Dear True Self,
I have a hard time being flexible to things I don’t enjoy in life. I get caught up in my preferences and become unhappy. How can I become more flexible?
Sincerely,
Infuriated and Inflexible
Dear IAI,
Let’s say your body is stiff. How did it become that way? You took certain actions and the result is stiffness, no?
Similarly, in the mind rigidity can happen. It to is just a consequence of certain actions.
A flexible mind will make for a flexible life. But you cannot force the mind to be flexible. You must create the right conditions, then, flexibility is inevitable.
Have you ever noticed that when you are joyful, you are very flexible? You are willing to do just about anything. But when you are unhappy, you will draw a line in the sand and put up a wall. This is all that is happening.
You can’t do anything to become flexible to things you don’t enjoy. It is impossible. Flexibility requires your joy. Simply, you must enjoy life, whatever it brings. But right now you have made yourself such a way that your happiness depends on everything except you.
Take a deep look – you become happy only if something external goes the way you want. You got the job you wanted, you got a compliment, the person you like gave you attention. Only then are you happy. This is ultimate slavery, isn’t it?
When your happiness is manufactured within you, why are you seeking it outside of yourself? When you have a bank account with millions of dollars in it, why would you suddenly start looking for pennies on the street?
This is all that has happened to you. You think that happiness comes from the outside. So you have made preferences – I like this situation, so I am flexible. I don’t like this situation, so I am rigid. Your preferences are the very basis of your enslavement.
Am I saying you must become some kind of freak, loving torture and misery? No, I am simply saying that whatever life brings you, no matter how challenging it is, you must learn to be happy of your own nature.
Your happiness should be independent of the circumstance. You see, if you have a difficult situation, it is already bad enough. But now you become unhappy about it, so you are rigid. What was one problem has now multiplied.
You cannot control what life gives you, but how you carry what it gives you is entirely up to you. Will you carry it joyfully? Or will you resist it, fight it, suppress it? The deeper you bury it, the more it will grow.
Become open to life. No matter what it throws at you, simply be happy with it. Don’t mind whether it’s good or bad or easy or difficult. Just be happy to be here, alive, breathing. It is simply a matter of perspective.
If you truly care about your well being, then just change your outlook. When life is good you can enjoy it. When life is difficult, you can strive to grow and learn and enjoy that also. What’s the big issue?
When is there ever a good reason not to be pleasant and joyful about life? In easy times, definitely you want to be joyful. In difficult times, you need it even more don’t you?
You multiply your problems in life and exaggerate them when you become unhappy. This is why I say to practice being joyful. I’m not saying walk around smiling like a grinning idiot at everything, just that there is always something worth celebrating in every moment.
Joy too is just a consequence. Accepting life as it is is the practice. You cannot force joy by saying to yourself “I am joyful, I am joyful!!!!”
When you learn to not have preferences, to simply take whatever life gives you and go with it, ease becomes inevitable. When ease is there, the system will be joyful, be it body or mind. When you are joyful being flexible is natural.
So don’t try to force flexibility. If you force a muscle to become flexible when it is rigid, all that will happen is you will damage it. So you cannot become flexible in the mind when you are unhappy. You will just torture yourself.
Instead, simply learn to accept the moment as is, appreciating it. The rest will follow.
With gratitude,
Your True Self
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