bend with the wind

bend with the wind

To be resilient and adaptable to harsh events or adversity in life, like the way a tree that can bend is better able to withstand heavy winds. I know you've had a lot of setbacks this year, but you have to bend with the wind and continue trying your best.
See also: bend, wind
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.
See also:
  • bend in the wind
  • blow with the wind
  • mighty
  • oak
  • reed before the wind lives on, while mighty oaks do fall
  • a reed before the wind lives on(, while mighty oaks do fall)
  • school of hard knocks
  • the school of hard knocks
  • bend over
  • bend forward
References in periodicals archive
Since the days of Robert Peel and Benjamin Disraeli, British Conservatives have known when to bend with the wind. They know that sometimes counter-intuitive measures are needed to maintain the fabric of society.
Theresa May Dances Towards an Attractive Alternative to Labour
Like bamboo, McClelland will bend with the wind, but will not break.
Social entrepreneur rides on sustainable, scalable revolutions through the Bambike
With the right sequence of yoga poses, a gardener's body can bend with the wind and stretch to the sky to alleviate the aches that come from all that digging, pulling, and carrying.
Gardener's Yoga: 40 Yoga Poses to Help Your Garden Flow
You go through a lot of human suffering every year, but I think it's that resilience that enables you to bend with the wind and come back.
An enabler aims to inspire
Many are savvy enough to know that their authority, even when it is vast, must bend with the wind. Only those who insist on bulldozing over the masses face the wrath of their nations.
Daesh is dead, long live the state
Sixty-five percent who could and would bend with the wind in the name of a cause.
My Obedience to Authority
Speaking at the campus' TechKriti event, Strabala explained how skyscrapers are built to bend with the wind, preventing them from collapsing during desert gales and making them earthquake resistant.
Architect talks Burj Khalifa build at prestigious Indian school
I followed my grandfather's advice: "Stay fluid like water, bend like the tree in the wind." I knew, as did he, that only pain and suffering would result if I allowed myself to become frozen and brittle like ice and that I would snap and break if I did not bend with the wind.
Water, Wind, Breath: Honoring My Ancestors
Privately, Dundee United's chairman Steven Thompson is seen by the SPL to bend with the wind and have a different point of view at every meeting held.
Singing for their supper; Bigotry may be good box office but 3 SPL clubs are hitting wrong note when it comes to shake-up
On the other hand, groups like the National Association of Manufacturers seemed to bend with the wind: giving in to pressure from the left in the late 1960s, rallying behind the challenges to affirmative action during the 1970s, then opposing the efforts of the Reagan administration to gut affirmative action in the 1980s because its members had learned to 'cohabit' with strategies of inclusion and diversity.
Freedom Is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace
Other trees put their faith in flexibility and bend with the wind. They may also have foliage that is shaped and structured so that high winds force leaves to curl up or lay along the branch and thereby reduce tree-toppling drag.
From little acorns champion oaks grow: a journey through the life of one of America's most prolific trees
Baillie Scott can easily be written off as a Voysey follower and a person who was ready to bend with the wind of fashion.
C.F.A. Voysey