Remember those times in life when you felt stuck in a situation, the familiar mental state of hitting a dead end with no way out. Advise, as help from friends didn’t sound workable. A big barrier of struggle, anxiety and panic fogged the brain leaving you helpless. As they say, time is a patient healer, you waited for the tough moments to get over. Till you hit the familiar territory of helplessness again.
Do you think it’s over? The pattern will repeat itself till you don’t develop a new way of dealing with the same situation. You are put in difficult situations to build weaker muscles of personality. Also, making the same mistake again and again doesn’t make you wiser. Hence for personal evolution, just like getting promoted to a higher grade, new experiences are inevitable.
Different and difficult life situations iput you in a fight or a flight mode. That’s how you feel mentally fogged, stuck or want to escape or avoid the situation.
“You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water my friend.” Bruce Lee
‘Be like water’ is an incredible philosophy to apply especially when hitting a dead end. Water finds its own path in the wake of an obstacle. If not, then it erodes the obstacle with patience and perseverance. It doesn’t stop. It doesn’t think that the obstacle is bigger, stronger or more powerful. It just flows. It doesn’t hold on to the old path it left behind. It doesn’t stop to reminiscence. If it is not allowed to flow, it stagnates, gets dirty, stinks.
Being flexible in life is the essence of flowing water. Don’t give two hoots to the situation or people, just flow. Being stuck with old patterns, beliefs, stereotypes, fixated ideas, rules, the way things have been done before, will only lead to repeating the same things over and over again and with the same results. That’s the reason you keep hitting the dead end. Go over, under or just break the dead end. Every problem has infinite possibilities or options. Only if we are able to think, choose and flow with them.
Will that be possible with rigid old thinking? Of course not. Flexibility is a very important ingredient of the personality propagated by Sun Tzu in the book The Art of War. And history is replete with evidences of rigid dynasties, religions, people, cultures, products, brands fading too fast.
Being flexible doesn’t imply to let go of values or conforming to the situation. It means to adapt to the changing environment by using it to get to one’s goals. It encourages to let go of habits and beliefs that served the past for a reason. New environment seeks better ways of doing the same things. That is also the reason why the younger generation is so comfortable with technology.
The easiest way to be flexible is to be aware of your mindset and actions thereby. Ask yourself “Am I behaving like a broken record?”, “Do I have repetitive patterns?”, “Are there any beliefs that I feel are important but actually they don’t serve me any advantage anymore?”, “Am I holding on to someone else’s, family’s or ancestral ideas which are outdated?”, “Am I operating from my ego?”, “Is being rigid a power game?”, “Does it give me any advantage in the long run or just resentment?”, “Have I looked at a different way to do the same thing or react?”
These are a few questions to ask oneself. When you truly believe that you are hitting the dead end because of your old baggage and that you cannot expand yourself to newer ideas and horizons, is when the need for flexibility sprout.
Bruce Lee says “Running water never gets stale”.
Be flexible, change yourself constantly, adapting to the situation, people. Don’t give in to the rigidity of outdated beliefs. They just want to keep you rooted in the past. The only thing fixed is your goal, till you get it. Once there, move on to the next one. There is no end goal, its moving.
There is light shining everywhere, inside, the flexible get to find it, follow it and radiate it.