Mental Balance - Part 2 - Flexibility

As a continuation from this post about Mental Balance, let’s talk about the second most important attribute you need to accomplish this — flexibility. Flexibility gives us a range of motion. Consider if you didn’t have it, think just of how ridged your body would be. You would try to catch your step and just fall flat like a rock. Flexibility helps us stretch our arms and limbs out to catch us in the right ways, to save us from a fall just by allowing us to reach areas for stabilization we may not without it.

Now let’s talk about why that is important to the mind. Have you ever met anyone who is extremely ridged in their thinking? Often referred to as black and white thinking but essentially coming down to a limited range of what their mind will allow them to think. To be on the other end of this can be quite frustrating as we know everything is on a spectrum… which can be here, there or a million places in between. Even if you do think you have a flexible mind already, it never hurts to see if you can stretch it even further.

So how do we do this? How do we ‘stretch’ the mind? Well, surely one way is to engage your thinking into things you wouldn’t normally do so at all, maybe something you wouldn’t dare to endure as it has never been in your wheelhouse or interest. It’s true, you may not like this exercise so much. As it is physically, it can even be quite painful and hard to stretch rigid muscles, but what you get out of it is truly allowing your thinking and mindset to be broader than it ever was before. You will suddenly understand someone who you never quite understood as much before because you can now ‘see’ a broader range of thinking. Theirs might have been on a part of that spectrum you just never stretched out to.

Why this is important? Not understanding someone is really the core of conflict. Most times when getting in a disagreement with someone it’s because one person was thinking of it one way, and the other the opposite and neither taking the time to use the flexibility of their mind to understand it. Conflict in itself ruins mental balance and peace. So why not give it a try? Are you someone who never likes to read or watch a documentaries about the ancient history of Greece? Or conversely, the lives of reality TV casts? Go for something completely out of your wheelhouse, try reading at least 15 minutes about it a day and you will be on your way to stretching that thinking.