A Letter from Chris Suarez

I Am Flexibly Stubborn

Good Morning Team,

This week I challenged myself to work on something that’s a bit uncomfortable for me. Flexibility.

What caused the sudden fascination with flexibility? I attempted (yes, I am going to use that word) yoga for the first time in my life. Perhaps it was my sudden realization around how inflexible I really was that caused me to think about where else in my life may I be demonstrating that.

As I stretched myself into the Lotus position (or Padmasana for you yogis) wondering what humanly good could come of it, the instructor announced that although “painful and with potential of injury if done wrong”, the pose would become relaxing with a little practice. In fact, she said that in time this position would allow for incredible rest while my mind would stay alert.

As much as I wanted to just believe her and focus on my posture and form, the only thing I could really focus on was the stark contrast between the yoga instructor’s flexibility and my own.

As my mind often does, it began to wander and I began thinking about where this lack of flexibility might show up in my business life, my personal life, my relationships, my finances.

After 45 minutes of stretching, obscene pain, moving in ways I never thought possible, and hearing words I don’t even know how to repeat, let alone spell, I decided I’d figure this yoga thing out. And more than that, I decided I’d get to the heart of the real benefits of flexibility.

I quickly found that the opposite of being ‘flexible’ is being ‘rigid’ or ‘stubborn’. Well that sounded right. You see, I come from a long line of stubborn Suarez’s. My dad is stubborn, my grandmother and grandfather were incredibly stubborn, my great-grandfather was so stubborn he lived to be 100. So I grew up assuming and believing that this was clearly a genetic trait. And yet, in just a few sessions of yoga, I’ve already begun to believe that flexibility is a learned trait which means inflexibility, or stubbornness, is a learned trait as well.

As you all know, I am obsessed with ‘learned behavioral change’, and so I dug in this week and I wanted to share a few things.

First, much as I expected, there are some definite benefits to being stubborn.

Stubbornness is defined as: “having or showing dogged determination not to change one’s attitude or position on something.” Based on that definition, this is a quality I will not simply give up or walk away from.

There are things in life that we need to up our stubbornness game towards. There are certain things that we need not change our attitude or position on.

We need to be more stubborn around our values. We need to be more stubborn around our personal and business goals. We need to be more stubborn around taking care of our people. We need to be more stubborn around our schedules. We need to be more stubborn around running profitable businesses. We need to be more stubborn around not quitting. We need to be more stubborn around living experientially. We need to be more stubborn around getting a little bit better every single day.

But wait. I thought this letter was about the benefits of flexibility? The definition of flexibility is “the quality of bending easily without breaking; the willingness to change.” Let’s unpackage that briefly.

I assure you, about 8 minutes into my first yoga session I thought I was going to break. I definitely wasn’t bending easily. And yet, it all started because I was “willing”. I was willing to bend, willing to stretch, willing to be uncomfortable, willing to change.

If left unchecked and unbalanced, stubbornness will rob us of our willingness to do things differently. To think about things differently. To consider things differently. To behave differently.

Just like taking the time to practice yoga helps our physical flexibility, taking the time to stretch our minds, stretch our thinking, stretch our opinions will help with our behavioral flexibility. In fact, when practice these difficult activities, we become more and more flexible towards them, and they thus become easier and easier.

Never before in history have we needed to be more flexible than right now.

Humility is the gateway to flexibility. If we are humble enough to accept that there may be a better way to do something, there may be a more enlightened way to think about something, there may be someone smarter or faster or more strategic or more engaging than us to learn from, then we can begin to allow ourselves to build our flexibility.

So how do we build and increase our flexibility?

Read. Listen. Ask. Write.

Read something everyday.

Listen to someone or something every day.

Ask questions every day.

Write something every day.

This rhythm for me has definitely been the start of breaking down my stubbornness…of loosening my inflexibility.

Reading allows us to take a few decades of someone else’s life experiences or their careers of study research and digest it in just a few days.

Listening to someone speak allow us to hear ideas clearly articulated from any point of view and internalize whether or not it could make sense in our world.

Asking questions will keep our mind open and inquisitive instead of closed and conclusive.

Writing down what we are learning, how we are thinking, and who we want to become will allow us to do the heavy work of actually increasing our flexibility. What we write, we see. What we see, internalize. What we internalize, we think about. What we think about has the power to change who we are.

Doctors have found that yoga has the ability to decrease stress, reduce inflammation, improve heart health, fight depression, reduce chronic pain, and promote sleep quality. Not bad results for increasing your flexibility a little bit.

The fact is that our business lives will benefit from being a little more flexible.

The fact is that our personal lives will benefit from being a little more flexible.

The fact is that our relationships will benefit from being a little more flexible.

The fact is that our financial picture will benefit from being a little more flexible.

So go ahead, reach down and touch your toes…or your ankles…or maybe just your knees. It’s ok. We are all on different scales of flexibility today. And my challenge for you this week is to practice flexibility. Build that flexibility every day as outlined above.

And for those of you that know me very well, don’t worry. I’m still pretty darn stubborn. But as I sit here in my Kapotasana pose, I’m certain that we will all benefit from a little more flexibility.

Namaste,

Chris Suarez