Rigid thinking is the opposite of cognitive flexibility. Becoming aware of the pattern of our own thoughts is a huge step forward in seeing things from a new angle and feeling more positive about the world.

Thinking is like walking: you leave a print wherever you go, and the path becomes increasingly well-trodden the more you go down it. Neural pathways are the same way.

Ask yourself some questions: What do you want to know? What do you want to talk about? Create mental categories for information and situations ahead of time so that you can more easily organize your experience.

While reading the news, place article headlines into mental categories such as Environment, Politics, Arts, etc. so that you can easily pull up the information later on. Do a brain dump. Research says that if we unload our worries it frees up more space in our brain to think of other things throughout the day, therefore promoting greater flexibility.

After only twenty minutes of intensive exercise, your brain releases dopamine, serotonin, opioids, endorphins, neurotrophics, and endocannabinoids—feel-good chemicals that allow the body and brain to learn and grow. For evolutionary reasons, the body is primed to learn while exercising.

Exercise also enhances focus and lowers anxiety. Over time, it stabilizes mood, increases the size of the hippocampus, and promotes neurogenesis. All of these things enhance cognitive flexibility. Learning new skills promotes mental flexibility.

Try picking up a musical instrument, a new foreign language, or learning a new game. To keep the mind sharp and flexible, introduce new things into your routine.

New stimuli promote mental flexibility because they force your brain to adapt quickly. Occasionally surrounding yourself with people who are unlike you is also a good way to push your brain into making new connections.

Quick-wittedness is a sign of cognitive flexibility. Finding the humor in a variety of situations is an exercise in flexible thinking. Explore our collection of informative and educational blog posts to stay updated on the latest industry trends and expert advice. Ends 20th February Certifications Certificate IV in Beauty Therapy Certificate III in Nail Technology Certificate III in Retail.

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On the other hand, your brain needs downtime to function properly, so allow yourself time to zone out. Paradoxically, perhaps, this can also improve your cognitive flexibility — if you allow your mind to simply wander, you may stumble upon novel ideas, and new ways of looking at things.

Your phone constantly pinging away with notifications is sure to redirect your attention and thoughts away from what you are currently doing. Written by Iwona Tokc-Wilde, journalist First published in Student Accountant, June Considering a career in finance and accountancy, but not sure where to start?

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Improve your cognitive flexibility Share this:. So, how do you react to change? Catherine Smith, behaviour change expert at professional coaching consultancy Equal Talent, suggests you consider these circumstances: Do you grab unpredictable moments positively and resourcefully or do they derail you?

Can you cope with and manage lots of balls in the air? When responding to the unexpected, are you able to adjust your thinking and your behaviour or is your response linear and rigid?

Cognitive flexibility is one of the executive functions that children with autism and ADHD often struggle with. Cognitive flexibility also strongly relates to developing coping and stress management skills.

You can improve flexible thinking skills with practice, the same way you can get better at playing a musical instrument by practicing. As a parent, there are strategies you can implement that will encourage your child to practice thinking flexibly.

There are also tools that you can use to help your child be more tolerant to change, and alleviate anxiety. For example, your child notices that the teacher gave their classmate detention for coming late one day. You would need to explicitly explain to your child that sometimes there are reasonable excuses for arriving late for class, such as an appointment, and in those circumstances, you should let the teacher know.

Using a calendar like this helps kids prepare for change. While the calendar shows very concretely when events are happening. This type of concrete information is often helpful in alleviating the anxiety that surrounds unexpected events. Some situations and changes cannot be predicted and recorded on a calendar.

For example, a funnel — You can pretend it is a party hat, a trumpet, a unicorn horn, an ice cream cone, etc. For example, set up a game of snakes and ladders, but play the opposite way. Instead of going up the ladders and down the snakes, climb up the snakes and down the ladders.

Use matching and sorting games to help your child understand that things can categorically fit into more than one group. This can help them with using different perspectives to look at similar situations.

The Learning Resources Super Sorting Set includes activity cards encouraging flexible thinking with different sorting rules.

For example, first, have your child sort the items based on color, then regroup them and sort them by shape. For example, get them to pack their bag for the beach — they would need a towel, sunscreen, a hat, and a bathing suit.

