Adaptability

 

As I've mentioned before, one of the biggest messages that the Agile mindset teaches us, is that we must embrace change.  We do this by becoming more flexible or adaptable to the changing circumstances.

After all, "Agile" can literally mean flexibility or the ability to move quickly.  The Oxford Dictionary gives these two definitions:

1. able to move quickly and easily.
2. relating to or denoting a method of project management, used especially for software development, that is characterized by the division of tasks into short phases of work and frequent reassessment and adaptation of plans.

Flexibility, in any sense of the word, hasn't ever been my strong suit.  (By the way, I had fun trying to find a photo of this in my photo library.  When I searched for "yoga" this odd picture of Becky and I doing a foot to hand high-five for a scavenger hunt mission emerged!)

I also had not been "naturally flexible" in my personality.  As Gretchen Rubin noted in her lecture on the 4 Tendencies, Upholders tend to be pretty rigid and inflexible in their thinking.  It is true that when I set a goal, I am very determined to follow-through and it's very disappointing to me if I'm not able to complete the goal as planned.

As it turns out, I'm not able to host the 4-Week Workshop that I've been planning for over the past month.  In fact, that workshop is the very reason that I've been writing these daily blog posts! The daily blog posts have been helping me figure out what material I want to cover and how I'd prepare an accompanying eBook and Workbook.

The reason I can't host the 4-Week Workshop is that I'm getting eye surgeries on May 13 and May 20, which just happen to be the exact days that I'd scheduled the final two weeks of the Workshop.  The doctor only schedules these surgeries on Thursdays and says not to expect to be able to do anything - even on the computer on those days.

Now there are a lot of solutions to this conflict..   I could reschedule the workshop, I could cancel the workshop, I could reschedule the surgery, or (this was my solution) I could change the 4-week Workshop to a 2-Session free Workshop.

I'm a little disappointed that I won't accomplish one of the primary objectives of even doing the workshop in the first place: To further my business by actually charging money for my workshop.  That's what was really getting me out of my comfort zone and now I won't be doing that (yet.)

I could have still charged money for the 2-Session Workshop, but honestly, it's a big relief to keep it free.  I know I worry that the quality of the materials will not be good enough when I charge, that people will be turned off by me "selling," or that I shouldn't charge money for doing something that I enjoy..   I also really hate the self-promotional aspects of marketing. I'm going to have to work on those self-limiting beliefs, but I will do that another time.

However, with all this blogging, I felt positive about pitching another article to TechBeacon, which was accepted! So I will still be getting income from my expertise (undoubtedly more than I would have made from the workshop).

I also will move a little farther along in learning and gathering feedback from my 2-Week Workshop which will make that 4-Week  Workshop (if and when I decide to do that) even better!

In the end, I feel really good at adapting to this new plan and think in many ways, it's a better plan than the original one!