Flexibility isn’t just something you can improve by taking yoga classes. It’s a state of mind. To quote the Tao Te Ching: “A tree that won’t bend easily breaks in storms.” The professional world is constantly changing: new skills to learn, old skills rendered obsolete, entire industries rising and falling in relevance. A key quality to cultivate to stay relevant is to be adaptable: you have to float on the winds of change or risk getting torn down. Change is scary. Stubborn refusal to adapt can be comforting. Clinging to the familiar can narrow your range of possibilities, though, so you need to work on making your mind as flexible as a yoga teacher.
Don’t Take Change Personally
Sometimes we respond to changes as though they were a personal attack. “I’ve always done things THIS way! You’re saying I’m wrong!’” When confronted with a new process, perspective, or technology, you don’t have to immediately embrace them. You can take your time to do your due diligence, learn about them, ponder the plus-and-minus compared to how you used to do things. But what you should not do is dismiss these new ideas out of hand. Ask yourself: is the way you do things now the best way? Is it efficient? Accurate? Less time-consuming? Maybe the proposed changes could be an improvement across the board.
The trick here is to remember that whatever changes are happening are not a judgment on YOU as a person. You are not wrong for doing things the way you did until now. You are not wrong for wanting to withhold judgment before making some adjustments. If you feel a change would make your overall job performance worse and feel like an alternative method would be better, that is something worth bringing up to a supervisor. Make sure, tho, that your criticism of the new processes aren’t rooted in your personal feelings about it. “This is bad because I don’t like it” won’t change anything; “this is bad because it’ll make our workflows slower and less efficient” is a much more effective argument. Controlling your emotions in times of great change will make it easier for you to adapt.
Reframe Obstacles as Opportunities
A simple life hack to help get you in a more flexible frame of mind is to reframe how you see problems. When you face a setback or problem, try to see them as opportunities or challenges. A problem can be a test of your skills or an opportunity to learn something new or meet new people to help you overcome it. A problem can provide valuable information: why is this happening? Is there a shortcoming in your work’s technology or processes that caused this issue or is unable to address it? A problem can show you what you don’t know.
By embracing problems as an incitement to grow, as a challenge to conquer, it turns them into something positive. Instead of feeling sorry for yourself or getting angry about this problem, you can feel motivated and empowered to address it.
Throw Yourself a Curveball
It’s easy to fall into autopilot. We develop routines that work for us: we eat at the same times, we drive down the same roads for our commutes, we take the same elevator to go to work. If you want to be more flexible, switch up your routines. Drive down a different set of roads for your commute. Eat something new to you for lunch. Get a new hair style and revamp your wardrobe. Take the stairs instead of the elevator. These little changes of behavior are called experiential diversity and research has found that making these adjustments every now and then can have a positive impact on both your ability to alleviate stress and to the parts of your brain that govern memory retention.
“By intentionally seeking out these small changes, you train your brain to stay open, curious, and adaptable,” said Gina Pinch, Rio Salado College faculty chair for Business, Management, and Public Administration. “Flexibility grows when you treat everyday routines like a learning environment— full of simple, low-pressure opportunities to discover something new.”
You can apply this curveball approach to your work. Use the same tool all the time? Teach yourself a new one and use it for a project. Brainstorming for a project? Try out mind-mapping or some other idea generating technique that you haven’t used before. Talk to someone during your lunch break that you don’t know very well.
Admit Your Errors
To be flexible means being willing to take risks, which means in turn that you’ll fail more often than you’re used to. That’s okay: failure is the fertilizer of growth! Mistakes can be teaching moments. The first step to failing with grace is to be accountable to yourself and others. Don’t lie to yourself when you fall short; you’ll never improve that way. When you fail, be upfront about it. Don’t fear the critiques you may receive from others; learn from them! Part of the reason why you want to be honest when you fail is because you may not know the real reason why you didn’t succeed; sometimes you need that outside perspective to see things more clearly.
“Admitting when you’ve made a mistake isn’t a weakness,” Pinch said. “When you acknowledge your missteps clearly and without excuses, you build trust with others and create the opportunity for genuine improvement.”
Learn Something New
To paraphrase Glengarry Glen Ross: always be learning. When we learn a new skill, it gives our brain a workout, forming new synapses and strengthening our cognitive abilities. Like a muscle, “use it or lose it” applies to our brains as well. Cognition can deteriorate over time if we’re not exercising our minds, which can impact our ability to quickly process new information and to retain and recall memories. Learning new skills keeps our minds limber and active while providing the additional benefit of making us more well-rounded as professionals. The more varied and deep your skill-set is, the more able you’ll be to seek out new opportunities and adapt when big changes hit your industry. It’s always good to have something in the back pocket, skills-wise, in case you need to pivot into a new line of work.
Article by Austin Brietta
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