The Science of Adaptability: How to Thrive in a Changing World

 
 

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Intro

In the next 10 years, we're likely to see as much change as we had in the last 100. We might know and feel that the world is changing fast, but the speed at which change is accelerating is making it difficult for most of us to keep up. It might give us stress. It might make us feel frustrated, left behind, or fearful. It might also make us feel curious, excited or hopeful, depending on how we look at change and uncertainty.

My friendly old neighbor doesn’t have a cell phone and I find myself concerned about his contact with the world, while also being confused on how I could easily communicate with him (right, knocking on his door and speaking face to face 🤦‍♂️). Nevertheless, I have a feeling he might be left behind, to some extend, because of all the changes that he is not being part of. And that worries me at moments, although it probably doesn’t worry him…

When reflecting on change, I also remember I used to silently curse my employer when we were changing office programs for the third time in 2 years, next to a new time registration system, another CRM system, a change in the way we need to book our travel, a different methodology for managing projects, and a new system for ordering company cars. And for opening the parking gates I now need an app 🤯.

Also, the last time I visited a client, I was interacting with a computer-stand before entering the offices. The receptionist? Gone.

In the big scheme of things, these are “minor” but often they don’t feel like that. And we also have bigger events that hugely impact how we live, work and interact, like Covid, war, economic instability, … .

I don’t know how you handle this, but for me it’s no surprise that I’m not super-excited to upgrade to the newest version of Windows or that I have to shift all my coaching and trainings to an online setting. Or for the parents out there, that you suddenly need to be working from home with kids running around which, according to your employer, should not have an impact on your productivity😅.

At times I feel I want to be left in peace. My adaptability buffer seems to be gone. Or at least, that’s how it feels.

For those who also sometimes struggle with change or uncertainty (and I think we all do to some extent), I’m happy to bring a positive message: you can become better at dealing with this.

Shifting the narrative

This article aims to shift the narrative. We’ll look at what we can do to feel better in this complex reality. Maybe like me, you were not aware that you have quite some inner resources that you can develop to be able to deal in a “better” way with everything that brings you out of balance, meaning dealing with it in a calmer, more flexible and positive way.

By nature, we are very adaptable creatures by the way. We are still here! We wouldn’t have survived if we were not adapting to changing circumstances. We’re adaptability ninjas if you think about it. But that doesn’t mean that change can’t be hard, especially now that it keeps on accelerating.

A first thing to realize that could already help in dealing with it, is that change is the only constant in life. So we can fight it, curse it, or try to ignore it, but we can't escape it.

Just a couple of forecasts and insights to understand the times we are living in (not to instill fear, just as a more factual indication of what I’ve mentioned above):

  • 40% of jobs that exist today will not exist in 10 years time.*

  • 375 million people may need to switch occupations and learn new skills.*

  • Depression and anxiety cost the global economy $1 trillion in lost productivity every year.*

So the important question to ask ourselves is:

Can we become better in dealing with change and uncertainty? Can we learn how to thrive in a fast-changing world? Can we increase our adaptability and bridge the gap in the graph below?

 
 

Luckily, yes!

How to increase your adaptability

How adaptable you are can be measured via your AQ (Adaptability Quotient), an increasingly important measure next to IQ (Intellectual Quotient) and EQ (Emotional Quotient) when looking at different elements that help you to thrive in this world.

You can approach strengthening your adaptability from 3 angles (and combined they give you a full model of adaptability):

  1. Building abilities that support your adaptability;

  2. Understanding your personality or character better, and learning how you can use this knowledge to your advantage in changing circumstances;

  3. Influencing your environment so that you feel more supported and more confident in moving through change and uncertainty.

 
 

If you’d have to choose one of the above elements to work on, my suggestion is to start with what you can most easily influence: yourself. So let’s have a look at our adaptability abilities and see what the science says about it.

The science of adaptability

Research* shows that there are 5 abilities that strongly influence your adaptability muscle:

  1. GRIT: the ability to “stay the course”, to follow through when approaching important goals.

  2. Mental Flexibility: the ability to accept, appreciate, and embrace competing demands, problems, or points of view.

  3. Mindset: the general outlook that change and adaptation will result in positive outcomes rather than negative ones.

  4. Resilience: the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties and set-backs (the ability to “bounce back”).

  5. Unlearn: the skill to unlearn and intentionally let go of previous knowledge and to reassess based on new and old data.

