexpected invitation, or one strange moment will become the stepping stone that changes your life.

We don’t make our own luck by controlling life. We make our own luck by becoming ready to dance when life changes the music.

Be ready for when your song comes to you.

Big Love from

Julie & Casey