Flexibility

While it is vital to have a realistic, workable method for getting from here to there, remember to keep in mind that the plan is not the goal. To reach the goal, you may need to relinquish certain parts of the original plan and sometimes, the whole plan.

I'm obviously feeling a bit thick at the moment. Can you go into more details on that one for me?

I think maybe FLEXIBILITY is probably a difficult one. To be flexible, I guess you have to be fairly relaxed?

I would appreciate more input on this one (( SeptemberMorn )) if possible.

Ok... a chapter out of my own life...

In my head I've had this vision for many, many years. I'm finally at the point in my life where I feel I have the time and the need to form a plan and impliment it. I want to take plain T-shirts and fancy them up a bit and sell them.

By fancying them up, I mean paint something on them, add beads, ribbons, washable silk flowers, embroidery and maybe even some glue on things.

Right now, I need to practice my painting strokes but I don't really want to use the practice sheets provided with the instructions. I'd rather use paper. There have been several kinds of paper I've tried, but either the paper soaks up too much of the paint, the paint bleeds or something goes wrong. The milar sheets provided work, but I don't like having to wash the paint off before it dries. There have been times I would have liked to save what I painted.

So... do I keep buying paper, using it and throwing it away (waste) or do I use the milar sheets? Common sense tells you the milar sheets, doesn't it?

I need to be flexible enough to do what is cost effective or be more rigid and keep buying a product that will go to waste... and I'll be wasting money, too.

Moving forward to actually have done some shirts. I've picked a few patterns. Either I can advertise them online or I can get me a booth at the farmer's market; either one.

I advertise, I go to the farmer's market, but I keep getting stuck with this one pattern that no one seems to like. Do I stop producing shirts with that pattern, or do doggedly keep producing them? Common sense tells me I need to be flexible. Find another pattern!

You've heard of people that want to get a degree is something and then halfway through they find out that it's not for them, or they're not successful. Nothing says they can't change majors OR jobs in the middle of the stream... if they are flexible.

Does that help? If not, let me know and I'll try again.

Plans are what our minds do to keep busy til reality hits.

are you talking about the "supportive team" being flexible or are you talking about us, the others, being flexible?

Perhaps Tomi is trying to say that being flexible means being able to make changes, adjustments. When something doesn't work, think of other ideas.

i was asking tomi, who is in the separate forum.

she sounds as if she knows something. something that might help the rest of us to understand what is happening to us.

happening to PC. a support forum.

Pat, I wasn't talking to anyone in particular; just to anyone that it would ring a bell for. I've told you, I don't know anymore about that forum than you do. But I do think you need to breath here. You're stressing over something you don't need to be stressing over.

B R E A T H... B R E A T H...

Exactly right, SS!

Kind of like what I do with my therapy program. I make plans and look for ways to solve my problems. Sometimes those plans and ways don't work for me so I look at what it is and look to see why it isn't working for me and if there is a way for me to change the plans / activity so that it will work for example -

In a workbook I think it was called "managing stress through the arts" or something like that. Anyway the activity was called something like - containment box.

The activity called for the person to think about a problem they are having and then draw the type of containment box that would enable the person to lock up, bury whatever the problem was so that they could walk away from the problem and be able to continue functioning without experiencing the effects of the problem.

Well I could not draw worth beans while I was completely aware. So every time I sat down to do that activity I would have artist version of writers block.

Finally after a few trys I decided I was not going to keep trying to do something I could not do and something that just wasn't working for me.

I tool that activity and changed it so that it did work for me. I took a shoe box and and lid and covered it with brown construction paper (to symbolize a wood box and dirt because my idea of containment for a problem was to put the problem in a woodedn box and dig a hole and bury the problem that way the problem wold be away from me and decompose into nothingness)

Inside the shoe box I made a divider and put in one side a pencil, a couple markers and pens and post it sized pads of paper.

Now instead of drawing my prblems into a drawing of a containment box I open my construction paper covered shoe box, write one word per piece of paper and put the written on papers into the part of the box that does not have the writing utensils and paper. Then I put the cover on the box and I literally walk away from the problem by going for a walk or bike ride.

Sometimes the box gets emptiesd into the garbage, and I have also on occasion given my therapist the contents.

I could have stayed rigid to my plan and do the activity the way the author wanted it to be done and I would still be sitting there 3 years later still not able to do that activity.

Instead I was flexible. acknowledged I could not do it as it was and then I bend to locate a way that I could complete the activity and still benefit from what the original idea of the activity was.

Ok Thanks (((SeptemberMorn )))

I thought long and hard on this one.

I guess what you are saying is- not to be hell-bent on one particular way of getting from A to B. It doesn't matter what the route is as long as you get to where you want to be.

And also if plan A doesn't appear to be working, it's ok to try plan B,C,D etc and try not to worry about it!

Maybe trying things in a way that I am more comfortable with, rather than trying to do it like everyone else. I don't know.

It has certainly got me thinking. I have read an awful lot of books and thought.... this must be the way to do it. And then found out at a later date that I knew a much easier way of doing it.

Trial and error and trying not to be utterly dismayed when I make a mistake.

Thanks again.

By Golly, I think she's got it!!

If at first you don't succeed, try, try, again - using different ideas.

Now why didn't *I* think of that! SHEEEESH!