How Can We Increase Our Resilience in Times of Crisis?
Mental flexibility is generally defined as the ability to adapt to new events and situations. In the process of mental flexibility, which is the individual's ability to both change himself and adapt to changing situations, many complex operations are carried out and different perspectives and solutions are found to the problems encountered .
Mental flexibility is a process. It can be defined as the process of first creating a solution to the changing situation in the mind, then adapting to the new situation in the last step by doing various applications. This is a process that is learned and developed as a result of intense efforts of the person .
A person with cognitive flexibility persistently repeats the methods that he knows were effective in previous conditions but will not be effective in the new process, and instead of solving the problem, he goes to the behavior of finding new methods .
As an example of cognitive flexibility, consider a person who tries to pull open a room door. If the door does not open when pulled, this person may try pushing it or may think that the door is broken and give up trying to open it.
Cognitive flexibility is a concept that shows how the results of the interaction between people's behaviors and cognitions can differ in this situation .
Unexpected and difficult situations that we encounter are part of the natural flow of life. It is possible to be more resilient against difficulties as a result of a flexible approach to the problems that a person encounters and being able to realize that they have different options.
However, if a person does not approach problems with the same behaviors every time and does not use different solutions and methods, they will have difficulty adapting to the difficult flow of life and will not be resilient .
Martin and Anderson mentioned three basic elements that constitute cognitive flexibility in a study they conducted in 1998. These elements are :
Awareness that there are various paths and alternative options
Willingness to adapt to new situations and be flexible
It is the belief that one has the competencies to provide flexibility.
According to the cognitive flexibility scale developed by Dennis and Vonder Val in 2010, they emphasized three aspects of cognitive flexibility for individuals to think harmoniously in the face of stressful life events. These are 5 :
It is their ability to produce multiple solutions in difficult situations.
Mental flexibility can be used in many dimensions such as education, psychology, social, business and management. There are some mental flexibility skills used in the education dimension of mental flexibility:
- Being open to new information
- Finding different solutions to the problems encountered
- Changing existing mental methods and techniques
- Using new methods and techniques
- Correcting mistakes and renewing oneself
- Expressing thoughts and communicating
- Being flexible and enterprising
- It is to adapt to change and innovation.