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.

People differ in how well they can tolerate uncertainty, but we can work on changing our tolerance levels. Uncertainty can trick you into making decisions too quickly and encourage you to stick with the familiar. Becoming more comfortable with negative feelings and thoughts will help you deal with uncertainty. Exposing yourself to small doses of

The process of transition involves first letting go of the old situation, then suffering the bewilderment and confusion of the in-between state, and finally emerging to start again in the new situation.

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

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

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

an agile mind drastically improves your chances of success and happiness. But the flip side is also true: an inflexible mind fuels anxiety and stress and a “stickiness” that can torpedo your life.

Paradoxically, our agile biology can also make us more rigid in how we behave. That’s right: this agile, predictive system is also what makes us reluctant to change. While the system allows us to adapt, fast, it requires a lot of energy. Many of the actions that we predict actually never happen and this can be exhausting. Our tired brain can become

sure, it’s very easy for us to become overwhelmed. What my research in psychology and neuroscience has taught me is that getting used to the intrinsic uncertainty of the world is essential for success: the people who thrive are those with the ability to accept and adapt to constant change and uncertainty.