Switch Craft: The Hidden Power of Mental Agility

and he spent several months really thinking about what it meant to give up professional sport, which had been his life since he was about ten years old. It was effectively a type of grieving process.

Having now coached many people to improve their performance in both sport and business, I have seen the benefits that improving agility can bring time and again. This has also dovetailed with what I am finding in the science lab. I have coined the term “switch craft” to illustrate this essential psychological talent, and the evidence for its effect

Constant worry does not give us any more control over events; it simply saps us of energy and destroys our vitality.

Change is the external events that happen all through our lives. Transition is different. Transition is the subtle internal reorientation and self-definition that are necessary in order to deal well with changes in your life. “Without a transition,” as Bridges tells us, “a change is just a rearrangement of the furniture.”

Respect the process: growth occurs at its own pace, and you should not try to force it. An internal shift in identity is essential: you can only adapt to new circumstances by changing inside. Accept yourself for who you are and what the process of change entails. Lower your expectations about what you can and can’t do during this period.

Respect the process: growth occurs at its own pace, and you should not try to force it. An internal shift in identity is essential: you can only adapt to new circumstances by changing inside. Accept yourself for who you are and what the process of change entails. Lower your expectations about what you can and can’t do during this period.

I was never convinced that this “high alert” theory was the whole story.6 In some of my own studies I was noticing that the main problem for anxious people was not actually scanning for threat, rather it was in struggling to pull attention away from a threat once it had been detected. This difficulty in disengaging attention from a threat is very d

The exercises Alexa and I worked on are examples of what psychologists call “behavioral experiments”—these are activities that test our beliefs and expectations. They work by exposing people to small “doses” of uncertainty and by exploring the usefulness of worry, among other things.8 By targeting beliefs through actions, you can test out your most

What I call a “sticky” attentional system can lead to a rigid mind. It’s like when you notice a spider and it’s impossible not to keep checking back to see what it’s doing. The same goes for our innermost thoughts, emotions, and actions. Once we think of a distressing thought it’s often difficult to pull our mind away from it. This mental stickines