Life is complex and ever-changing.
Nothing stays the same.
Your best ideas and most well thought out plans may not work out as you expected.
In fact, it is prudent to assume that life will not go as planned or anticipated.
Remain flexible.
Stay determined without being rigid.
Rigidity will only cause you pain and frustration.
Focus on your goals, but soften your gaze to allow room in your vision for the unexpected.
When you are open to all possibilities, opportunities present themselves.
Make plans, but be open to change.
Nothing will go exactly how you want or expect it to.
Change, therefore, should be part of your plan.
That way, you will be less disappointed when you are forced to pivot.
Success will come to you much easier when you are willing to adapt to life as it is, as opposed to insisting that it conforms to your expectations and demands.
Remain flexible and open-minded, and you will find that, even when you face challenges and difficulties, your journey is far more interesting and enjoyable.
Not all of life’s challenges can be faced head on, nor overcome with force exerted directly against force.
Some things come at us too quickly, too unexpectedly, and too powerfully for us to successfully brace and push back against them.
In these instances, we will have to be pliable.
We will have to be flexible.
And, we will have to be adaptable.
There has to be room in our hearts, minds, and lives for us to move and to grow.
In order to find this room, we must learn where and when to soften up our approach, to yield, and to pivot.
Our survival and our success depends on it.
If we are inflexible for too long, we will eventually break.
It is far better to give and to survive than to resist and to perish.
We must not allow circumstances that are outside of our control to turn us into someone we do not want to be.
Circumstances, whether good or bad, come and go.
We must stay vigilant with our character and integrity.
We must remain strong in who we are and true to ourselves.
However, our strength must also be tempered with flexibility.
If we are not flexible in our strength, as we are pushed and pulled by the circumstances we face, we will either waver in our principles or we will break under the forces applied against us.
Holistic Budo: As it is in budo, so too it is in life. As it is in life, so too it is in budo.
Robert Van Valkenburgh is co-founder of Kogen Dojo Self Defense Academy where he teaches Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
All photos by Robert Van Valkenburgh unless otherwise noted.*
*Robert Van Valkenburgh’s black and white photography can be seen at My Darkness To Light
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We should remain flexible in our attitudes, but not in our standards.
Compromise is a necessary facet of human existence.
No matter how strongly we believe something, if we want to get along with others, we will have to make concessions for the sake of our relationships.
An attitude of rigidity rarely serves the greater good as much as it serves our egos.
Inflexibility keeps us stuck in place, incapable of growing, changing, and evolving, while the world moves on around us.
For this reason, we must remain pliable.
We must remain open to new attitudes, ideas, and beliefs.
And, we must be willing to change our minds, our perspective, and our direction as need requires.
Our standards, however, the moral foundation upon which we stand and move, should never be compromised in the process.
Without standards, we risk being so flexible, so pliable, and so porous that we become something else altogether.
Without standards, we risk losing ourselves and becoming someone else entirely.
Relationships demand that we change, but we must also demand of ourselves that our integrity remains constant and uncompromised.
Holistic Budo: As it is in budo, so too it is in life. As it is in life, so too it is in budo.
Robert Van Valkenburgh is co-founder of Taikyoku Mind & Body and Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
All photos by Robert Van Valkenburgh unless otherwise noted.
Follow Robert Van Valkenburgh and Holistic Budo on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, and LinkedIn.
If you found this post helpful or meaningful in some way, please feel free to Share, Comment, and Subscribe below.
Meditations on God 