When plans change, do you get so frustrated you could scream?
Then it’s time to get flexible.
Becoming frustrated, upset, or angry when things don’t go the way you want them to is a common anxiety disorder trait. It’s often referred to in research as “cognitive inflexibility”–an inability to adjust to changes in your environment or changes in your personal goals. But the great news is that you can become more mentally flexible through practice, just like a person can become more physically flexible.
Developing cognitive flexibility is analogous to developing physical flexibility: Nobody has it unless they practice it and the only way to practice it is to find your limits and push into them. So you’ll be doing things that seem very difficult, but the more you do them, the less difficult they’ll become. And soon you’ll be able to stick your leg behind your head (metaphorically) and everybody will be very impressed. Here are some exercises that I find helpful for building cognitive flexibility:
Go for a walk and practice not judging people. One way that cognitive inflexibility manifests in our daily lives is how we judge people. If you’re walking around and constantly judging drivers as dangerous, judging pedestrians as too slow, or ugly, or so attractive you start judging how you look, or you’re judging cars as fancy and too expensive for you to buy so you feel worthless, or you’re judging people as weird, others as cool, judging conversations, getting upset that people aren’t acting the way you think they should act, etc, you’re building cognitive inflexibility. You’re strengthening your judgments and making them increasingly inflexible. So if you don’t like the experience of being stressed out when change is happening, don’t train your brain to be that way. Instead, practice not judging people. Accept them as they are without all of the labels and meaning you typically attach to them. You gain nothing from those judgments except feeling miserable and anxious.
Recognize that desires are choices. If you want to eat a cookie but somebody prevents you from eating a cookie, then you might get very angry with that person. Anger comes from a misalignment between our desires and reality. If you choose to desire something that, in reality, you can’t have, then you’re the one responsible for you getting angry, anxious, and upset. The thing you perceive as the barrier is not responsible. If you want plans to stay the same, but the plans are changing regardless, you can hold on to that desire and get angry and make yourself miserable, or you can choose to desire something else. In general, it’s very difficult to control other people. If your desires depend on controlling other people, you’re going to consistently make yourself miserable. It helps to bring your desires within the realm of things you control. Otherwise you can end up engaging in many controlling compulsions that only feed anxiety disorders.
Play team sports for fun. This one can seem really odd but you’ll often find that the same people who think their cognitive inflexibility is just a personality quirk also think they’re just not the type to play team sports. Learning how to play team sports is great for learning not to be in control, adapting to multiple different external events happening at once, accepting that you won’t live up to your plans for yourself, others won’t live up to your plans for them, and if you’re really lucky, there’ll be somebody on the team that gets even angrier about losing control than you do, and you’ll dislike them so much you won’t want to be like them. It’s an awesome motivator!
There are many other ways you can improve cognitive flexibility. Take the general approach from those three examples and apply them to different areas in your life where you see yourself getting frustrated and anxious. The more flexible you can become, the more you can do in life, the less anxious you’ll be, and the happier you’ll become. Enjoy stretching!
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