The Man MakesHold your aim like iron and your route like water.
Principles are stone. Methods are water. The adaptable man keeps the first fixed and lets the second flow. When the ground changes, he changes his footing — not his direction.
Rigidity looks like strength until the plan fails, and then the rigid man fails right along with it, insisting the map is correct while standing in the wrong country. The adaptable man holds his aim and surrenders his route. He treats obstacles as information, not insult. The thing in the way often becomes the way, once a man stops cursing it and starts using it.
The Stoic source
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 5.20The mind converts and changes every hindrance to its activity into an aid; and so that which is a hindrance is made a furtherance to an act; and that which is an obstacle on the road helps us on this road.
Translated by George Long
The Scripture
Proverbs 16:9, KJVA man's heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps.
The move
Take one plan that just hit a wall. Keep the goal, throw out the method, and write a second route to the same place.