In this episode, we discuss that you can’t be too rigid in your ways.
Full Transcript
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, with your host Joe Bautista. In this podcast, my goal is to give you quick lessons on how to grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually so you can have better careers, better relationships, and better personal finances.
I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book, I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones. I’m also the founder of Grow With Joe, where I combine self-development coaching and financial planning for Latino Professionals.
In today’s episode, we’re are going to talk about being adaptable. Charles Darwin wrote “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.”
You can be the strongest or most intelligent person alive, but that doesn’t guarantee your success. What is going to help you be successful, is how well you can adapt to change while using the resources you have. If you look at the conflict between the United States and Great Britain, the United States used more guerrilla tactics because they knew they could go face to face with Great Britain and Great Britain, didn’t really change their tactics and that is one of the reasons the United States were able to break away.
If you look at the giant businesses of the past like Kodak, who invented the first digital camera back in 1975 but didn’t want to pivot away from their lucrative film business which would do them fine for the next couple of decades but now they are nowhere to be seen. If you want to be successful in the long term you have to be adaptable to your environment. You’re most likely not going to be able to force your way to success, you have to be able to finesse your way into success.
The world does not revolve around us. It might feel that way but give it enough time and the world will show you who is in charge. You have to understand your environment and see try to see around the corner. I know I have had to adjust my attitude and perception to my environment so I could be successful. One of the things I ask in my meetings with a client is, “What can I do better for you to make these meetings better?” I get my feedback and then I adapt my business.
I’ve added a lot of little things here and there to make my client experience more enjoyable and I get a lot of really good feedback. I could be the smartest financial planner that knows every single thing about financial planning, but if I don’t know how to adapt my teaching style to my clients, then I won’t last very long in this business.
I’m just one person and I can’t expect to have every single person I’m interacting with me to think like and act like me. This doesn’t mean I can’t add my own style to a situation. I know I can give people information and guidance on how to become better versions of themselves that they won’t be able to come up with themselves, and I need to add value where I can but understand when I need to change my plans and tactics in a situation.
There have been times where I said the right thing at the wrong time and it just blew up in my face and cause more headaches than necessary. I need to understand the situation that I’m in and know which tools I need to use in that situation. If I do mess up, I do take ownership of the situation and I ask myself how I can do better in the future.
That is what is amazing about life though, you can mess up and you can redeem yourself. For the most part. So if you do mess up, just move on as best as you can. In the Marines, it’s kind of crazy seeing marines that were mess-ups while on active duty but doing amazing things once they got out. They adapted and now are thriving.
One of the things we learned in the Marines was Semper Gumby, which means always flexible. It’s a play on Semper Fidelis, which means always faithful in Latin. In the Marines though, things rarely went to plan. Something had to be fixed and we just adapt and overcome. It was a really good lesson learned because when things go wrong now in my life, I won’t crack under pressure, I’ll just adapt and ask myself what do I need to do now or who do I need to reach out to help me fix this issue. That is adapting.
Ask yourself what can you do now to fix this or who can you ask to fix something. You don’t need to do everything to survive. You can leverage the talents of others to help you adapt. Just don’t burn any bridges and don’t abuse the relationship.
To be adaptable you need to learn how to use different resources to bail you out. Sometimes you will need to use your strength instead of intelligence to get you out of a bind and sometimes you need to use intelligence to get you out of a situation. Sometimes you need someone else. You just have to recognize the situation you’re in. If it’s your first time in the situation, just try something and then adapt your next action based on what happened with your first move.
This is how I live my life. I just keep taking action and my next action step is going to be based on what happened in the past or from what I learned from someone else. I don’t hold to things longer than I have to and this is how I stay adaptable and make sure I have the most flexibility and control over my life, and life is good now.
That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.” like Charles Darwin said. If you want to be successful in life, you have to know how to adapt your skills, your beliefs, and values based on your situation. Being stubborn can only work for so long before you get left behind by society. Sometimes change can happen so fast that it’s hard to adapt but if you just focus on getting one percent better every day physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, you can minimize your exposure to this fate. I want the best for you listening to this and I hope you start adapting now to the changing future. You got this.
To get a free copy of my book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and just pay for shipping and handling.
I have a quiz on my website that grades your inner circle, so if you want to find out if your inner circle is an A, B, C, D, or F, you can take that quiz at growwithjoe.me/quiz
I’m also trying to do a feedback Friday episode, so if you have a question that you would like to have my answer on the air, just e-mail me at [email protected]
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Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
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