Category Archives: Flexibility

The Urge to Increase Your Choice

Men and women throughout time have struggled to make sense of life. What is the reason behind the seemingly constant struggle? Why must we continue to do the same things over and over while paradoxically staying in the same place? I’m sure you’ve felt that way from time to time. Get up in the morning. Go to work, go through a days work, with as little trouble as possible. Come home, perhaps stopping at the gym on the way home, or perhaps the corner bar or other place to relax and unwind. The next day, you do the same thing.

I was finishing up a workout once, and a guy with a particularly well defined body which indicated the amount of effort he’d put into it, said

“Well, go home force myself to eat healthy food, watch TV, fall asleep, wake up, go to work come back here, work out, take a shower, and do it all over again.”

There is a character in Lewis Carol’s Alice in Wonderland called the red queen. She tells Alice that in order to stay in place, you have to keep running.
But does it have to be that way? Do you have to do the same thing day in, day out, on some path that you chose how many years ago? Is that the meaning of life? To struggle through elementary school, junior high school, university if that’s your thing, then as Bob Dylan said “twenty years of schoolin and they put you on the day shift.”

It doesn’t have to be that way. One of the reasons humans have catapulted themselves to the front of the line in the race of evolution is our adaptability. The beauty of mother nature is that we can go through life completely oblivious to the idea of having a choice and still manage to have a successful career and family, and produce more copies of ourselves. Which is all mother nature really cares about. She gave us the internal drives and desires that are strong enough so that even if try and ignore them, they will drive us forward. For most of human history, these basic urges have drove humanity to build cities, cathedrals, beautiful works of art.

But what happens when you examine your urges? What happens when instead of blindly following these to eat, make money, have sex, build a family, you not only accept these urges as a natural part of you, but channel them, even harness them, to help you create the life that you want?

What would that be like?

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He with the Most Choice—WINS

One of the greatest things about being a human is flexibility. It affords you to easily discover the strategy to apply to any particular problem that you may encounter in life. I’m sure you’ve heard the adage “In every problem lies the seed of the solution.” What that presupposes is that you have the flexibility of thought to find the solution. And you can use flexibility to think of new ways around problems, or you can use flexibility to solve new problems in old ways. Either choice will give you fantastic results.

Many evolutionary biologists agree that humans arrived on top of the evolutionary ladder not due to any single advantage. We became the kings of the jungle not because we have the sharpest teeth or the brightest feathers or the boldest silver stripe down our backs. We became rulers of the earth because we were flexible enough to live in any environment, under any circumstances, and could thrive with any set of resources. Humans have lived in trees, caves, grasslands, forests, deserts, and frozen tundras. This would not have been possible had we not the flexibility to adapt to the ever changing landscape of life.

Just as our species rose to the top due it’s inherent gift of flexibility, so can you. Those that come up with creative and new solutions have always been rewarded with fame, riches, and a plethora of, ahem, mating opportunities. It wasn’t the strongest, or the fastest, or the tallest. It was he with dexterity of mind and thought that became king. It has been argued that the driving force of our ever increasing brain size was competition among ourselves to come up with new and better ideas to find shelter, get food, and woo women. This has wonderfully expressed itself in our time with the incredibly huge amount of art, poetry and pure beauty that this once monkey brain has produced.

How about in your life? How many ways can you realize that by improving your flexibility of thought you will reap rewards of a king? Flexibility is not only about success, it is about personal pleasure and happiness. Who is happier, somebody that can only be satisfied with one specific set of circumstances, or one who can create happiness for yourself anywhere, anytime? Should you not understand the power of flexibility, just look to the great inventors of our time, and notice how many wonderful inventions have come to pass because of their boldness of new thought.

As the economy continues to crumble, and the old model of doing the same thing for the same result passes away into the new paradigm, it becomes clear that he who is most flexible will come out ahead. And when you change your mindset into this kind of thinking, you will naturally become aware of the untapped opportunities that are all around you, now, waiting for you to profit from.

How many ways can you imagine doing that?

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What Would Spock Do?

Have you ever been having an argument with somebody, and they came out of left field with some point they were trying to make? No matter how hard you tried your best to see their point of view, you were completely baffled with what it was they were trying to get across?

Have you ever worked for somebody, or been in a relationship with somebody, and you just never figured out the reasoning behind their thinking? Perhaps you thought that they were a big daft, and they had no idea what was going on in the real world?

Maybe you thought they were being illogical. Despite your impeccable logic, they still failed to see your point. Despite how well you flawlessly presented your arguments, they still held fast to their opinion, regardless of how blatantly obvious that they were incorrect. Well guess what? You actually may have been wrong.

