15. Be flexible

Prophet Muhammad (~ ) said: «The likeness of the believer is as a stalk of com which the wind does not cease to blow down; even so trials do not cease to fall upon the believer. The likeness of a hypocrite is as a cypress tree which does not bend (or shake) unless it is felled.» 120 In a similar hadith he (~) said: «The parable of the believer is that of an herb, the wind pushes it over and straightens it in tum, till it strengthens.» 121 Then there is another analogy, as explained in The Moral Vision; the author looks at life's events as trains reaching their stations one by one. If you reach the platform and find that you missed your train, be confident, there are always many trains coming next. It is up to you to choose which one to take. Falling into despair and gloom will not bring your train back; it will only delay your chance of catching the next one.

What you need to do is to assess your situation wisely, taking every possibility into account, and grab new opportunities to reach your destination even if this means you have to wait for a while. Think clearly and be ready to accept and appreciate God-given opportunities. 122 izo Bukhari and Muslim. izi Al-Bukhari. 22 t Khan, 2003 . First you have to accept your situation with a11 its unpleasant surprises; you have to adjust yourself to the Divine will; only then will you be able to assess your options wisely and be flexible in confronting life with tolerance and endurance. There is an old tale (not of Islamic origin) about a wise worshipper who had tremendous faith and belief in his Creator. One day the village where this worshipper lived was flooded by a huge storm.

People started fleeing their houses. Since this poor old worshipper had no means of transportation, he stood on the sidewalk in the middle of a highway praying for God's help. A man saw him and stopped to save him, but the old man refused, saying that he knew that only God would save him. The water rose higher and the wind blew stronger. Another man stopped to rescue the old worshipper, then a third one, then a fourth, and each time he stubbornly refused, insisting that only God would save him.

The weather became worse, and the man was finally struck by lightening; he died while waiting for his imagined salvation. What that man did not realise was that God's help can come in any form. It may not be in the manner or shape that we expect to receive it. We have to be flexible enough to figure out the different 'deliverance options' sent to us by the Owner of the Universe. Allah (~) says: " ' ~ (~ "t~ •/ u v::- / ..,, ~11-:::;-- (·< J-'L;..J r~·-.::. • i~ -'"/~ j -t""< _r'-' ~ ... }._ .,,, f ..

It may be that you dislike a thing and Allah brings through it a great deal of good) (Quran 4: 19) ~It may be that you dislike a thing which is good for you and that you like a thing which is bad for you. Allah knows but you do not know) (Qur 'an 2: 216) I learned a great deal from the story of Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, as he told it during a speech he delivered at Stanford University. 123 Jobs started his career in his parent's garage and proceeded his way up to be, in ten years, the leader of Apple, a $2 billion company with thousands of employees. Then, against all odds, the board of directors decided to fire him. I can imagine someone in his place, who got fired from a company that he started, to be devastated, depressed and overwhelmed. This was not the case: Jobs decided to work his way up again, to tum his calamity into challenge, into an opportunity for growth and creativity.

He started two new companies, NeXT and Pixar, the world's most successful animation studio which created the famous computer-animated feature film, Toy Story. It was only a matter of time before Apple bought NeXT and Jobs returned to Apple. This is a marvellous example of flexibility, a great way to perceive a devastating situation as a lesson and an occasion for growth and progress. In neurolinguistic programming (see Chapter Three), an important concept is that your approach to any situation is mainly determined by your way of thinking - or rather, your perception of your situation (P) and your emotional state (E). For instance, if you have too much work to do, you may perceive your situation as stressful and overwhelming.

But, if you are flexible enough to change one aspect of your approach, it will be easier for you to adapt. You could focus on the final rewards of your hard work, the 123 Jobs, 2005. appreciation that you expect to receive from your boss, a promotion, or maybe some time off at the end (P), or you could change your frustration into feelings of motivation and challenge (E). By changing any aspect of your inner world, you generate high quality options so that in the end you can change the results you come up with. 124 In the book Teach Yourself to Think, Edward de Bono gives an example of two hawks: one of them has excellent eyesight, while the other is short-sighted. 125 Both of them love to eat frogs. From a great height, the hawk with excellent eyesight can see and recognize a frog; it immediately dives and eats it. On the other hand, the hawk with poor eyesight dives to catch any small thing that moves; this might be a frog, a lizard, a rat, or it might tum out, at other times, to be just a false alarm.

Which of the two hawks would you consider the best? Probably, the hawk with good eye-sight. According to de Bono, the second hawk is better, because it is the flexible one. If frogs suddenly become extinct, this hawk would be easily able to carry on with his life. In contrast, the sharp-sighted hawk that has not learned to vary its diet would die out with the frogs. The point of this analogy is that you can tum virtually any disadvantage into an advantage, if you have the right attitude.