Staying flexible

Yesterday, while running, I had two thoughts that somehow seemed connected.

1. You’re never done with learning. I think one of the worst situations regarding interpersonal relationships, is to mentally shut down and assume you’re on top of a certain topic and know everything about it that there is to know.
2. You can’t control everything. When you’re setting a goal, there’s still the chance that circumstances prevent you from pursuing it the way you had imaged. When this happens, you can either let yourself be stopped completely or you adapt your goals so that they fit with the current situation and you’re still able to continue forward.

These were the thoughts that I had while running. The first part is something I wrote down a few months ago when I was thinking about how people can get stuck when they assume they know everything about a topic, so experienced in a specific area, that they’re not open to input that might not exactly fit to what they believe is true. In such a case, rien ne va plus, mentally speaking. It’s the contrary of a healthy and open minded attitude of learning. You can’t really get anywhere with people in such a case, be it in teams who work together on some innovative project, or be it a political conversation.

The second thought came to my mind when running up a hill, slowly with great effort. Regarding running, my current goal is to collect some Kilometers. Roughly 20 km per week would be nice. But the area where I spend most of my time this summer is so hilly, that this means a lot of effort and sweat. So I thought I’d rather not force it but embrace the circumstances — being happy about my increased fitness that will come from running uphill and downhill tracks — and focus on collecting kilometers at another time, when I’m back on flat running courses.

Yes, this is meant to be some kind of metaphor. It’s about staying flexible and open-minded, because being stubborn never leads to anything good.