More Mental Flexibility

A fascinating topic.

Just as you can stretch your body, to become more flexible, you can stretch your mind!

What is Mental Flexibility?

It is an attitude, a skill, a way of thinking.

Mental flexibility allows you to see things in a new way, come up with unusual solutions, and achieve better outcomes.

It you are mentally flexible, you can quickly adapt to feedback and adjust your behavior if necessary in order to get the outcome you intended.

And the good news is, that you can learn to be more flexible.

There are many benefits.

The first characteristic is Perception.

This is influenced by our personality, experiences and expectations. If we look at things in a rigid way, we can only see things that we recognize from past experience and may miss an opportunity for growth.

Your perception is determined by your experiences, expectations, and attitudes. For example, many years ago I went to a restaurant with a friend of mine. She is a nurse. While looking at the menu she became very excited. "What is this -- M.I. Special? OMG, what could be in it? A dozen eggs, a pound of bacon and some extra lard on the side?! I can't believe it! How can they sell something like that?!"
I wasn't sure what she was taking about. I closed the menu briefly and looked at the name of the restaurant. It said, Matthews Inn. I said , "I think M.I. stands for Matthews Inn. What do you think it stands for?" She said M.I. stands for Miocardial Infarction! Then we burst out laughing. As a nurse, M.I. had a different meaning for her than for me. Her experiences colored her perception.