Mental Flexibility and How To Develop It
What happens when things don’t go the way you planned or practiced? Maybe you spent hours designing the perfect game plan for an upcoming match, but once the game starts, nothing you’ve planned happens or works. The same goes for athletes when they’ve practiced skills and strategies consistently yet can’t seem to produce using them. Expect these disruptions to happen and realize a result of disfunction is stress and anxiety which can slow progress. To help keep forward progress, work on mental flexibility.
What is mental flexibility?
Mental flexibility is your ability to appropriately and productively adapt your way of thinking based on a change in a situation or your environment (Dajani & Uddin, 2015). Flexibility requires you to be able to shift focus internally, externally, broad, and narrow to be able to pick behaviors and actions that will best help you to respond to the events. Your ability to flex in this way can also contribute to your ability to be resilient (Notebaert et al., 2024). At the core, resilience is how well you adapt and remain calm when you are faced with uncertainty or difficulty (for example, hard things, trouble, failure).
How do you build mental flexibility?
There are a variety of ways you can work on your mental flexibility. Below are just two techniques to try that you’ve probably heard of before. The key is being intentional with how you use them.
Focus on action steps. Examine your situation and determine what you CAN do right then or in the future. We often get stuck thinking about what is in the past without realizing there is nothing we can do to change the past. So, shift your thinking to what you can act on that will move you forward. One acronym you may find helps is to think “What’s Important Now?” (W.I.N.). Once you identify what you can act on (or what is important now), make a list and get moving!
Adopt a challenge mindset. When you allow yourself to sit with your negative feelings about a situation too long, your negative thoughts start building on top of each other. Soon, you may find yourself making excuses for not moving forward or doubting your ability. When this happens, you are operating in what is called a “threat mentality.” You do not like the feeling of failing, being uncomfortable, or not getting selected so you see any action as a threat to your sense of comfort. This threat mentality stops you from moving forward toward progress and growth. It is okay to feel how you feel, but after you sit with those feelings for a little while, shift your thinking to a challenge mentality. In a challenge mentality you see obstacles, setbacks, and failure as opportunities. Opportunities can mean a chance to get better, enhance your overall game, or even expand your skill set. Let yourself get excited about what you still have the chance to do!
The more you practice adjusting your way of thinking in regular, daily life events, the easier it will be to mentally flex on the field. Remember, you are working on developing a skill that will help you adapt more quickly when your situation or environment changes in unexpected ways, and as coaches, you can help your athletes flex too!
References
Dajani, D. R., & Uddin, L. Q. (2015). Demystifying cognitive flexibility: Implications for clinical and developmental neuroscience. Trends in Neurosciences, 38(9), 571–578. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tins.2015.07.003
Notebaert, L., Clarke, P. J. F., Meeten, F., Todd, J., & Van Bockstaele, B. (2024). Cognitive flexibility and resilience measured through a residual approach. Anxiety, Stress, & Coping, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/10615806.2024.2353654