Some people are unbendable: A tower of steel.
Me? A tower of rubber.
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Easily Bent
Pliable - easily bent; flexible.
This post is self-indulgent. I apologies in advance. It’s a meditation to myself:
It’s ok to be pliable.
A flaw you might think? I disagree.
I have many flaws. But this is not one of them.
Life comes at us each and everyday, and we have a choice: Fight it or go with the flow?
There are elements of steel needed in every startup journey. Sometimes the mountain just needs to move. But the rest of the time, flexible works.
I won’t fight my own battle here. Far too much like hard work. No, I’ll hand the stage to Michael Singer. There’s no bigger champion of going with the flow than him…
Surrender
Singer tells his remarkable story in The Surrender Experiment, a memoir of his life.
As a young man Singer fought the world. He struggled, as we all do, to find his place. Fears and desires dictating his life. Then, in his mid-twenties, he had a spiritual awakening.
He found meditation. In a big way. It wasn’t long before he was meditating for hours a day and taking himself off to the woods to find quiet. And then he broke through. He decided, from that point on, he would surrender to life. He’d go with the flow.
From that moment on his life changed. He took life as it came.
It wasn’t long before he moved to a cabin in the forest. Not long after that he built a temple. He started a commune. And then… Believe or not… He accidentally built a $5bn tech company.
Read the book. It’s a wild story. I’m sure some of it is there for narrative value but it’s hard to rebuke completely. He really did build a $5bn tech company from a temple in the woods.
Singer’s an extreme example but the you get the idea: Go with the flow.
Childish
We’re on to our next stage of growth. I’ll be honest, for a week or so I felt the pressure to change. I told myself:
Time to grow up. I need to get serious. A laidback, “go with the flow” approach suddenly felt childish.
Ridiculous!
Getting serious is the worst thing I could do right now. I’d be terrible at it.
I certainly need to change the what, there are new problems to solve. But the how? Now’s the time to lean into what works for me.
It’s hard not to question how we do things in this day and age. We’re all making it up and, for the most part, terrified that people will find out. Terrified they’ll uncover us as imposters.
But those people are just as terrified. That huge success you follow on social media? Them too.
So what can we do but go with it? I’m not asking for you to be completely pliable, that’s not for everyone.
But maybe you don’t need to fight quite so hard. Embrace it. And just go with the flow.
(Thank you Sam Pearce for the inspiration and Conor Swenson for the book recommendation. 🙏)
My Week in Books📚
Flash Boys by Michael Lewis
Such a cracker. I love anything by Michael Lewis, this one did not disappoint. We’re living in a complex world. All is not as it seems.
(Thank you Sumir for the recommendation!)
The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
A wonderful book. A fable about how connected we all are. Beautiful written and an enlightening read.
(Thank you K for the recommendation!)
I’ll be updating the books I’ve read this year here. Any recommendations? Let me know! See 2021’s books here.
A Final Thought 💡
“Those who flow as life flows know they need no other force.”
– Lao Tzu