Leadership & Optimal Performance through Adaptability, not Strength or Grit.
The practice of cultivating resilience by inviting fluid movement through states.
This piece began as a simple question I kept returning to in my own body:
What happens when we stop trying to hold ourselves together and allow ourselves to move?What follows is an exploration of resilience not as strength or endurance, but as adaptability — the capacity to move through states without getting stuck. It’s an invitation to notice where you are right now, and to experiment with meeting your body with a little more permission, curiosity, and care.
Try this thought experiment on for size.
What would it look like if, for one day, you gave yourself permission to embody a pendulum?
A pendulum moves through a wide range of motion around a fixed axis or center point. It is a continuous process of shifting momentum, direction, state, location, and position in time and space — fluidly and adaptively.
A pendulum is incapable of remaining stuck at any single position across the continuum, except at the completion of its full expression, when it naturally returns to the center.
A moment of pause.
A moment of stillness.
And then, inevitably, the next wave of movement and flow begins.
When you consider the range of your emotional, energetic, nervous system, and relational experiences, do you feel more like a pendulum — swinging freely from moment to moment, returning to center after each excursion into more extreme states? Or do you sometimes feel more like a statue — rigid, fixed, locked in, and numb within a particular state of mind and body?
What would it look like if you allowed your inner experience to unfold with movement, shifts, and flow — like a pendulum?
What if, throughout a single day, you fluidly moved between dozens — even hundreds — of internal states?
Your Expression is Welcomed and Necessary
There would likely be moments of gratitude, appreciation, clarity, and intuition.
There would also be moments of stress, anxiety, planning, and preparation.
There might be frustration, resentment, and anger.
There could be subtle or significant collapses — moments of retreat inward, sitting in uncertainty, not knowing.
Flowing, pendulating movement is resilient. Fixed and rigid structures are fragile.
Consider the example of water in a river: constantly adapting, flowing, slowing, accelerating, and reshaping the environment through which it moves. Now consider a bridge constructed as a fixed object within that same river, unable to move, doing its best to maintain its foundation against the never-ending, effortless force of water.
If you were able to fast-forward one hundred years into the future, which would you expect to find still strong, vibrant, and alive — the water and river, or the bridge?
To embody the pendulum is to recognize that we are most resilient, adaptable, effective, and impactful when we flow like water. It is to acknowledge that control, rigidity, being right, holding our ground, and “keeping it all together” are often fragile and short-sighted strategies for moving through life.
Resilience does not come from bracing against experience.
It comes from allowing movement.
It is in giving ourselves permission to move fully to the outer range of each experience — to feel the sensations in the body, to notice the stories forming in the mind — and then remembering that being whole, healthy, and resourced means we are allowed to shift again.
Pendulation as a Form of Self-Regulation
When we pendulate, we work with the nervous system rather than against it.
From a nervous system perspective, health is not the absence of activation or discomfort, but the ability to move fluidly between states of mobilization, rest, connection, and withdrawal without becoming stuck in any one of them.
If we find ourselves in calm, stillness, and presence, the next movement may be toward gentle mobilization — a stretch, a walk, a spark of play or creativity.
If we are consumed by stress, nervousness, excitation, or agitation, the movement may be in the opposite direction — a deep anchoring breath, opening the heart and drawing the core downward, reconnecting with the ground through a slow, extended exhale.
If we notice collapse or exhaustion — a natural protective response of the nervous system — the movement may be a tender and nourishing return inward. Softening the body. Quieting the mind. Giving ourselves permission to curl inward while still remaining connected.
Pendulation is not about forcing ourselves into a “better” state.
It is about allowing movement along the full continuum of connected human expression.
When we stay present and connected to our core integrity, the expressions that arise from within are not problems to fix. They are restorative gestures — signals pointing toward what is required for healing, growth, and renewal.
How Do You Move Through Life Now?
Pause for a moment and ask yourself:
Are you able to fully land in moments of reverence and full-body gratitude?
Can you sit in stillness without needing to optimize, distract, or escape?
Are you willing to let waves of stress or anxiety wash through you, acknowledge them, and then return to center through an embodied practice?
When anger or frustration surges, can you notice it before it hardens into emotional reactivity?
After moments where your expression affects others, can you return to yourself with humility, compassion, tenderness, and forgiveness — for yourself and for them?
And when you find yourself collapsing — curling into a ball, wanting to retreat into a dark cave — can you gently give your body what it needs?
Can you support your core, anchor yourself to the ground, and allow your body to fold inward without abandoning yourself?
“I Can’t Possibly Move Through All of That”
At first, the idea of pendulating between states hundreds of times per day can feel impossible.
You might feel it is unfair.
You might feel like a victim of circumstance.
You might believe reconciliation must come from others before you are allowed to return to center.
But pause for a moment.
Take a breath deep into your belly.
Expand your chest.
Connect with your heart.
Anchor downward on the exhale.
Then ask yourself, honestly:
Whose energy are you draining by resisting movement?
Whose internal resources are being burned?
Whose life, time, and vitality are being consumed?
It is only yours — not because this is easy, but because your body is the one carrying the cost.
Even when the decision feels impossible, the choice to meet your body where it is still belongs to you.
Shifting the Frame: From Fixing to Meeting
Perhaps this practice is not about fixing everything or solving the story.
Perhaps it is about changing the frame of reference entirely.
Instead of asking, “How do I make this go away?” or “How do I fix or eliminate the issue?” try asking:
What does it look like to meet my body exactly where it is in this moment?
Meet it with observation.
With compassion.
With curiosity.
Simply notice what is happening.
Then ask a gentle question:
What does my body need right now to pendulate toward healing, restoration, growth, or expansion?
The context — the story, the narrative, the justification — is not required to answer this question.
If the stories arise, take another breath.
Return to the body on the exhale.
Let the narratives and sensations soften and dissolve.
Ask again:
Where is my body right now?
What could it look like to give my body one percent of what it needs?
Not what anyone else needs.
Not what expectations demand.
Only what your body needs in this moment.
Following the Smallest Signal
As you sit with this question, notice what emerges from your core.
It may be subtle.
It may feel almost too simple to matter.
Follow it anyway.
Release any expectation of outcome.
Let go of past and future.
Acknowledge that, for this body, what you choose to give it in this moment is what matters most.
Notice what happens when you offer your body what it needs in the smallest possible way.
Pause — and appreciate what just occurred.
Perhaps there is a softening.
Perhaps a spark of renewed energy.
Perhaps a melting away of old tension.
Perhaps a breath where you finally allow yourself to restore.
You have just practiced being a pendulum.
You have shifted — subtly but meaningfully — along the continuum of both psychology and physiology.
Returning to the Practice
You can return to this practice dozens — even hundreds — of times each day.
Silently.
In moments of calm.
In moments of mobilization and stress.
And in all the liminal spaces in between.
The practice is simple:
Where is my body right now?
What do I notice shifting and changing? Physically, mentally, energetically and emotionally?
Can I observe without judgment?
Can I become curious?
What does my body need in this moment?
What can I give it to help it heal, restore, grow, or expand?
This is pendulation.
This is adaptability.
This is returning to center — moment by moment, over and over again.