More and more neural scientists are starting to believe that logic is a mere illusion of our thinking process.  Study after study has shown that humans are severely limited with certain kinds of decisions which are seemingly logical based, but under different conditions, the same choices yield different answers. One study, involving cards and probabilities yields only a correct answer around twenty five percent. Yet the exact same study, but with the choices described not as black or white or even or odd, but instead as people in social situations, people score correct answers much higher.

Neural surgeons have reported that when the so called “emotional centers” of the brain, generally thought to be the interferers of logic, are disconnected, it is almost impossible to make a decision. Brian Tracy reports that ALL decisions are made from an emotional perspective, and then a split second later the “logical” outcome is calculated by the preconscious processor, and only later delivered to the conscious brain and so we think of it as a ‘logical’ choice.

Most people won’t like to admit that a great deal of human choices are made subconsciously and then only later defended as a conscious, rational, logical choice. Color and model of your car, type of clothes that you wear. Your partner in life. The things that you eat every day, the movies and music that you like. All these are decisions that are made emotionally.

Problems can arise when you make a decision, and believe that it is a logical decision. Especially if the decision is publicly made. You will stick to your choice, because you think it is a logically sound outcome. By admitting to yourself that at least it may be possible that it was driven by emotion, you may open yourself up for reconsideration. And that can help you drastically improve your relationships, both at home and work. And it can improve your decision making ability overall.

Something to think about next time you are about to accuse somebody of being an illogical boob.
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How to Insult the Buddha

One of the things that most people strive for in life, yet never achieve is that sense of being in a place where you are completely independent of the opinions and ideas of others. No matter how rock solid your self confidence and self esteem is, we seem to always be vulnerable to some stray comment from somebody whom we don’t’ even expect has that kind of power over you.

I’m sure you’ve had that experience. You are going through your life, cruising right alone. Everything is pretty good, not perfect, but pretty good. Then out of the blue somebody makes a comment. Not a mean comment, not really. They’re not a person who has any power over your life, they aren’t your boss or a decision maker, but yet, somehow that comment slips in and wriggles through your confidence self defense and festers. And the more you think about it, the more it festers and causes you to remember other incidents that are similar, creating similar emotional responses.

What’s the answer? Remove yourself completely from society? Stare straight ahead with your thickest skin and refuse to allow anyone’s comments to affect you one way or the other? That is the default defense for many, but it doesn’t allow you to let in all the comments and things people say to you that can help you feel really good.

A good way around this is to develop a state of uninsultability. No matter what you say, you can accept the good things and reject the bad things. It’s like you have a pre conscious defense shield that can acting as a sorting mechanisms for incoming information. True information that makes you feel good is let in completely. True information that doesn’t make you feel so good is split into it’s logical, data components, which are accepted for you to decide what action to take, and the emotionally charged component which is summarily rejected. Information coming in that is not true is rejected altogether.

This can be difficult to maintain, but it is possible. The secret lies in choosing to evaluate any incoming informational stimulus before your automatic emotional response has a chance to react. The more you choose to consciously practice this on a regular basis, the more space you will create between the initial external event, and the emotional reaction. Your goal in this is to insert a quick but effective moment of rational choice between the external event and the corresponding emotional response.

Most people walk around through life as biological automatons. Reacting without thinking, seemingly at the mercy of the events and opinions of others. It doesn’t have to be that way. You can choose to live your life differently. With choice, with control with power. There is an old Buddhist story I’m reminded of.

The Buddha, and two of his young disciples were walking along the river. Suddenly a distraught man jumped out, who had apparently heard the Buddha’s last sermon, and began hurling insult after insult at him. His disciples were shocked, while the Buddha stood and only smiled. Afterwards, they asked him,

“Master, aren’t you hurt by his mean insults?”

to which the Buddha replied:

“If somebody gives you a present, and you refuse to accept it, who does it belong to?”

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What’s the Main Course of Your Mind?

I was out shopping this morning, and I bumped into a friend of mine. She is the kind of friend that you can catch right back up with after along absence without missing  beat. It’s great when you can make friends like that. She was shopping for a dinner party is planning on having next weekend. She belongs to a book club, and they get together to read different books and discuss them. The group only has six members, but she says they are a tight group because they all share the same interests as far as books go, and they can discuss the latest novel for hours on end.  They usually meet in a bookstore or a coffee shop, but once every couple of months they meet at one of the members house, and this is her turn. When I bumped into her, she was having trouble finding what she was looking for. She’d found this really interesting recipe, but she neglected to bring it with her to the supermarket, so she couldn’t really remember what was in it, as she’d never cooked it before. She was on the fence between guessing, and going home to get it.

