Elaine Fox - Switch Craft: The Hidden Power of Mental Agility

Clinging to the past is the problem. Embracing change is the answer.

Gloria Steinem

Freedom and happiness are found in the flexibility and ease with which we move through change.

Gautama Buddha

In this ebook edition, please use your devices note-taking function to record your thoughts wherever you see the bracketed instructions [Your Notes]. Use your devices highlighting function to record your response whenever you are asked to checkmark, circle, underline, or otherwise indicate your answer(s).

I lay on my bed sobbing uncontrollably.

Crying was rare for me, but I was overcome by the enormity of the mistake I had made. I was seventeen years old, and several weeks before, I had decided not to apply for a university place. Instead, my plan was to train as an accountant so that I could make enough money to travel the world. But after several weeks as a work-experience trainee in a local accounting firm, I knew I had made the wrong decision. It felt like I had destroyed my future.

Everyone was perfectly friendly but I found the office staid and the work soul-destroying. Every day I would stare out the window, counting down the minutes until 5pm so that I could leave. I knew I could not stick with accounting but, coming from a low-income, albeit very supportive, working-class family in Dublin, my options felt very limited. Education seemed like my only escape, but I had realized too late, and the application deadline for university was tomorrow at noon. The Central Applications Office, which handled applications for every university in the country, was in Galway, on the other side of the country, and the final date to mail the forms had long passed.

I buried my head back into the pillow, until a gentle knock on the door jolted me out of my misery. My parents had never seen me so upset, as I told them how I had missed my opportunity.

Well, actually, you havent, my mother said.

I was stunned when she suggested we get a late train to Galway, stay overnight, and deliver the forms by hand the next morning. This positive thinking was completely out of character for my mum, who typically zoned in on problems rather than finding solutions, but my genuine distress seemed to push her into action. Before I knew it my dad had driven us to Heuston station on the other side of Dublin, and I was sitting on the Galway train filling out my application forms. My mother and I stayed in a tiny B&B that night and we had fish and chips in a busy restaurant overlooking the sea that evening. I still vividly remember the joy I felt the following morning when we found the applications office and handed over my sealed envelope.

Six months later, following much intense study to make sure I got the grades, a letter arrived to offer me a place in general science at University College Dublin. And that began an incredible journey into academia that I am still exploring. When I look back over those forty years since leaving school, its incredible to reflect on the many twists and turns my life has taken along the way. I have had many highs and also many lows. Every transition has required multiple adjustments that forced me to change as a personboth internally and externallyin order to cope and adapt. For instance, as a shy teenager I would rarely take center stage and was terrified about speaking to groups of people. I had to work hard to overcome this fear of public speaking to become a university teacher, science communicator and life coach to numerous elite athletes and businesspeople to help them reach the top of their game. There is little doubt that my interest in studying the psychology of adaptability and resilience, which has become a lifelong passion, was forged by these early experiences. And of course, I now realize that even if I had missed that deadline for university, there would have been a way around it, or I could have taken another path altogether. Life is often about opening up to new possibilities and being able to see routes around obstacles and setbacks.

There are always choices to make in life, and they are rarely right or wrong. Whatever the situation you might find yourself in, there will almost certainly be many options that are hard to choose between. This natural uncertainty is a fact of life. Even when you look back, you can never be truly certain that you made the right decision. You might be grateful that you married the person you did, for instance, because you have such great kids and a happy life. But if you had married that other girl or guy, you may have had equally great kids and may have been even happier. You will never know. And this can be liberating.

Whether it is to do with career paths or personal decisions, there are lots of pathways and rarely a clear right choice, even with the benefits of hindsight. This is very different to when you take a test in school or college, where there is a right and a wrong answer and your ability to figure out which is which is a mark of success. Everyday problems are different; there may be wrong answers, but its likely that there are also several right solutions.

Uncertainty is the only certainty. Accepting and adapting to this is crucial. The world can feel like an uncertain place, and it is. Unless we can learn to live with not being sure, its 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.

The good news is that we can improve our ability to adapt. It takes practice and we often need to push ourselves outside our comfort zone. I managed to overcome my reluctance to speak in public and adapted over time to the demands of being an academic psychologist.

Harnessing the benefits of an agile mindwhat I call switch craftcan be transformative. Its important to remember that we are active stewards of our own well-being, rather than passive victims of change and so we must actively manage our approach to life. Switch craft refers to those natural skills that are necessary to help us navigate a complex and unpredictable world. I have seen time and again how developing an agile mindsetthe capacity to flex our thoughts, feelings, and actionscan transform our lives and bolster our resilience. In this book, I have brought insights from decades of work together in one place to uncover the mental talents we need to help us thrive during times of uncertainty as well as during more settled times. You will learn how to find ways to become more agile, find out what really matters to you, gain a deeper understanding of your emotions, and ultimately sustain your fulfilment, curiosity, and zest for life.

Maintaining a flexible mind allows us to thrive amid change. The first step on your switch craft journey is to accept that change and uncertainty are an inescapable part of life. Our lives will change, many times, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. It is how we navigate those shifts that shape our present and our future happiness. If you are reluctant to change, or wary of trying out new things, this is something you need to work ontrust me, it will transform your life.

Agility is built into our DNA and supports our resilience. The good news is that nature has provided us with all the tools we need to become agile. While we may think that our own times are particularly unstable, most periods in history have been characterized by tremendous upheavals and uncertainties. People have always had to deal with wars, famines, floods, earthquakes, political upheavals, and pandemics. This is why we are actually intrinsically much more agile and resilient than we might think.