It seems to me that we react to life’s situations in one of two ways. We either adapt or control. The path we choose reveals our conditioning.

If you choose to control, you’ve been raised with a mindset that suggests things should be a certain way, and when they’re not, you rely on the rigidity of Robert’s Rules to spackle the cracks.

The path of adaption, which most of us don’t learn at our mother’s knee, shows you that your real power is not in controlling reality, but rather responding to it. There is only one rule in adaptation - choosing a response.

Please don’t misinterpret what I’m saying. Control has its uses, but they are always temporary fixes to the ever present challenges of reality. When control is our only response, we eventually wind up like the circus performer who attempts to spin one plate too many.

Control has you spending most of your energy fighting the tide and always leaves you with a feeling of being overwhelmed. It has you ignore your innate power to adapt.

Controllers have been conditioned to think that adapting is giving up, when, in fact, it’s often the only way you can win.

Reminds me of something I’ve written about before . . .

My apologies to any New Hampshire readers but your state slogan, if lived out, only has one solution - “Live Free or Die.” That slogan, which many are passionate about, reveals the conditioning of control and it doesn’t offer many options.

I’m sure it wouldn’t fit on a bumper sticker or be a rallying cry, but what about, “Let’s live another day and figure out another way to try.”

Adapting means flexibility, and in case you haven’t been keeping track, flexibility is most often the winning strategy. Look to nature for an example. See the difference between how a young and old tree responds to a heavy snow - One bends and the other breaks.

The difference with humans is that rigidity isn’t tied to age, as in the case of the tree. We can begin to adapt at any age and be free - Free to choose a winning response.

If you spend your whole life attempting to control, you insure that you’ll always be less than whole, always searching for the elusive rule that will make you complete.

Adapting suggests that you’re already whole, because when you adapt, you always have the freedom of flexibility to choose from the whole range of responses, not be boxed in by one.

Adapt or Control? It’s a choice that can make you “Less than” or “Whole.”

All the best,

John