I’m a huge fan of mindset, so let’s explore this one more in detail.

Mindset

In general terms, mindset is how you think about yourself, about others and the things around you. It’s your established set of attitudes. In the context of change, it’s how you think about change.

The beautiful thing about mindset is that it is not fixed. You can change how you think about things, like for example how you think about change itself. You can move from a rather negative point of view (see my rant above) to a more positive one. And the interesting thing the science is showing is that when you start working on one element, you improve other elements as well. For example, changing your mindset to a more positive one, positively influences your GRIT, Mental Flexibility, Resilience, and Unlearn abilities as well. Character traits like Hope are also positively influenced. Imagine how you can exponentially increase your AQ when working on several of these elements!

Ok, so we can influence our mindset for the better. The next question to ask ourselves: what are ways we can actually do this? How can we strengthen or change our mindset so that coping with change and uncertainty becomes easier?

Tips to work on your mindset

Step 1: awareness

It all starts with awareness: you can only influence those things that you are aware of so the first crucial step is to trigger this awareness (in this case in the context of change).

So take a moment to reflect on how you look at change.

  • If you have a rather negative outlook, what is frustrating you about change?

  • If you have a rather positive outlook, what makes change positive for you?

  • What is going through your mind when a new (big or small) change is about to happen in your life (use a couple of examples)?

    • What are your thoughts?

    • How do you feel?

    • How does this influence your behavior?

  • How do you interact with others when going through change or uncertainty?

  • And so on…

Take some time to write the answers down.

Journaling/ writing is a fantastic way to build up your self-awareness. If you’d like, you can download a journal template. Mindfulness and meditation are the other amazing tools that can strengthen your self-awareness, which we will discuss in step 5.

Step 2: shift perspectives

If you discover that, like most people, you struggle to some extent with change, you can start exploring how you can change your thinking about change by shifting your perspective. And for this I’d like to bring in a second adaptability ability: mental flexibility.

Mental flexibility is one of the AQ abilities that helps you to be open to differing points of view or a multitude of demands. Being mentally flexible can trigger a shift in perspective, i.e. a mindset change. If for example I have an approach in mind to solve a specific problem and my boss suggests another approach, being mentally flexible helps me to be open and curious about his solution, and as a consequence it possibly shifts how I look at the problem, shifting my mindset and as a result my behavior.

And we have good news: you can also develop your mental flexibility and shift perspectives.

You can ask yourself for example these questions:

  • What are benefits of the change (take a recent example)? Now, in 6 months and in 5 years?

  • What was a change in my life that was very difficult at the time but turned out to be bring about something fantastic?

  • How did I cope with difficult change in the past? Which strengths did I use and how did that help me grow?

  • When did I triumph thanks to change or in the face of change? How did that make me feel?

  • How have I successfully dealt with insecurities in the past? And how did this support my growth?

  • And so on…

These are just some of the questions that can help you shift your perspective.

Another way to increase your mental flexibility is by participating in improvisation exercises. Very confronting if you’re a rather rigid thinker like me, but a great (and fun!) way to find more comfort in change and uncertainty and to be more skilled in shifting perspectives.

Next to asking yourself questions to help you shift your perspective and next to improvisation, you can also actively engage with the following 2 mindsets to become more mentally flexible: the growth mindset and the ownership mindset. They have helped me tremendously in my personal growth, self-confidence and overall happiness.

PS, if you’d like to know how changing your thoughts can change your life, check out this blogpost (in Dutch).

The Growth Mindset and the Mindset of Ownership

In the growth mindset you believe that with effort, you can learn and grow. In the mindset of ownership, you take responsibility for what you experience and achieve in life.

Really grasping these mindsets will create a shift in how you see life, making it a playground for experimentation and growth, moving away from victim-hood, fear and self-doubt.

A tip to cultivate the growth mindset: practice the beginner’s mind by using curiosity very actively. Curiosity makes life more interesting and also a very active, self-created, learning process.

A tip to strengthen your ownership mindset is to ask yourself these questions: if I would be responsible for this outcome or for this feeling, how did I contribute to this? And what could I do differently next time if I want to change the outcome or the feeling?

Extra resources

  • Learn more about the power of curiosity and the beginner’s mind in this blogpost. And explore other tips on cultivating your growth mindset in this article (in Dutch).

