Be Flexible in Your Thinking
Once your thinking gets crystallized, rigid, and formed, you’ve
lost the battle. Once you think you have all the answers, you
might as well hang up your boots. Once you get set in your
ways, you’re already part of history.
To get the most out of life, you have to keep all your options
open, keep your thinking and life flexible. You have to be
ready to roll as the storm breaks—and, by golly, it always
breaks when you least expect it. The instant you are established
in a set pattern, you set yourself up for being knocked
off-course. You might need to examine your thinking pretty
closely to understand what I mean. Flexible thinking is a bit
like mental martial arts—being ready to duck and weave,
dodge and flow. Try to see life not as the enemy, but as a
friendly sparring partner. If you’re flexible, you’ll have fun.
If you stand your ground, you’re likely to get knocked about
a bit.
We all have set patterns in life. We like to label ourselves as
this or that and are quite proud of our opinions and beliefs.
We all like to read a set paper, watch the same sorts of TV
shows or movies, go to the same sort of shops every time, eat
the sort of food that suits us, wear the same type of clothes.
And all this is fine. But if we cut ourselves off from all other
possibilities, we become boring, rigid, hardened—and thus
likely to get knocked about a bit.
You have to see life as a series of adventures. Each adventure is
a chance to have fun, learn something, explore the world,
expand your circle of experience and friends, and broaden
your horizons. Shutting down to adventure means exactly
that—you are shut down.The second you are offered an opportunity to have an adventure,
to change your thinking, to step outside of yourself, go
for it and see what happens. If this thought scares you,
remember that you can always go back into your shell the
second it’s over, if you want to.
But even saying yes to every opportunity isn’t set in stone as a
rule, because that would be inflexible. The really flexible
thinkers know when to say “no” as well as when to say “yes.”
If you want to know how flexible your thinking is, here are a
couple of tests. Are the books by the side of your bed the same
sorts of books you’ve always read? Have you found yourself
saying anything like, “I don’t know any people like that” or “I
don’t go to those kind of places”? If so, then perhaps it’s time
to broaden your mind and take the shackles off your thinking.
RULE 7
TRY TO SEE LIFE NOT AS
THE ENEMY, BUT AS A
FRIENDLY SPARRING
PARTNER.