Sometimes when you have a difficult decision to make, it can be frustrating. You think about going one way, and then you suddenly change your mind and think about going the other way. Sometimes it seems that the more you think about it, the more difficult the decision can become. What can even make things worse is when you have several people involved and everybody wants to go in different directions. It can be absolutely maddening. I was on a hiking trip, and we didn’t take the time to plan ahead, so when difficulties came up, we had to spend a long time discussing which way to go. Once we came upon a trail that was closed due to maintenance, and we stood there and argued for what seemed like an hour trying to figure out what alternative route to take.

And when you think about it, there are always alternative routes to take. Even if there is only one road, there are different times you can travel this road and find things of value here. I took a seminar once, shortly after new years, on goal setting. The guy said that setting goals is much better than making resolutions. He said that the more clear you are when you choose your desire, the more flexible you can be with how you get there. The problem most people have, he said, was that their desire that they’ve chosen is kind of vague, so when they think they are making progress, they are actually going in the wrong direction. Because they weren’t able to set a clear goal, they aren’t able to see the results they achieve when they get there.

As it turns out, while we were standing their arguing, a couple came walking up from one of our two choices. We asked where’d they came from, and they said that down this trail was a fantastic lake, and a big meadow with many wildflowers. And we decided to take this way, in part because they seemed to describe it so enthusiastically. And when other people describe things enthusiastically, you know there is something good here.

So I asked my friend if she was having some old friends over for dinner, or trying to impress a first date. She knew where I was going with this and realized the recipe wasn’t the most important thing. The most important thing was having a group of close friends over to discuss this really good book they’d all separately had the experience of reading and enjoying this, and were going to share it. The dinner was just a side dish, not the main course of the evening.

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How to Control Your Happiness

Once there was a tiny field mouse. He was scurrying around, hurrying up to catch up with all the other field mice. He lived kind of far from the main mouse activity center, so he always felt like he was running late. He would always show up on time, and even as he put his socks and shoes on, while his wife was telling he had plenty of time, he still felt like he was late.

One day he had a day off. It was a Tuesday, so he didn’t really get a three day weekend, but it almost seemed like it. Because Sunday night, instead of getting depressed like he usually did when he started to go to bed, he actually felt pretty good. Because even though the next day was Monday, it was really like a Friday. So he was in a pretty good mood. And he played a little extra with his kids, and they all had a fun Sunday night. Because the little mouse kids were in the same boat. For this particular week, Monday was the new Friday.

As he was laying in bed, he started having a conversation with his wife. Because like every other Sunday, he knew that he had to go to bed at the same time, and the kids knew they had to get up at the same time, but they all seemed a lot happier than a normal Sunday.  The little mouse couldn’t really understand it, because even the same programs were on TV that night. Everything was the same, but it felt different.

Of course his wife, being the wise mouse that she was told him that it was because of his state of mind. She was saying that when you have a state of mind based on positive expectations about the future, you can feel better and happier, and enjoy life more. It doesn’t really matter what the future brings, because the future actually never comes. It’s always now. Mr. Mouse seemed a bit puzzled by this, but Mrs. Mouse explained it thusly:

The future is only a guess of what is to come, and the past is only an incorrect memory. Most mice think that the past is solid and it happened just as you remembered it, but if you dig into your memories, you’ll realize that not only are they not entirely accurate, but sometimes they are completely made up. Which is why it’s good to always try something a little bit before withholding judgment.

But Mr. Mouse still wasn’t convinced. He said he was happy, of course, because he knew there was an unusual holiday coming up. That was why everybody was in a good mood, because they all had a holiday coming up on Tuesday, when they didn’t have to go to work or school.

Of course, Mrs. Mouse, not to be outdone, countered by asking Mr. Mouse why he allowed other people to tell him when he was permitted to feel happy or not. Why do you let a bunch of mice you never met before to decide on a holiday for you to be happy inside your own mind? Did they plant a robot chip inside your brain when you weren’t looking, so they could control your thoughts from a secret building outside of the Mice Territory? Of course not. Your thoughts belong to you, and you can think them any way you want. You can even choose not to think them, if you think that will help.

Mr. Mouse seemed a bit confused, but he knew better than to blame his wife. She usually knew what she was talking about.

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Ants with a Choice for a Better Life

Once upon a time there were these two ants. They were busy bringing crumbs of food back to their nest, where the food would be broken up into it’s components, and given to the various elements. The workers would get the parts that had energy for immediate use, so they could continue to work and bring back even more food. The small aphids would get the food that would be transferred into short term storage, that could be later used for nourishment for other ants. The queen would get the best stuff. She would get the most long lasting and densely nutritious portion of the food. She needed to save as much energy as possible, because she was going to give birth to the next generation of ants, who would go on and build their own colony.