Then, get them to pack their bag to go skiing. The bag should look very different — now they need a snowsuit, mittens, hat, boots, etc. If your child prefers to do everyday things in the same order and the same way, try encouraging small changes to help your child adapt to different options.

Try making it into a game or challenge. This will help your child feel they still have some control. You can use reinforcements to encourage your child to try out these new changes if necessary.

Introduce changes slowly and let your child have choices — this will help them feel more in control and help with anxiety. For example, if your child brushes their teeth every night before bed and then puts on their pajamas, ask them to put on their pajamas first and then brush their teeth.

The first step to problem-solving is being able to think of at least two possible solutions to your problem. If your child has rigid thinking, that task can be difficult.

Work on making brainstorms together to help your child think about different options and improve problem-solving skills. Frontloading is a way of preparing your child ahead of time for what to expect, and also for possible scenarios and what they can do if changes arise. This ability is generally considered part of the executive function of the brain.

How do we know that other species have it and demonstrate it to a higher degree? We can turn to a recent study by Watzek et al. They designed a simple, yet elegant, project designed to compare the levels of cognitive complacency laziness of capuchin monkeys and rhesus monkeys with that of humans.

Before describing the results, I should warn you that capuchin monkeys are true innovators. They are notorious for generating novel solutions, behaviors, and cultural practices.

Some, such as poking each other in the eye as a test of faith and potentially friendship , are perhaps less than spectacular, but nevertheless, avant-garde.

In the Watzek et al. After learning this sequence, they were presented with an alternative and significantly more efficient strategy. Immediately, 70 percent of the nonhuman primates of both species selected the new approach, compared to only 1 human, or a measly 1. Eventually we humans caught on, right?

Rather than catching up with our primate cousins, where percent of the individuals integrated the new and more resourceful tactic, 61 percent of humans never used the shortcut.

Not even after they watched another human do it in a video! What does this mean? It means that most humans are pretty bad at optimal decision-making. It seems that once we learn something one way, we stick with it even if there is a faster, better, more effective approach. In short, we are incredibly biased.

Here's the big deal. Having greater cognitive flexibility confers a significant set of advantages, including being able to acquire and integrate new information rapidly, solve problems more creatively, quickly adjust responses to changing conditions, and inhibit automatic behavior.

All of these benefits allow those individuals to outperform others in a variety of circumstances social, academic, political, business, etc. If being cognitively flexible is valuable and the majority of us are falling short in the adaptability department, is there anything we can do about it?

Fortunately, we are not bound by our rigidity and bias , even though the developmental trajectory is somewhat solidified by late childhood or early adolescence.

How do we know? Some of this good news comes from rats. In yet another fascinating study, Crawford et al. First, learning a new skill can be stressful. Second, once rats learned the basics, they accepted more challenges, not fewer.

Third, after the rats mastered the task, their stress levels went down. Fourth, those rats that had a richer environment with a diverse set of toys and opportunities learned faster and were better drivers. And finally, being a passenger is just as stressful for rats as it is for people! To watch rats driving their special rat cars, you can see a small clip here.

What this and other studies do is clue us in to some key ideas for how to improve cognitive flexibility, ultimately making us more resilient , creative, and confident. Do something you know how to do, but do it differently and often.

If we think about the rats driving their cars, we can easily see how we can apply this to our own driving habits. Have you ever driven home from work and arrived there not quite remembering how you got there? Have you needed to run an errand that would have taken you out of your way and instead ended up at home?

We all have routines and they bring us a sense of predictability and even comfort. However, as I wrote about in a previous post , routines can become ruts, diminishing our cognitive abilities. To avoid this, you must shake things up.

For driving, that may mean drive home a different way. However, it could easily be other things, like trying new foods, changing the time of day you exercise, even sitting in a new chair. Pursue new challenges and experiences.

If rats can learn how to drive, surely we humans can learn how to do something new. For example, dancing, martial arts, boxing, and painting all challenge your body and mind to work together to learn a new skill.

Alternatively, learn a new language, change jobs, or travel to a new place. Be creative. Meet new people. One other place we converge with other species is that we tend to like people that are more like ourselves, birds of a feather and all.

However, the research is clear. The more you expose yourself to different people and their views, cultures, and ideas, not only does your cognitive flexibility improve, but also your moral compass on right and wrong.

Indeed, those species that exhibit less cognitive bias, also have a much stronger capacity for moral reasoning and fairness.