You're listening to that, That's life podcast by Richard Butler. Where I talk about everything to do with life and how to make it better. 

Hey there! Welcome to the podcast. You of course are listening to Richard Butler today, I want to talk about flexibility and adaptability and how as humans, well the more flexible and adaptable you are, the better your life can be. And I was thinking about this when I was in Dublin recently because in Ireland they had taken out all of the restrictions regarding covid and mask wearing etcetera and here in spain and obviously in many other countries there are still restrictions 

Now when I say they have taken out all the restrictions, I mean both outside and inside establishments. So that means that you can walk into a supermarket, you can walk into a restaurant into a bar and you don't have to have a mask. Now I thought that was going to be quite a culture shock for me. I arrived in Dublin and I went for lunch and I was going to go to the toilet and I got up and I slip my mask and then I thought oh I don't need a mask. And immediately my mindset had had really changed of not having to wear a mask. And I thought to myself, it's it's interesting how we can adapt very quickly to different circumstances. Now if we if we kind of just backtrack a little bit when you think about it two years ago we went from a normal life without having to wear masks or worry about such such things like that, two within days wearing masks and accepting that we had to wear masks in order to um help each other so that we wouldn't spread this this virus? I'm not talking about it, I'm not getting into the whole mask wearing and the whole uh, you know, wasn't right, wasn't wrong argument. 

My point here is that we adapt very quickly to different situations or we should adapt very quickly to different situations because I do believe that the more we can adapt, the more flexible we are, the easier it becomes to, I guess, continue in life and to live a healthy life. Now, obviously what has happened with with Covid is that a lot of people have become fearful of what will happen when I have to take off my mask, will I get the virus, etcetera? And a lot of the times what happens is that we get this idea or we get an idea into our head and it's very difficult to shake that idea. I mean, many, many, many years ago I did a video and in a talk and I talked about the wedge of doubt and the wedge of doubt. The story goes that this guy goes to hell and he's talking to the devil and the devil says, what would you like to know? And he says, well what is the greatest tool that you have in your arsenal of of dev illness? And the person starts saying to the devil, you know, is it nuclear weapons? And the devil says no, is it um you know, famines? And the devil says no, and finally the person has double, what is the the the worst thing that you have? 

And the devil takes out like this little piece of wood and he says this, the person looks, and he says, well what the heck is that? And he goes, this is the wedge of doubt, and he goes on to explain that once we get out into our mind that can really affect us, I mean we start to doubt different things. So for example, if you feel that you're not doing that well in work or that your boss doesn't like you, that wedge of doubt creeps in and then everything that you see, everything that you hear from your boss makes you doubt that they mean that it's true, what they're saying, or it makes you doubt that you're actually doing a good job, etcetera? So we do have to be careful of that. Now, how does that relate to flexibility? 

Well, if we are flexible in our mindset and we say, you know, maybe it's not to do with me, maybe for example, I can take off my mask and I will be fine and we try and remove that doubt from our minds and we become more flexible in our approach. I do think that life becomes a little bit easier um, as we were, you know, quick to put on masks or to accept that we had to wear masks, we should also try and remove the doubt that if I remove the mask I'm going to have problems. I mean I went to Dublin and then we went out for dinner and the place was really, it was a small little restaurant and it was quite warm but still I didn't feel uncomfortable. I mean I was able to switch my mindset quite quickly to that. Then when I returned back to spain, I mean it's got even more difficult now to wear the mask because you kind of say, well um why do I need to wear it? But again, because I adapt flexibility, it's easy to get back into the routine. Now that can be good or bad of course, because if you get back into routines very quickly you make it back into negative thought patterns as well. So I think what you really want to be able to do is um assess what needs to be done, assess what is important and then adapt to your circumstances, adapt to your environment, whether that is a work environment or whether that is another environment that you may actually you need to adapt to. But think about the idea of flexibility. 

I mean it's like when you see horses and they have these things called the blinkers and sometimes you may hear blinkered vision or tunnel vision in that we just look straight ahead and we don't adapt to what's going on around us. And if we have blinkered vision or television, sometimes that can be very good. If we need to focus on something, if we need to work on something that can be very good. But the negative side of that is that if you have that thought process then what's going to happen is that you are going to only see one vision Or one idea and you won't open yourself up to others. So in summary, try and think, are you an adaptable person? Are you flexible or sometimes do you make decisions based on? Well, I've always made those decisions. So I want you to think about that. And of course if you enjoy this podcast, make sure that you subscribe to the podcast, make sure that you like it. Make sure that you share with your friends and I will see you next week. 

Mhm If you enjoyed this podcast, make sure that you subscribe and check out my website. Richard Butler dot coach. I'll see you next week