On Wednesdays, I share posts, fables, songs, poems, quotations, TEDx Talks, cartoons, and books that have inspired and motivated me on my writing journey. I hope these posts will give writers, artists, and other creatives a mid-week boost.

In The Rules of Life, international bestselling author Richard Templar shares a personal code for living a better, happier, more successful kind of life. Here is an excerpt from Rule 7, “Be Flexible in Your Thinking”:

We all have set patterns in life. We like to label ourselves as this or that and are quite proud of our opinions and beliefs. We all like to read the same paper, watch the same sorts of TV programmes or movies, go to the same sort of shops every time, eat the same type of food that suits us, and wear the same type of clothes. And all this is fine. But if we cut ourselves off from all other possibilities, we become boring, rigid, hardened—and thus likely to get knocked about a bit.

You have to see life as a series of adventures. Each adventure is a chance to have fun, learn something, explore the world, expand your circle of experience and friends, and broaden your horizons. Shutting down to adventure means exactly that—you are shut down.

The second you are offered an opportunity to have an adventure, to change your thinking, to step outside of yourself, go for it and see what happens. If this thought scares you, remember that you can always go back into your shell the second it’s over, if you want to.

But even saying yes to every opportunity isn’t set in stone as a rule, because that would be inflexible. The really flexible thinkers know when to say ‘no’ as well as when to say ‘yes’.

If you want to know how flexible your thinking is, here are a couple of tests. Are the books by the side of your bed the same sorts of books you’ve always read? Have you found yourself saying anything like ‘I don’t know any people like that’ or ‘I don’t go to those kinds of places’? If so, then perhaps it’s time to broaden your mind and take the shackles off your thinking.

Source: The Rules of Life, p. 17