Two subcategories of cognitive flexibility are task switching and cognitive shifting, depending on whether the change happens unconsciously or consciously, respectively. You can breathe through whatever feelings you experience. While physical flexibility is the ability to stretch and bend without injury, mental flexibility is the ability to switch thoughts or consider multiple aspects of a situation and withstand the stress. When presented with evidence of climate change, people who don’t already believe in it tend to respond to evidence by clinging even tighter to climate change denial. Is it necessary to improve a person’s capacity for mental flexibility? How To Stay Focused? It allows an individual to abandon a previous response set or pattern in order to generate an alternate that is better suited to the requirements of the situation at hand. (Ways to Boost Endorphins), How to Build Self-Confidence? And training yourself to do that can be as simple as solving a wide variety of problems in a wide variety of situations. It’s not just that it never occurred to you to believe you can have an amazing romantic relationship. Not everyone can give a better response depending on the shifting settings. It’s not because there’s anything wrong with you. Mental flexibility is a core property of cognitive executive functions, relying on an extended frontoparietal network in the brain. Moreover, people naturally mature into a bigger, full brain that fits according to what their age status may require. As we see with climate change and Covid deniers, the world has evolved too and the opposite is now true: too much certainty can actually be dangerous. By increasing your mental flexibility, you become a better listener, a keener observer, a more skilled thinker and a … An example that jumps to mind, this was about 20 years ago, something really important to me. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. Issues like stress, anxiety, and poor decision making in long term goals can have lasting effects in the future. There are many ways to respond to the situation, but little do individuals know that it takes the skill for preparation. This is particularly important when faced with new, complex, or problematic situations. Because in order to shift your beliefs, you have to be willing to hold two competing thoughts or ideas at the same time. Psychological Flexibility. Mental flexibility is a trait that helps you adjust to new circumstances, deal with different kinds of people and build better relationships. Mental flexibility is valuable in every professional field because all lines of work involve solving a variety of problems in an ever-changing environment. Especially when individuals grow old, so does the nerve receptors that transmit ideas and thoughts. How can it relate to your health and wellbeing? When our beliefs are challenged, we tend to experience cognitive dissonance, dismiss the new belief outright, and double down on our original belief. Picture a two year old throwing a tempter tantrum because their juice is in the red cup instead of his or her favorite blue one, or an older … People who are mentally flexible have the ability to adapt to change, meaning that they are open minded and able to see other view points, they are capable of taking risks and cope well with uncertainty. Cognitive flexibility (also referred to as “shifting”) refers to our ability to switch between different mental sets, tasks, or strategies (Diamond, 2013; Miyake & Friedman, 2012). WikiMatrix. Developper la flexibilité mentale pour changer de perspective temporelle avec fluidit é. stemming. It’s a way of approaching situations that allows you to adapt your behavior so you can achieve the best outcomes. Solving them over a period of a few days it ' s valuable... 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