Life Skills Series – #2 Flexible Mind

Reality bends us. Every day. How flexible are we, how ready to take all that comes our way? As a simple self-assessment, answer the questions below:

• You plan a picnic out with friends and the rain makes it impossible. What do you do?
• You finally get one hour for yourself, but the sewer suddenly backs-up and you need to call the plumber to fix the mess. How do you take it?

These are just two examples of how we can get bent, but basically anything can change overnight, all our plans can be washed out, people close to us could ‘disappear’. If we wake up in the morning and things are still as they were before we went to bed – we can pretty much consider it as a miracle.

If you answered the equivalent of “oh, well” to the questions above, you are probably pretty flexible in general. Most of us though would go through these phases:

• get upset when these things happen
• think that “it shouldn’t have rained or ‘sewered’”
• get emotional reactions: “I hate this weather”, “I hate the sewer”…
• stay in a bad mood and ‘spill’ it over by starting fights with loved ones, friends, etc.

To learn how to flex with life changes, here is a simple idea. Before the picnic remind yourself that it could rain, and with that knowledge start thinking of plan B in case rain happens. Then you are ‘covered’. For the second example (which was literally a case of ‘sh** happens’  ), use this trick: in the morning, before getting out of bed remind yourself that anything could happen today, and that you are well equipped to deal with it and get to the other side of it. 

After all, nothing is the end of the world, just the end of our plans. The world continues to happily spin away and we can choose to either go with it, or get our bones crushed. Which will it be?

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