Ep 157: The Power of Flexibility in Life and Healing

What’s something you believe is “just the way you are”? Maybe you tell yourself you're just not a morning person, not good with technology, not creative, or always running late. We tend to cling to these “fixed” identities, but what if I told you that none of them have to be permanent?

In this episode, I discuss something that may shift how you perceive yourself and your potential: the power of flexibility. Your brain is capable of creating entirely new patterns, habits, and ways of being throughout your life. When you stop believing you’re “just the way you are,” you open yourself up to so many more possibilities.

Flexibility doesn't mean throwing away all support or pretending you don't have limitations. It means staying curious about the version of yourself you're becoming while still honoring where you are right now.

Click HERE to get the full show notes.

Transcript

Hey, this is Melissa Parsons, and you are listening to the Your Favorite You Podcast. I'm a certified life coach with an advanced certification in deep dive coaching. The purpose of this podcast is to help brilliant women like you with beautiful brains create the life you've been dreaming of with intentions. My goal is to help you find your favorite version of you by teaching you how to treat yourself as your own best friend.

If this sounds incredible to you and you want practical tips on changing up how you treat yourself, then you're in the right place. Just so you know, I'm a huge fan of using all of the words available to me in the English language, so please proceed with caution if young ears are around.

Hey there, and welcome back to Your Favorite You.

I'm Melissa Parsons, and I'm so glad you're here with me today. So I have a question for you. What's something you believe is “Just the way you are?” Maybe you tell yourself you're “Just not a morning person,” or “Not good with technology,” or “Not creative,” or “Always running late.”

We all have these stories about ourselves, these fixed identities that we tend to cling to. But what if I told you that it's possible that none of these things are actually permanent? What if the brain you have right now, the one telling you this is just who I am, is capable of creating entirely new patterns, new habits, and new ways of being?

Today I want to talk about something that might change how you see yourself and your potential, and that is the power of flexibility, especially if you're on a healing journey. And I want to share some science that will hopefully blow your mind about just how changeable you really are.

So many of us reach a certain age, maybe it's 30, 40, maybe 50, and we start believing that this is it. We're fixed. Everything's rigid. This is just who I am. We say things like, I've always been this way, or I'm just not that type of person.

And I get it. There's something comforting about these identities, even when they're limiting. They give us a sense of knowing ourselves, but they can also become a certain type of prison. So to give you an example, I spent years telling myself that I was a left brain person.

Science, facts, things that could be proven and explained, that was me. I was all in on that. And because I saw creativity as a right brain trait, I had this story that I just wasn't creative because how could such a left brain person tap into this right-brain technique?

But here we are on episode 157 of a podcast that I write every single week. I'm creative in how I help my clients. I was actually creative as a pediatrician. My coach had to help me remember this, that I would find ways to connect with scared kids.

I would come up with solutions for complex cases. I would find ways to connect with parents, too, that, you know, were creative. I used a lot of creative language, if you get my meaning. So I've always been creative, but because I was clinging so tightly to my left brain identity, I couldn't even see it. And that story wasn't protecting me. It was actually limiting me.

Remember a few episodes when we talked about that quiet inner voice who knows so much? Sometimes that voice is whispering, you could try something different, or maybe that's not true anymore of you. But we can't hear it because we're so attached to our fixed ideas about who we are.

I have a client who insists that she can never get on top of her schedule. She was always living in overwhelm and thought this was just how it was. She'd say, I'm a hot mess, almost with pride. It had become her identity. But once she started being flexible in her thinking and wasn't holding on so tightly to this hot mess identity, she was able to introduce so much more ease into her life. Now she's pretty organized and quite calm and she doesn't really believe it yet. She's kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop because it really challenges everything she thought she knew about herself.

For the longest time, scientists believe that after a certain age, usually around 25, when our prefrontal cortex is fully developed, that our brain was essentially fixed, that it was done developing, that neural pathways were set, and that was that. If you weren't good at something by then, you might never be. This belief shaped everything, how we thought about learning, aging, recovering after injury, and even our personality. You know that old saying, you can't teach an old dog new tricks. It wasn't thought of as just a saying. It was really considered fact. But then something amazing happened. Researchers started discovering that our brains have something called neuroplasticity, which is the ability to reorganize, to create new neural pathways, and to literally rewire themselves throughout our lives.

We're talking about people in their 70s and even in their 80s being able to learn new languages. We're talking about stroke patients recovering functions that doctors previously thought were impossible and people completely changing personality traits that they'd had for decades. Every time you practice a new habit, every time you choose a new response, every time you challenge an old belief about yourself, you are reshaping your brain. You're creating new neural pathways and weakening old ones.

And this is, I think I've talked about this before on the podcast, but this is one of my favorite things to see happen with my clients where they're so used to doing something one way and then they start practicing doing it a new way.

And that, you know, our brain takes the path of least resistance. So when they're first starting the new way, it's very easy for them to go down the quote-unquote old pathway. And then the more that they try it, the more that they flex that muscle, the more they start going down that new pathway, the more that new pathway becomes clear and trampled down and easier for them to traverse. And the more the old pathway kind of overgrows. And sometimes they find themselves on this overgrown old pathway. And they're like, wait, how did I get here after I've been forging this new path, you know, for so long? So it's kind of fun. So that story that you have about just not being organized, your brain can learn organization. That belief that you're bad at relationships. Your brain can develop new patterns of connection. That identity of being a really anxious person. Your brain can help you create new pathways of calm.

And here's the beautiful thing. Just like we had to be flexible about what we thought we knew about the brain, we need to be flexible about what we think we know about ourselves. The very science of neuroplasticity proves that flexibility is not just helpful, it's actually how we're designed to function.

