Welcome back! In the last post, I spoke about developing your observation, to tell you whether or not your actions and behaviours were getting you the results you want. We looked at developing our senses to be more observant and also at being internally observant. By that I mean becoming more aware of and observing your feelings and emotions and what they are telling you about the results of your actions.
The next thing I said that we’d need to develop is our “Flexibility”. This is something we all need to work on and develop.
Flexibility, in this context, is the ability to change what you are doing as soon as you realise that what you have been doing has not been achieving the result that you desire. Flexibility to change your behaviour and keep changing it until you find out what works!
Not achieving your desired outcome in a certain way is never a failure. As Thomas Edison said of his many “failed” attempts at inventing the light bulb, “I have not failed, but I have succeeded in discovering yet another way of not producing electric light”. We need to be ready to change and change constantly until we have found what does work.
One popularly quoted definition of insanity is “Doing the same things over and over again and expecting a different result”! When we are not Observant and Flexible we usually end up doing this ourselves.
A good example of where a lack of flexibility halts progress and can even be fatal is in our relationships. Two people come together with their own fixed patterns of behaviour. A relationship can get into a repeating cycle, the famous vicious circle. A circle by definition has no end point. Where there is a pattern of repeated rows, it is because each person is behaving, responding and reacting in exactly the same way each time! If you are in a situation like this, even though emotionally you may be driven to behave in a certain way, try thinking about some different new response or action that you could try. It could be physical or verbal. A very good way to break a pattern is with humour. (Obviously it must be appropriate and laugh “with” and not “at” the other person). If you can both see the funny side, it breaks the old ineffective mood. Why not look at your own behaviour and maybe even laugh at what you’ve been doing?!
Flexibility in reaching our targets and goals should be looked on as a constant adjustment procedure. Imagine a helmsman on a boat. Although he is obviously travelling from A to B, he is constantly adjusting the rudder to keep the boat on track. If it is a sail boat, in order to get from A to B a sailor needs to constantly adjust his sails and sometimes zig-zag his direction in order to handle changing conditions and achieve their goal of reaching their destination.
So it is in life also. The most effective people have developed the skills of Observation and Flexibility. They are very quick to notice that what they are doing is not achieving the desired results. And they very quickly change their behaviour in some way to be more efficient and effective. They do this constantly until they find what works!
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