Dan Siegel is one of the world’s leading mindfulness / neuroscience / interpersonal neurobiology experts.

Dan tells us that the healthy human being is psychologically flexible. He says we need to be kinda like a river flowing between two banks—on one side we have structure and on the other we have spontaneity.

Now, the trick to maintaining flexibility is to make sure we don’t flood one side or the other. We want to have just the right amount of structure—too much and you get rigid. Not good. On the other side of our river of flexibility we have spontaneity. Again, we need a certain amount but not too much. If we go over the top on spontaneity we can flood that side and wind up with chaos. Eek.

Again: The healthy human being is like the river of flexibility that runs between the banks of structure and spontaneity.

Structure + spontaneity = flexibility.

How’s your river?

You flooding one side or the other?

What’s one little thing you can do to Optimize today?