But this story is about the two worker ants. They didn’t’ have names, because worker ants generally are not given much thought other than what they can produce. They only know how to follow one another, pick up a piece of food from the same source as the person who picked up the food before them, and turn and follow the trail back to where everybody else was going. Had they had the capacity of reason and the time to contemplate it, they would realize that all this was predetermined by nature and genetics. They didn’t have much choice in the matter. Food, trail, deposit, return to source. Over and over and over. They never got breaks, they couldn’t go out drinking on Friday night with their friends, they couldn’t wear shoes that didn’t match the rest of their outfits only because they were in a particularly festive mood that day. Food, trail, deposit, return. Such was the life of ants.

Until one day. One ant decided that he would stop, just for a little bit. Something inside of him spoke. Perhaps it was a genetic mutation, perhaps it was a voice that you never listen to. Perhaps it is a voice that you have inside you that is telling you to stop, and look around. Because when you stop, and look around, you might be able to notice things that you weren’t able to notice before. You might be able to see things that you hadn’t been able to see before. And you might have an idea, you might even create a new idea. The great thing about new ideas is that you can try them out, and nobody will really know what you are doing. Because it’s a new idea, even if it doesn’t’ work, you can still learn from the experience.

And when this one ant stopped, and took a break, he was completely surprised to see that all the other ants did the same. One second before, he felt depressed and angry and lonely. It’s not much fun being an ant. But when he decided to take a risk, and stop for a break, something amazing happened.  When he saw all the other ants following his lead, looking to him for guidance instead of that automatic scent they had been following, he changed. He transformed from a mindless worker ant to somebody with a choice.

When the queen gave birth to the new colony, she had to choose a leader. Because everybody knows that when a new ant colony is born, they are sent off into new and unknown territories, and must depend on the experience and guidance of those who came before. So naturally, the old queen, who was now advanced in years and failing in health, chose this young upstart ant to lead the new kingdom, which would undoubtedly flourish and prosper for generations to come.

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Choose the Positive to Erase the Negative

I remember when I was in Junior High school. I used to play golf with my friends after school at the local nine hole course. It was around seven bucks, so we could afford to play once a week. The first four holes were pretty easy. Big. Wide. I could slice and shank the ball all over the place and not worry. The sixth hole was where I had problems. I was a water hole. I could never figure out why I almost always plunked the ball in the middle of the water. Sometimes I could even catch any air, I would just burn if off the tee straight into the drink. I never had that problem on other holes. I could always hit monstrously long towering drives if I had a big patch of green in front of me.

Some grass, of course, is greener than others. I had to help my friends put in new grass, or sod as they call it, in their backyard once. I never knew deciding on a grass was so involved. You can choose based on the weather, how much effort you are going to plan on putting into it, how much money you have, how much money you want the neighbors to think you have. I never knew that there was so much choice. I guess when you don’t put yourself in situation where you realize that you can choose, you don’t notice all the choice that is around you.

My friend was telling me that choice is a funny thing. You can choose which direction you want to drive, you can choose where you want to sit, and you can choose where you place your focus. Some people only place their focus right in front of them, which can cause problems, while others tend to take a longer view of things, placing their focus off in the distance or the future, to see things they hope to create instead of focusing on things they fear. Because usually, whatever you place your focus on, becomes your reality.

I guess the only real good thing about helping out friends with home improvement projects is you usually get treated to a really nice meal afterwards. He bought some really good steaks that he barbecued on their new barbecue. Rib eye’s. And she makes this secret recipe which is mouth wateringly fantastic. She gives me bottles of it sometimes, but she’ll never give me the recipe. It was the thought of that which kept me going through the whole sod planting ordeal. And all this time I thought grass just kind of grew on its own.

My friend had  really good idea. He told me, and I’ll never forget this, that just before I tee off, to close my eyes and imagine that the lake is really a big green fairway, and I wouldn’t have a problem. I tried it, and much to my surprise, it worked. Metaphysical advice in junior high school. Its always good to realize that when you focus on a postive outcome, the negative has a way of disappearing.

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Easy Way to Bubble Your Way Out of Stress

I used to live in a city where I had to ride my bike around. The only time I ever took the train was when I had to go someplace out of reach of my bicycle. There was a movie theater I used to go to that was about a ten kilometer ride, so it was defiantly doable, but I didn’t want to get sweaty before I watched a movie, so I usually took the train. The local places that I went to I usually went to by bicycle. And at the time, I thought it was a drag, because sometimes I was kind of tired, and didn’t really feel like riding my bike home.

