Bending Without Breaking
Anyone that tells you that life will be a funfair and without challenges is not being truthful with you. Life will present you with unpredictable turns - challenges that will stretch you, and moments that will test both your strength and patience. In these moments, you will understand that being flexible is not just a trait that one is born with, but it is a survival strategy that is needed to keep you afloat. Bending without breaking talks about building up resilience to adapt to changes, strength to adjust to pressure, and the ability to rise up again even after life has beaten you down.
It is worthy to note that strength does not always mean rigidity and holding on to something - a plan, a method, a school of thought, etc, but it is about being flexible and adjusting effectively without losing purpose. That is; you may want to do something and you already know the expected outcome and the result which you want to obtain, but the methods and processes to arrive there should not be static and should not be rigid, but should be dynamic. There is actually strength in dynamism, and power in flexibility. The people who remain flexible even in the times of hardness are more likely to overcome the challenges of life with grace. This is just like the way a tree will bend when the wind comes but will still stand tall unbroken.
You also need to know that being flexible in life is not a show of weakness, nor of compromise, nor giving up on your dreams, rather it is understanding that the pathway to success is not smoothly tarred. You may have done something in a particular way and it may not seem to produce the right result. Then you should not get stuck at it trying to keep doing it over and again in the same way. In fact, the more you try the same thing that has not worked for you in the same way you have been trying it, the more you get weary by it. This is because you will still get the same result. If you want a different result then you should be flexible enough to try out a different action or method. Even if the idea and the dream may be static, the plan and the methods need to be flexible to what should work.
It is true that things may not always go in the manner that you want, but when you learn to adapt, you will figure out ways to move forward even if it means following a different route. When challenges and tough times come, you need flexibility to be able to maintain your emotional and mental well-being. In addition, it also reduces stress because you are not trying to fight reality, nor trying to force what you cannot control, rather you are trying to accept what is, then attempting to change what you can change - Like your mindset, your mentality, your responses, and your direction.
If you take a look at some of the great innovators and successful people both in the present and in the recent past, you will agree with me that they did not get to where they were going to by following rigid a particular plan. They learnt to adjust where required and and tried again with new methods and approaches. If what you have been trying all these while does not seem to work for you, then it will make no sense trying to stick rigidly to it. What you need to do is to try out a new approach so as to have a new result. It is your flexibility that will make you to turn failure into success, and setbacks into comebacks. You may not be able to determine the trend of events, but you can determine your responses to them.
There are times when it may look like things are not going rightly, and you may feel that nothing is working - this is the time that you have to make flexibility your greatest ally. Instead of feeling defeated and beating your over because the method you tried did not work, you can ask yourself if there are other methods to follow to solve the challenge and also what you can learn from the challenge itself.
In order to become more flexible in life, you need to have these hacks in handy - learn to look beyond the norm, do not accept failure as the final, practice gratitude, be open to feedbacks and ideas, let go of perfectionism mentality, then learn to trust the process.
Thanks for reading