  • Learn more about the ownership mindset in this blogpost.

And if you’d like to dive deeper and learn how to cultivate these mindsets, you can check out these online courses (in Dutch):

Step 3: invest in your self-confidence

When you feel confident, you more easily see the positive (because fear and insecurities are less triggered). By tapping into your self-confidence, you’ll also feel more capable to deal with uncertainty and change. Strengthening your self-confidence moves you into the mindset of “I know I’ve got this” and is therefore a great investment for a more positive mindset (and so much more).

The great news is that with small actions, you can have a big impact on your self-confidence.

A powerful thing to start paying attention to if you want to increase your self-confidence, is the agreements that you make with yourself. If oftentimes you don’t stick to the agreements you make with yourself (tomorrow I’ll get up earlier, this week I will run 3 times, etc.), your self-confidence will suffer. But if you start making small agreements with yourself and stick to them, your confidence will grow.

If you’re interested in other ways to develop your self-confidence, you can check out these resources:

Step 4: build up your happiness

You think positively when you’re happy (you automatically have a more positive mindset). You also more easily notice the positive things around you ánd your own positive contributions. When feeling happy, you have more energy, you are more creative and you see the bigger picture more easily. At your core, when you’re happy, you feel that life is good (including the struggles), and whatever challenge is thrown at you, you take it with strength and maybe even with a smile.

All these side-effects of happiness contribute to a positive mindset and allow you to deal with change and uncertainty in a lighter, more constructive way.

By the way, if happiness sounds like too big of a term, think of your mood instead. If you’re in a good mood, you also deal with challenges and uncertainties in a light, open, and confident way. When you’re in a bad mood (stressed, frustrated, etc.), you typically don’t take change and uncertainty that well.

Your mood and happiness in other words strongly influence how you look at and approach situations, hence they have a direct impact on your mindset. Luckily, as with self-confidence, this is also something you can take in your own hands and influence for the better, raising your happiness baseline or instantly changing your mood.

Two of the simplest “happiness hacks” you can immediately apply:

  • Start paying more attention to the positive. What was fun today? What was nice today? What made you feel good? What did you do well?

  • Practice gratitude. Close your eyes, slow down your breath for a minute, and think of 10 things you are grateful for.

If you’re interested in raising your happiness baseline further, you can check out these resources:

Step 5: level up your mindfulness skills

Mindfulness is the awareness of the present moment without judgement. This “no judgement” part of the definition is huge because it’s the judging of change that makes it extra hard for us. If we see change as something negative, it becomes more difficult to deal with it. But if we learn to look at it for what it is in a more neutral way, lots of the struggle with change and uncertainty can dissolve. Mindfulness can help you to lift that negative label or the negative connotation you have around change and uncertainty, which will automatically shift how you think about it (mindset shift).

What you resist, persists.

Stop resisting change and uncertainty and you’ll create the space to be more at ease with it.

If you’re interested in leveling up your mindfulness skills, feel free to check out these resources:

Summary

Change is the only constant in life so the more equipped we become in dealing with it, the more likely we are to thrive in the face of it. Research is making this more and more clear, showing us indeed that next to IQ and EQ, AQ (adaptive intelligence) is becoming increasingly important. And the research is also showing us a path to level it up.

In this article, we highlighted one of the abilities that you can work on to improve your AQ: mindset.

Mindset is a very powerful tool when you learn how to navigate it. We’ve discussed 5 elements that you can use to let you mind work more in your favor, helping you to more easily go through change and to feel and perform better in this fast-paced world:

  1. Level up your self-awareness.

  2. Learn to shift perspectives (by asking yourself questions and developing your growth mindest and ownership mindset).

  3. Invest in your self-confidence.

  4. Build up your happiness or gain more control of your mood.

  5. Level up your mindfulness skills.

For each element, we’ve given a couple of actionable steps to impact your AQ immediately and to feel more capable to deal with change and uncertainty, or even thrive in the face of it. Experiment with it and feel free to contact me if you’d like some help.

If we want to leave no-one behind, adaptability is key.

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Any questions or comments? Comment below or DM me.

Cheers,
Jan

#becurious #becourageous #beyourbest

 
 

*AQai, World Economic Forum, McKinsey, World Health Organization.

 
 
AdaptabilityJan AquariusAQ, Adaptability, Mindset, Growth Mindset, Groei mindsetComment