Flexibility

As the end of 2010 rolls around taking the time to reflect on the year, your beliefs and values, can perhaps, help the move forward in 2011. It is important that the behaviors we manifest represent the beliefs and values that we have. C4K values flexibility. Flexibility is the ability to adapt and change to suit different circumstances. Flexibility is what Angeles Arriens would define as, “Being open to outcome, not attached to it.” Flexible people have the ability to live with ambiguity and to roll with the ever-changing thinking that surrounds the job that they do.

After-school does not exist in a static environment. It operates daily in very dynamic surroundings. Ambiguity is the name of the game. Flexibility is the ability to live by the ethic of “current best thinking.” What this means is that when you learn new information, you change your thinking and adjust to the new reality. Flexibility does not mean weakness, rather it means being supple enough to make “lemonade from lemons.” Stay true to your principles and flexible in your strategies. Tom Robbins puts it this way, “Stay committed to your decisions, but stay flexible in your approach.”

Other interesting quotes on flexibility follow.

"Nothing in the world is more flexible and yielding than water. Yet when it attacks the firm and the strong, none can withstand it, because they have no way to change it. So the flexible overcome the adamant, the yielding overcome the forceful. Everyone knows this, but no one can do it." Lao-tzu

"I am a man of fixed and unbending principles, the first of which is to be flexible at all times.” Everett Dirksen

"Men are born soft and supple; dead, they are stiff and hard. Plants are born tender and pliant; dead, they are brittle and dry. Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible is a disciple of death. Whoever is soft and yielding is a disciple of life. The hard and stiff will be broken. The soft and supple will prevail." Lao-tzu