Adaptability: Human and Developmental Flexibility Essay

Submitted By babsbr11
Words: 562
Pages: 3

Adaptability is a life process. Some might call it a ‘fundamental law’ or ‘universal law’, but whatever the terminology, it is as necessary to sustaining human life as air and water. Every second of every hour our bodies and our thoughts are adapting and changing, if not, life would cease to exist.
When we adapt ourselves to a different circumstance, lifestyle, or environment we adjust and modify the core of who we are to fit new circumstances, requirements or conditions in our lives. Adaptability is about both having the flexibility and the ability to shift you from your commonplace conveniences into something that allows you to be changed for progress and change. As it has been said, change does not necessarily assure progress, but progress implacably requires change. What impacts our adaptability? Mostly it is a question of, “What are our priorities and our influences?” Programming, conditioning, the subconscious mind are some factors that play a part of our developmental flexibility. According to scientific studies, our developmental flexibility to adaptation is not limited to genetic or biological estimation; adaptability should be theoretically based on beliefs, skills, values, social expectancy and past experiences.
Our book suggests that every person has the potential to adapt to stress and solve problems of living that occur. I recognize this with my own example of an adaptable experience when I decided to travel alone last year to my homeland in Brazil and backpack the islands of Santa Catarina. This journey led me to a mountain where a community of Rastafarians, hippies, geographers and environmentalists abided; the mountain I called home for over a month was exclusively accessible by hiking bamboo trails or boat transportation on specific schedules. During this time period I either stayed in the Rasta’s artisan house, or camped a tent outside a friend’s house in the jungle. Initially, my cold and arrogant self felt very misplaced around these noble and selfless human beings; it was clear that the way I was raised and the way I taught myself to live in the United States was not harmonizing with the