I want to share what I think is a pretty perfect metaphor for this from my yoga practice. I used to think I would always need blocks to transition from downward dog to high crescent lunge, for example. I had a story that it was my body habitus, my short legs, my short arms, basically my short body, just how I'm built. But as my flexibility has improved and I'm practicing more, I'm needing the blocks less and less. And here's the interesting part. I still keep them right there next to me on my map. I think knowing I have the option to use them if I need them actually makes me need them less.

And that's really the flexibility of your brain in action, as I'm speaking about flexibility in my body. It's not about throwing away all support or pretending you don't have limitations. It's about staying open to the possibility that things can change while still honoring where you are right now.

So you might be wondering, okay, how do I start practicing this kind of flexibility in my own life? First, I want you to start noticing your I'm just statements. I'm just not good at. I'm just always. I'm just the type of person who. These are usually clues to areas where you might be in a more fixed mindset than a flexible one.

Second, try some experimental thinking. Instead of “I'm not creative,” try, I haven't explored my creativity much. Instead of "I'm always late,” try I've had a pattern of running late and I'm curious about changing that for myself.

The third thing you can do is give yourself permission to be inconsistent. I know, right? What is she talking about? You don't have to completely reinvent yourself overnight. You can be someone who's sometimes organized and sometimes scattered, someone who's learning to be more creative, someone who's developing new habits. This is especially important on any kind of healing journey, whether you're healing from trauma, changing your relationship with your body, like I talked about on a recent episode, or just trying to become a favorite version of you.

Flexibility is essential and it makes it more fun too. Healing isn't linear. Growth isn't consistent. Some days you'll feel like a completely different person and other days you'll feel stuck in some old patterns. That is not failure, my friends. That is neuroplasticity in action. And that is you letting your brain rewire itself. I also want to give you permission to outgrow the stories you've been telling about yourself, even the ones that feel fundamental to who you are, even and maybe especially the ones you've had for decades. You're not betraying yourself by changing. You're not being fake or inauthentic. You're being human and you're allowing yourself to evolve. And as we've talked about many times on the podcast, you can hold both truths at once.

You can honor who you've been while remaining open to who you're becoming. You can appreciate the ways your old patterns served you while still being willing to try some new ones.

Remember the quiet inner voice we talked about? Sometimes it's whispering, maybe you could try being different. And you can trust that voice. I know that this can feel scary. There's safety in knowing who you are, even when that identity is limiting. But what if the most authentic thing you could do is stay curious about who you're becoming? What if this is just who I am is actually the least true thing you could say about yourself?

If this resonates with you and you're ready to start exploring new possibilities for yourself, I'd love to invite you to join my group coaching program that starts later this month. We'll spend time together identifying the stories that are no longer serving you and practicing the kind of flexibility that can create real change. And if group coaching isn't an option for you right now, that's okay too. You can start this work on your own by simply paying attention to your I'm just statements and getting curious about them.

Here's what I would love for you to try this week or what I would invite you to try this week. Pick one small thing you've always said that you just can't do or you just aren't good at. Maybe it's waking up early or speaking up in meetings or trying some new type of movement for your body. You don't have to completely change overnight. You can just experiment with the flexibility. Try it once and see what happens. Notice what comes up. Be curious instead of being certain. Your brain is literally designed for change. Your capacity for growth doesn't have an expiration date. Those stories you've been telling about yourself, they're just thoughts that you've told yourself over and over again, and thoughts can change. You're not fixed. You're not stuck. You're not doomed to repeat the same patterns forever.

You're a human being with a plastic, adaptable, amazing brain that's ready to support you in becoming whomever you want to become. And here's what I know for sure after coaching, I think it's now hundreds of brilliant women.

The moment you start practicing flexibility, the moment you start questioning those old stories, so many things become possible. Not easy necessarily, but possible. Because becoming a favorite version of you isn't about becoming someone who's completely different.

It's about becoming flexible enough to let all the parts of who you are, including the ones you haven't discovered yet, have some room to grow. So I invite you to stay curious, stay flexible, and remember you're not done becoming who you're meant to be.

Okay, folks, thanks for listening once again, and I'll talk to you next week.

Hey, before you go, I want to tell you about something special I'm doing that I think you're going to love. On Tuesday, September 30th at 7 p.m. Eastern, I'm hosting a free workshop called Why Smart Women Stay Stuck and the one ship that's set you free. If you've been listening to this podcast, you know that I work with growing accomplished women who have achieved everything they thought they wanted, but still feel stuck in one way or another. This workshop is for you if you're tired of overthinking every decision, if you're exhausted from seeking everyone else's approval, or if you know you're capable of more but can't figure out what more even looks like.

I'm going to share the one shift that changes everything, how to move from external authority to internal authority, and I'll tell you exactly what that looks like and how to make it happen in your own life.  Here's what makes this even better. Just for signing up, you'll be getting a 25-question assessment called Am I Giving My Power Away? That helps you identify exactly where you've been handing your authority over to others.

And if you show up live and engage with me during the workshop, you'll be getting two additional bonuses. My permission slips for smart women, a collection of 10 beautifully written permission slips you can save to your phone for daily reminders that you don't need anyone else's permission to want what you want.

Plus, you'll get my five-minute internal authority check-in. It's an audio to help point you back to your own intuition. The women who come to these workshops tell me that they get massive clarity just from the hour we spend together.

Some say it really helps them make sense of why they're doing what they've been doing, and it's completely free. Go to melissaparsonscoaching.com/workshop to save your spot. That's melissaparsonscoaching.com/workshop.

Tuesday, September 30th at 7 p.m. Eastern. Stop trying to think your way out of being stuck and start trusting yourself instead. I'll see you there.