TeamAre you worried about the future? Flexible thinking could help you get rid of your worries. It’s okay to think about your plans for the future, but over-thinking can’t bring you anything good. For instance, instead of over-thinking about your job and paying attention to every little detail, try to establish a work-life balance.
What is flexible thinking? It’s a mental stage or ability to adapt your thoughts, actions, or feelings to a specific situation you find yourself in. If you want to achieve your goals, you must accept the fact that situations change. Next, you need to develop the ability to function in any new situation!
When we are born, our brain is not flexible. We need to go through various life situations to make our brains more flexible. If we are trapped in our comfort zone, we won’t be exposed to life challenges and our brains won’t have enough chance to develop. In other words, when our brain can’t predict something it has two options – to learn something new or to ignore it. If we don’t learn from new things that happen in our life, we won’t develop flexible thinking.
So how do you develop flexible thinking? Follow the instructions below:
Change Your Daily Routine
To develop flexible thinking, instead of repeating the same routine every day, you need to change it. For example, if you use the same route to go to your job every day, try to find another one. Instead of using your own car, take a bus! These small changes could make your brain more flexible. But you need to practice it every day. This is just the beginning of this process.
Don’t Always Take the Easy Way
To make your brain more flexible and creative, don’t always take the easy way. Today we have technology that helps us in many ways. For instance, we have mobile apps, GPS, and smartwatches that tell us what to do, where to go, and when to exercise. If we rely on these devices too often, we simply don’t give our brain a chance to develop. Instead of choosing the easiest way of doing things, your should occupy your brain more.
For instance, when you drive a car, don’t use navigation. If you find yourself in an unknown street, ask people for help or use a paper map.
Meet New People
When we meet new people and exchange different opinions, we actually start to look at life from a different angle. Looking at life from another perspective can help us make a wide picture on some topic. We shouldn’t be rigid when it comes to our own opinion because we aren’t always right. We all have our own beliefs, and values, but we should hear the other side.
Therefore, it is ok to change your own opinion. This means that you have been exposed to a new situation in which you have talked to other people about something that has convinced you to change your mind. So, meeting people and talking to them gives our brain a chance to develop flexible thinking. In other words, we enhance active listening, communication, and tolerance.
Be Creative
When you try to solve a problem, don’t use patterns that are too obvious. Instead of that, think out of the box. Creative thinking is exactly that, finding new ways of solving problems and meeting new challenges. For instance, many business leaders use creative thinking to solve complex business problems. That is why one company is more successful than another one. We can’t use the same patterns to solve the most complex problems. We need to be creative!
