Be Like Water

Become the most adaptive badass in the games you choose to play

I am competitive – ultra competitive, at times. I love winning more than I hate losing, but you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference when I’m in game mode. I play to win. No love lost. There’s a phrase I use when I play FIFA with my friends – especially when someone beats me. I point at them and shout:

I am the most adaptive badass in this game

The word I use is a little more colorful than badass, but you get the drift. Especially when I lose, I adapt. The phrase works – partly through intimidation, partly through the internal boost I give myself when I say that. It works more times than it doesn’t. I adapt. I say this to your face then I beat your ass. I learn your game, then I beat you at it. And even if I lose again – I learn, I adapt, I make a plan and I execute.

Do I need to say that this works beyond video games?

Setbacks are temporary. Losses are temporary. Victories too are temporary. You must not define yourself by the temporary, or else your identity will crumble every which way. Accept. Adapt.

Adapt, adapt, adapt. Aim to become the most adaptive badass in whatever games you choose to play. Be like water.

Bruce Lee said it best:

Be formless, shapeless. Like water. Now, you put water into a cup – it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle – it becomes the bottle. You put water into a teapot – it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow, or it can crush. Be water, my friend.

If everything outside of you is temporary, learning to adapt to the moment is the most crucial skill you can build. This is an iron law of nature: Adapt or die.

When scientists speak of survival for the fittest, they’re not speaking about gyms. Fitness is a measure of adaptation. How successfully a species adapts to its environment is directly proportional to how long it will last in nature. It is not the strongest that survive, it is the most adaptive. Otherwise, we would have dinosaurs roaming Earth today. Adapt or die.

I am not writing this to motivate you. Effectively, you could read this as a series of platitudes and get some temporary motivation from it. What matters most here, however, is the mindset. To see whatever happening around you as temporary. To accept the things you can’t control. To adapt when things change.

Develop range. I have been lucky enough to have a set of circumstances that has allowed me to develop range in my life. Everything from the parents I was born to, the environments I grew up in, the hundreds upon hundreds of multicultural teams I had to assist since childhood through my parents’ work… etc. I’ve got range. I feel right at home teaching storytelling techniques in the most high-powered boardrooms in this country, and spending nights with Hadzabe hunters. I excel at producing polished pieces for the biggest names in media worldwide, and keeping preschoolers engaged with story baskets and scavenger hunts. I don’t become a different person – I just adapt. I don’t even see it as a thing until I stop to think about it – I’ve got range. I’ve been lucky and have a bit of experience.

The tough thing is putting this range to use when you’re under pressure. The tough thing is maintaining a joyful indifference to things when you’re not winning. But tough things are good for you.

Ease is a greater threat to progress than hardship. – Denzel Washington

When stuff gets tough, you make a plan. And you execute. And you win. When the going is easy, you stay ready. Don’t get too high on wins, or too low on losses. Your wins don’t define you just as much as your losses don’t define you. Be like water. Adapt. Plan. Execute. Act.

Action is greater than everything else that isn’t action. Don’t sit around waiting for things to happen for you. You know they won’t. Make it happen or it won’t happen.

Life isn’t happening to you. You are happening to life. You are an active creator of your own path – when things happen, you adapt.

There’s so much more I can write about this. But motivation can only get you so far. Try this with me – the next setback you feel you’re in, tell yourself (or those around you): I am the most adaptive badass in this game!

Then change what you need to change.