How flexible are you?...

When we think of flexibility we will mostly think of how flexible our body is, now the irony is here me personally because I have Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, I am super flexible due to one the symptoms from it. Any way I digress, the flexibility I am talking about here is how flexible you are with life itself, which can be difficult because we are creatures of habit so being flexible about things can make us feel uncomfortable or even unsafe, especially if we like to be in control of things.

This is something Ive had to personally work with especially because due to health I’ve had to be so careful with pacing and looking after my that sometimes being flexible could impact me in a negative way, which I’m sure many people in this situation would relate to. But I began to notice that the impact of this spread further in my life, in how I reacted to things, so I set about baby steps to become more flexible about things that I could be with, and have felt the positive changes.

I even found myself feeling freaked out if I made a mistake or ran late, I got that rigid with myself, and what I know here from conversations with people I’m not the only one here.

Now I’m not saying with become so flexible, that you have no boundaries with yourself or others at all because that doesn’t work either, it’s finding the balance, especially for instance if you live with a chronic illness, and you have to look after yourself.

It’s remembering this life doesn’t run in a straight line we often forget this and go through life living by the idea life is in a straight line. The thing is, it goes up and down, so by learning to bend and become more flexible, we flow with this much better, and life will feel easier.

The funny thing I had this conversation in a recent podcast I recorded with a friend who had chronic illness.

Things will feel easier, you will be less hard on yourself and others and it won’t feel such a disaster when things go wrong or when a plan changes for instance.

Now we are all different and have different limits so its finding where you feel comfortable, and remember that’s ok too.

So how do we approach this.

My best advice is to get clear, on where you are at with this, asking yourself ‘how easy do I find it to bend with life?’, as we are all different, but it's important to be honest with yourself because else you won’t really get very far with this.

Start with small things where you don’t feel too much discomfort, when learning to bend and practise from there, and the more you strengthen this, it will create momentum and like a muscle when we do this it gets stronger. In time it will get easier, and you can move on to bigger things where you find yourself in a situation where you have to bend, and it feels kind of ok, and you get in the flow with life, with its rise and fall rather than have resistance against it.

Now don’t get me wrong you won’t always nail it, and some people will find it harder than others, but like any mindset when we adjust it slightly, it can actually take us a long way and even benefit us in other areas of our lives such our relationships.

So where ever you are at with this, maybe explore it as it could be something that makes your life easier, I certainly know for me exploring this has been really helpful and I’m still working on it despite being able to bend my body into a pretzel.

So I invite you to ask yourself…

Are you flexible and do you find it easy to bend with life ?

All my love

Hannah X