Sam Radford

September 21, 2021

Flexibility = resilience

I finished reading ‘Ikigai’ by Héctor García and Francesc Miralles this week and, towards the end of the book, there’s a chapter on resilience. This paragraph in particular resonated:

Resilient people know how to stay focused on their objectives, on what matters, without giving in to discouragement. Their flexibility is the source of their strength: They know how to adapt to change and to reversals of fortune. They concentrate on the things they can control and don't worry about those they can't.

Resilience is something I’ve given plenty of thought to in recent years. But I hadn’t quite seen it framed like this in any of my reading. 

The idea that flexibility is at the heart of resilience makes sense though. 

Life doesn’t come to us as a straight path to tread. There are twist and turns, blind alleys, wrong routes, challenges, and obstacles. Successful people aren’t those who pretend to live a perfect, linear life; successful people are those with the flexibility to adapt to all life’s unexpected changes. That’s resilience.

–Sam

Got some thoughts on this? I’d love to hear from you – do hit reply or drop me a note.

@samradford | samradford.com

About Sam Radford

Husband, father, lover of books, writer, tech geek, sports fan, and pragmatic idealist from Sheffield, England.