Do you find it hard to adapt?

A great deal has been written about how we can adapt to change, new technologies, automation, expectations, relationships, and so on. We pounce on the latest productivity trend, the happening self-improvement book or mimic some successful person to demonstrate that can respond and adapt at light speed to ever-changing external stimuli.

We usually fail because we have come to view life as a board game where moves and countermoves are made in an attempt to control external circumstances, other people or anything outside of us. Survival of the fittest (attributed to Charles Darwin) has become a battle cry and not surprisingly, life resembles a battle zone for most as they struggle to adapt.

Does this constant attempt to shape-shift and contort yourself to adapt serve you? Maybe for a while but the fun, especially with material acquisition, can wear off, leading to self-doubt. A meaningful life cannot be built on money and in reaction to your physical environment alone.

“Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you react to it.” – Charles Swindoll

What are you if your life is simply a response to external stimuli over which you have no control? If a reactive life of material gain based on external expectations provided fulfillment, most humans would be happy. Research and numbers prove otherwise. You can don a thousand masks and convince everyone else that you are the well-adapted person you claim to be but if you do not communicate well with yourself, life becomes an insecure journey, constantly craving external validation.

“Needing approval is like saying – your view of me is more important than my own opinion of myself.” – Wayne Dyer

Is there another, better way to adapt and evolve? There is, if you start the right way around – by adapting your external involvement to serve your evolving internal stimuli. This perspective is beneficial because you are now focusing on what you can control – your internal environment – instead of trying to control unpredictable variables in your external environment.

When you look at life from the inside out, change becomes infinitely easier to handle because you are ready to adapt your external environment to your internal needs rather than wasting energy on trying to force outside variables to serve your needs. You are able to better assimilate the good guidance you receive en route and apply it to your own unique life circumstances.

Getting there is not an overnight process, though. It requires constant practice and focus, regardless of external distractions or relentless conditioning because it is the only way to understand what you need to evolve in a meaningful way. Imitating or going one way because others are is not adaptability. Instead, it puts you constant conflict with yourself because you are trying to live up to some expected external version of you rather than exploring what it is that you expect of yourself.

“O imitators, you slavish herd!” – Horace

When you expect to experience life as a way to evolve through deep experiences, you stay vigilant for opportunities that will allow you to adapt your external environment to your internal needs instead of viewing it as one that is at the mercy of uncontrollable external factors. When the opportunity does strike – and it can happen at any time and in any form – you know. The choice is clear: stay in the same place amidst others who slumber for a lifetime in a diminutive comfort zone or move forward to new experiences.

“Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open?” – Rumi

You accept that fear will always be the monster at your gate and the biggest obstacle to growth instead instead of finding excuses to stay in a comfort zone while denying its existence. You are able to accept new experiences and life changes with far more ease. You know that life can alter even the best-laid plans but you enjoy it anyway because you have consciously entered an environment based on what you want to experience. You are flexible, creative and open to life. Will you adapt and ride the wave of life or allow it to toss you overboard?