Learn To Adapt: 5 Ways To Boost Your Adaptability

Quick thinkers gain chances — slow thinkers lose balance

7 min readNov 11, 2020

Adaptability is the main reason our species has conquered the planet. As Charles Darwin once said: “It is not the strongest who will survive, nor is it the most intelligent. It’s the one who’s most adaptable to change.”

Companies that were unable to adapt to a changing market faced bankruptcy. People who were unwilling to adapt to new work processes lost their jobs.

In an everchanging world, even to this day, adaptability is our most important means of survival. Many people, however, focus too much on a certain way of doing things. They can’t deal with sudden change and fail to adapt.

This can have dire consequences. Crisis negotiators from police forces all over the world agreed that adaptability is a core skill for their job. If they fail to adapt quickly enough to changing circumstances, lives are at stake.

If you want to stand out as a flexible pathfinder who can deal with changes, here are 5 ways to help reignite your adaptability.

1. Get out of your comfort zone

What forced us to grow adaptable in the first place was the lack of a comfort zone. Predators would hunt us in our favorite spots, food wouldn’t just wait for us in the refrigerator, and every wrong move was often deadly.

But nowadays, we have monotonous lives, a stable income, a secure home, and no conflict. This is our comfort zone. We can live in it today and in 30 years. As long as nothing changes, we have all we essentially need.

You aren’t looking for a better job right now, though you’re not entirely happy with the one you got.
You aren’t looking for a new home, though you still hate that the living room gets quite cold in the winter and you have to let the heater run 24/7.

And that’s what is keeping you in the same spot. Comfort.

If you were to lose your job or home tomorrow, your first reaction would be shock. What to do now? You are unprepared.