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Step 47: «From the wind I learned that the stiffest tree is the most fragile tree»
The 88 rungs of happy people
In this chapter of “The 88 steps of happy people” I invite you to differentiate if you are stone or plasticine
Would you like to know if you are a person with a high or low Inner Success Belt? The answer lies in the similes of stone and plasticine. Thus, the closer you are to being stone, the lower your Belt will be; And the closer you are to being playdough, the taller. And of course, consequently, the more stone personality, the less happiness; and the more plasticine personality, the greater the degree of happiness.
One day I did a coaching session with Mónica, a super-enthusiastic person, with an overwhelming but sweet personality, who moves at great speed and with a very high level of intelligence. She told me that her main problem was that she couldn’t find the boy of her dreams. I asked her why, and after listening to her speak for several minutes, she concluded that the first conversation she had with each of those who might interest her, she had already discarded them as insufficiently intelligent. Without a doubt, in his mind he considered that the problem was with them. But the reality is that the problem was not in what they could offer, but in their inability to predispose themselves to receive it. I told him the simile of the stone and the plasticine and I realized the great power that a single story has when hearing it from the outside, something clicks from within. Monica got that click.
These are the properties of stone and plasticine. Stone, above all else, is characterized by rigidity. Plasticine, above all else, characterized by flexibility and adaptability. When you are stone, your rigidity leads you to see black-white life, you are categorical, you have red lines that you do not allow anyone to cross, and you are willing to use all your exigency to protect the rules that you have created yourself, using your force if necessary. You keep your way (of being, of acting) without predisposition to adapt to anyone else’s. Therefore the stone, which is not ready to be molded, never yields in its firmness. It is relentless, and as a consequence of its toughness and rigidity it can do a lot of damage. Plasticine does not. Plasticine is soft, smooth, pleasant, adaptable, flexible …
What are the implications of all this? That stone-people, as a result of all the above description, are the people who suffer the most. When you create firm criteria of rules and stipulations about how the world should act and what life should be like, you have just created your own minefield. Every time something does not meet your rigidity criteria, it will be exploding one of those mines, and consequently, you will suffer. There are only explosions where there are mines, because had there been no mines, there would have been no explosions.
Imagine someone drawing a powerful sword ready to swing it with all their might. When that sword hits the stone, it will split in two. But it only breaks in two because it is rigid. If it wasn’t, it wouldn’t split. That is the danger of stiffness. On the other hand, when that sword hits the clay, it does not break, but simply takes the blow. The sword represents the setbacks that life gives you. When we are stone, we are broken before them. When we are playdough, we adapt and fit them.
Lastly, the stone represents arrogance; and the clay, humility. The stone does not change. And everything that is not predisposed to change is not predisposed to improvement, but where there is no improvement, there is no growth. These are the phrases that stone-people use: “I am like this”; “If you don’t like the way I am, your problem”; “I’ve always had this belief and I’m not going to change it now.” In Monica’s case: “Either your intelligence convinces me in five minutes, or I discard all the other virtues that could make me fall in love.” These are the phrases people-play dough use when they see a opportunity for improvement: “I am willing to change my old way [of thinking, being] for a new way”; “I am willing to receive first and discard later, and not the other way around”; “Until now I have been like this, but I am willing to change and therefore to grow.”
Humility … heals
When Monica understood this, she realized that it had been stone. She was enforcing the rigidity of her rules regarding the boy of her dreams, and as a result, she was missing even the best candidates. Being a stone, it could not fit in with anyone, since stones have no lace power. I asked him to begin to detect which of his behaviors were typical of stone and to imagine how they would change if they were typical of clay. It did not detect one or two or three… it detected dozens. And by turning into clay, he adapted to the new situation … and found his Romeo. No, it was not a car.
# 88StepsPeopleHappy
@Angel