The Secret to Life: Embracing Improvisation and Flexibility

I think, and I’m going to lay this down right out of the gate and then I’ll unpack it, that the secret to life is that there is no secret to life. The one strategy that you can take away as being a strategy for life becomes your ability … to improvise. A process made up of processes. You make it up. On the moment and in the moment. Your presence and awareness and state of mind at any given time all goes into that. And it’s your ability to logically and intuitively allow your space for your own flexibility in communication undoubtedly creating out of what’s happening where you will have gone next now that also, in my understanding, becomes what takes you there.

Herein lies the challenge I'm putting forward. Any time you make “this” (whatever that may be) become the secret to life or the strategy that always in every situation will forever get you what you want, you forfeit your ability to come up with a better strategy when opportunity comes knocking. Let's say I am walking down a hallway ... if I always choose the first door, I never see what’s behind door number 6,7, 8, or so on or what's up the stairway down at the end of the hallway.

So, for me, yes … I can build in a pathway for my brain to know when and how and always if in whatever case things show up however, they do to make out of what’s happening a path that always leads back to “this” one strategy. That in itself gives you a chance to strategize on a different level about what’s happening if you know what to look for. For example, I have a boxer. Let’s say he’s my "go-to." I can always throw his hat in the ring, and he’ll always come out on top … of this one context - these one-on-one sports. But what about a team setting? The boxer might not play nice with others. I’ve got to have other players I can get to play the game or if they are tag teaming into a wrestling match ... well, now the game has changed. And so, there’s always this ability to switch out what's out front and to know, if I have the right skill sets and degrees of awareness, when one strategy needs to be taken out of commission, to know when a boxer can use some work on a specific punch or punch combination and so on.

Now, if I think there is a set strategy for what works in life, I leave no room for what is emergent. Yes, I can notice for the patterns that tend to work more often than others but addressing those patterns always in the same way as new forms of that pattern emerge to which I can try and find better responses for ultimately puts me out of commission without addressing the elephant in the room.

I need my ability to let go of what was and be certain with what I don’t know, and allowing of what comes next to give rise to what’s possible or not yet possible from the position of what was … but becomes completely and entirely logical from what is and ultimately from what will have been.

Now, where does that leave us? You want the ability to improvise. To remain playful and flexible and creative to work with whatever is going on in the moment and ultimately allowing of that in a space that can begin to naturally and effectively enable you to upgrade and update how you operate in the world in newer and better ways now.

And that’s all there is to it now, isn’t it?