How Flexible Are You?

The Menninger Institute of Kansas City, USA, conducted a research a while to verify what qualities would be most important for success and happiness in the 21st century. Their conclusion is this: The most single most important personal quality that you can develop is:

Flexibility.

We are living in an age where change is happening faster than anyone of us can imagine. Like what Einstein said some time ago, answers to the same questions are changing all the time. For those of you who are studying now, most of what you are learning now will become obsolete by the time you graduate.

Coupled with the rapid advancement in technology, change doesn’t occur in a straight line, is unpredictable and come from all different sides that it is impossible to predict.

Since this is the case, the only attribute that will ensure your sustained success is your flexibility to learn new skills, find new resources, try new solutions, tread new paths.

Change causes great stress for people who have a “fixed” mindset. These are people who are stuck in their beliefs and ideas about how things SHOULD BE. They have fallen in love with “tradition” and “history.” They are always thinking, “I have done it this way in the past and it worked, and so, I shall continue to do it this way.”

They constantly take on the role of a JUDGE, comparing how things are done now with how things have been done in the past. As such, they continue to use their existing methods and processes, and are unwilling to change even when circumstances demand otherwise.

In other words, they can only think IN the box given to them.

And they would rather spend energy and time RESISTING the change rather than putting that effort into making the change work for them.

Whether you like it or not, a time like this demands rapid response to blinding changes. It is VITAL that you develop your flexibility by remaining open to all possibilities and never to close yourself off to anything. Stay alert to new ideas, information, and knowledge at all times and be willing to put them to use or test.

Remember this: It is your willingness that makes you able.