Everything is moving in perfect rhythm and at perfect speed. 

The tide flows in, and the tide ebbs out. 

If you stand at the shore, rigid and unwilling to go with the flow, the surf can crash over you and even knock you down. But if you're willing to bend, to relax, to enjoy the swells, you can actually catch a nice wave every now and then.

Have you ever been caught in an undertow? 

If you have and didn't know how currents work, you probably used up so much energy fighting it that you were exhausted.

The best way to get out of the current is to just swim across it
instead of against it. It doesn't matter how strong a swimmer
you are-fighting is futile. 

I learned this lesson at the Copa Cabana beach in Rio de
Janeiro. I had been a competitive swimmer in my youth and a
triathlete as an adult, so when I visited there in my twenties, I thought I was safe in the ocean, although I'd trained only in lakes and swimming pools.

Then I found myself caught in a major current one day. I thought I would just out swim it, go against it, and make my way back to shore.

Wrong! Here I was, this strapping young guy, trying to battle
the ocean and losing. 

I nearly died that day. 

What I didn't realize was that if I had swum across the current,
I'd have gotten out of it. Or if I had just let it carry me, within about a hundred yards I'd have been out of it.

With some luck and lot of stamina, I finally made it out of the
water, exhausted and having learned a profound lesson about the nature of currents and my will to live.

Not fighting feels totally unnatural to the person who isn't familiar with how currents work, but the universe is fairly relentless.

If you simply don't know a law and break it, you don't get cut a
lot of slack, kind of like making a right-hand turn on a red light in a state where it's illegal.

Just because you're from out of state and thought it was okay to
turn on the red light doesn't mean a cop won't pull you over and
be completely justified in citing you with a moving violation. 

Back to my point: The ocean has a great deal to teach you about the rhythms of life.

You must recognize when you're in a current and when you're
resisting the natural rhythm, whether it's in your personal or
business life. 

There's a rhythm that occurs at all times. 

Think about how relationships can feel in and out of sync. 

How is it that one minute you can feel so lovey-dovey, and the
next you're ready to jump off a bridge? 

The same is true with your job. 

At one moment you can be completely ecstatic, and the next
minute a phone call comes in to tell you a deal just went south. 

You cannot force the good times to continue always, nor can you force anything in life to happen.

The planets orbit in perfect rhythm, and so do you. 

Life has seasons, both figuratively and literally. Some are
longer than others, and some are harsher than others. 

There are times when things seem out of rhythm-or are simply in a rhythm that makes you uncomfortable.

Your job is to stay focused on your vision and go with the flow
instead of resisting it. 

Most people waste too much time and energy resisting, yet no one can change the seasons. You can choose whether to stay warm in winter or gripe about the cold.

Better yet, you can decide to learn to ski!

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"Your life and my life flow into each other as wave flows 
into wave, and unless there is peace and joy and freedom 
for you, there can be no real peace or joy or freedom for me.
To see reality-not as we expect it to be, but as it is-is 
to see that unless we live for each other and in and through
each other, we do not really live very satisfactorily; that 
there can really be life only where there really is, in just
this sense, love." 
-Fredrick Buechner 

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"The Law of Rhythm" is excerpted from the chapter "The Seven Natural Laws of The Universe That Will Transform Your Life Forever" in "The Street Kid's Guide to Having it All", an exciting new book by John Assaraf, a.k.a. "The Street Kid". Visit 
http://www.thestreetkid.com/freereports to get the full excerpt and to see how John took himself from a low self-esteem teen to a multi-millionaire entrepreneur by age 30, using timeless spiritual principles outlined in his new book.