I had a friend kept three or four bikes around town. His theory was that two or three junker bikes would be a better value than one nice bike, because he would always have an option of leaving by bike or by taxi. Because he always had a bike stashed somewhere he could use. And some of the bicycle places shut down early, before the bars, so it was sometimes convenient to get a ride someplace other than he had planned on going. He was always looking for ways to be more flexible. He thought that always having two or three options in his back pocket was the best way to go.

He reminded me of a speaker at a seminar I went to once. It was a stress management seminar, and the guy was saying that most people make the mistake of wanting less stress. He said that people that have lower stress overall actually have pretty boring lives. He said they key is to be able to find the bubbles in the stress, and make good use of them. One guy that was sitting next to me asked about this, as did the guy that was sitting behind me. They wanted to know why he was talking about bubbles in stress. But then he said that bubbles were really the moments in the middle of a stressful period where you can momentarily forget what is going on around you, and just exist by yourself, in the moment. Just take a quick break and follow your breath for a couple cycles. In. Out. In. Out. Slow like. And he said the people that are actually the most flexible, the people that can find the most little bubbles in the stress throughout the day are the most healthy. He gave an example of an old Samurai warrior who had about a five minute time period between battles, and decided to lean against a tree to recharge himself, while all his Samurai buddies were sharpening their swords. The tree contemplating Samurai, of course, was victorious.

Sometimes my friend even was able to loan his bikes out due to his flexibility in their placement, because it’s always good to have friends. And he told me once he even had bikes in other cities, because sometimes the trains stop at stations that aren’t so close to the city center, and you never know when you are going to take an impromptu trip out to the sticks.

The city I live in how has lots of trains and opportunities to use public transportation, so I haven’t even used my bike yet. But I’ve had to run and catch connecting trains and busses and such, and I’m finding that those bubbles sure do come in handy. But you already knew that, didn’t you?

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Find the Right Fit

I had a rude awakening this morning. As I was heading out, I noticed that I had forgotten to take out the trash last night. As stepped out for my morning walk, I noticed that the garbage truck was just pulling up. I ran inside, grabbed my bag of trash (today is burnables day) and ran down the five flights of stairs in my apartment. I got to the trash truck just as they were finishing up, and the trash man told me they couldn’t accept my bag, because it was the wrong color. Furious, I turned and walked back upstairs in shame, holding my improperly colored garbage bag. I thought of plenty of insulting things to say to that garbage man. Stupid rules. I can understand rules, but the wrong color? Some rules are meant just to annoy me, I’m sure of it.

A friend of mine used to have a rule about girls that he dated. He was looking for a specific type, with a specific personality. He had a really good job as an investment advisor for a very large company. He was looking for a girl to settle down with, as he was reaching that age. He had set up a system, so that he could, after only a couple of dates, determine if the girls personality and intelligence level met his criteria. Some of the girls wanted to date him again after he’d disqualified them, and although they seemed to be determined to get another shot at him, he refused to change his standards. At the time I wasn’t sure if I believed that he was really searching for “the one” or if he was just using it as an excuse to date as many women as possible.

I had a girlfriend, way back in high school that I knew wasn’t right for me, but we went out for a long time anyways. I was really relieved after we broke up, and she was as well, because we had spent so much time trying to keep something going that shouldn’t have been started in the first place. I realized that you can’t make something fit, regardless of how much you want it to. I think many people try and do things backward, in a way. They tend to create a image of what they think they want, and instead of taking the time to sort through the possibilities, and make a determination whether or not something fits, they try to fit things where they really don’t belong. I think it’s a lot easier, in the long run, to figure out exactly what you want first, and then spend your efforts to find the right fit, instead of forcing a square peg into a round hole.

Which is exactly what my friend was doing. He found his girl, they were exceptionally compatible, and ten years later, they are still incredibly happily married with three kids. It turns out he really did know what he wanted, and determined as early as possible. You really have to develop courage and a strong belief in yourself to pull something like that off. Many people just roam through life and take what they can get.
I suppose that’s exactly what the sanitation worker did as well. Who knows how much trouble he’d get into if he showed up at the sanitation processing plant with the wrong color bag. It might throw off the whole system they got. I’m sure he wanted to finish his morning route and whatever he needed to do back at the sanitation processing plant as quickly as possible. When you have a clear destination in mind, it’s easy to reject things that will only slow you down, and not waste time with somebody that is too busy to learn the rules of the game.

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