The answer is yes; you’re probably doing everything backwards. Which makes life much harder than it needs to be. It’s time to stop working against ourselves.
The way to do that is to be flexible before strong.
I mean this both literally and figuratively.
I’m serious.
Being a business and life coach for almost thirty years, and also teaching movement of one kind or another for even longer, I know that we all make this mistake somewhere in our lives.
Because it is both our training and our habit to be strong first and perhaps become flexible later.
And that’s doing everything backwards.
I’ll use a physical example to prove it, and then we can apply this lesson to the rest of our lives.
Hold on to something and lift your leg in front of you as high as you can. Don’t bend forward or bend either knee. How high did you lift your leg?
Probably not as high as you wanted to.
Do you think it’s because you are not strong enough? No. Exactly the opposite.
How high you can lift your leg begins first with how flexible you are, in this case, primarily the flexibility of your hamstring.
No matter how strong you are, you can’t lift it higher than your flexibility. Yes, it takes strength too. But first flexibility.
Watch a dancer lift her leg to her ears. Do you think that’s strength first? No. It takes less power for her to do that than it took you to lift your leg a few feet off the floor.
Be flexible first. Then be strong.
In life, it works the same way.
When we stay strong, believing we have to do things as they have always been done, we make life hard.
We can’t do things how they used to be done during this pivot point in all our lives. Everyone must think differently. We will make this transition easier by being both mentally and emotionally flexible.
Unlike muscular flexibility that takes time, mental and emotional flexibility is available now.
Here are a few keys ways to become more flexible in life.
MAKE SPACE
Again, both literally and figuratively.
Throw stuff away. Use stuff up.
Look for what you already have and use it. When you need something, ask yourself, “What’s in my house?” before rushing out to get something new, or bemoan what you don’t have.
In the past few months, I have made some interesting discoveries because I asked that question and then listened to the answer.
Plus, I have used up bottles of duplicate lotions and given away clothes and items that I don’t need or are no longer comfortable.
Make space to be flexible.
Yes, I mean physical messes, too. Are you finished with something? Put it away. Done in the kitchen? Clean it up.
To make space for things to happen, we also need to take care of things like balancing our checkbooks, apologizing when we hurt someone’s feelings, or attend to problems we have ignored for too long.
What worked before may not work now. Check and make sure that old ideas are not clogging your thinking. Can you imagine outside of how it’s always been?
The new term doomscrolling talks about the habit of scrolling through bad news. Stop it.
Find out what is essential to know and move on.
Be a Joy Chaser instead. It will bring the same endorphins as doomscrolling, but it will make things better, not worse.
Be willing to imagine outside of what you know and have done before. Willing to be innovative. Willing to let go of what was but isn’t any longer, and expand into a fresh way of thinking and being.
We have to stop fighting what has changed. This is choosing flexibility before strength.
Hard-headed, inflexible thinking is not the solution. Our legs will never go as high as we wish, no matter how strong we get, unless we get flexible first.
As we embrace flexibility, we set ourselves free to be strong as we need to be.
Two podcasts that talk about imagination and innovation – flexibility – that you might like:
BECA LEWIS coaches, teaches, writes blogs and books, plays with art, and is addicted to reading. She lives in Ohio with her husband and has kids and grandkids scattered across the country.
