Chapter 15 | Lesson on Flexibility: Flexibility is the Mega-strategy to Surviving Covid-19
Be like water, said Lao Tzu.
Be like water and the bamboos, said Bruce Lee.
Water and bamboos are good metaphors of strength through flexibility. Water is soft; Bamboos are hollow inside. These apparent weaknesses become strengths because of their adaptability to changing circumstances.
You may be lacking in IQ or EQ, but if you have the flexibility, you can survive almost every kind of adversity. Flexibility is a real-life mega-strategy for survival. Charles Darwin put it very clearly: "It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change."
"In desperation, a dog will jump over a wall, a human being will cry to the Sky God," so said a Chinese proverb. This is a good description of flexibility.
According to another well known Chinese idiom, a real man can shrink and expand. Such a person knows how to how to endure hardship with patience and humility during difficult times, and how to expand his enterprise in times of peace and prosperity. This is an example of the Yin-Yang principle.
The BRAMMT resilient mind, as described earlier, demands flexibility. For example, even if you are an atheist, you can still benefit from acting as if God exists. You have nothing to lose, but everything to gain by praying for God’s protection and helping in the battle against an invisible monster. Another example is mindfulness. If you suspend all your biases/prejudices and accept life as it is, you will be in a much better position to decide the best coping action.
According to my resource-congruent model of effective coping (Wong, Reker & Peacock, 2006), optimal flexibility means using the most fitting method and the most appropriate resources to cope with any problem.
During the long history of human evolution, the most effective coping strategies have been selected and encoded in our collective memories. We are all endowed with the capacity to tap into the vast repertoire of coping strategies to cope with COVID-19, and its aftermath, if we do not let our pride, biases, or dogma limit our options.
If you want to learn more about the resilience revolution in coping with the pandemic, please leave with me your contact information, so that I can contact you regarding the forthcoming webinar on The Positive Psychology of Resilience to cope with COVID-19.
Why pay money to learn resilience? You can now learn for free from this master in this time of crisis.