Survival of the fittest – adapt or fail!

Survival of the fittest is all about adaptation, right? The species that can adapt is most likely to survive because habitats and food chains and climates change, so if the species can change too, they will become extinct. Simple.

Humans adapt all the time without realising it. We adapted to a highly technological world which didn’t exist some forty-fifty years ago on the scale it does now. I’m only 29 and the smart phone didn’t exist when I was a kid, yet everyone has one now and uses them relentlessly.

(We could argue that we haven’t truly adapted because there’s a lot of mental health problems due to the sudden rise in technology. I’ve seen studies saying that it’s not good for our brain to have gone from only knowing about 150 people to seeing into the lives of thousands and thousands, but that’s a post for another time!)

Yet, when it comes to our day to day living, not a lot of us are comfortable with adaptation and flexible thinking. Some of us beat ourselves up for not reaching a goal or following a habit, then give up all together. When really, we just need to adapt.

I said I wanted to do the park runs every week, right? Well, I’m going to, just not in the way it sounds. It’s perfectly okay, I’ve realised, to show up to do the park run and just…walk! Gasp! There are plenty of people who walk the park runs every week. And are happy doing so. There are plenty of people, like my husband, who complete it in record times. Great for them. And then there’s plenty of people in the middle, like me, who will do very slow jogs, or a mixture of walking and jogging, or do a variety across different weeks. And that’s okay.

The point of the park run is to be active and get outside. By doing a brisk walk, I’m doing just that. Today, I’m on my period and I’m a bit rundown from a long week. There should be nothing wrong with adapting to do my best with what my body can manage today.

That’s the key thing to remember with your goals, your dreams and your habits: your best will look different each day, and that’s perfectly okay.

So whatever your plans are, remember that you can still fulfil them even when things go wrong or you’re not up to it; you just need to get creative and think of a way to adapt the plan.

Wanted to write 1k on computer – write a page on your notebook

Wanted to go for a run – go for a brisk walk

Wanted to go away to Spain – go away to a city in your country that you’ve never visited before

Wanted to save £1000 – save £100

Every little helps!

Sincerely,

S. Xx