A new way of navigating mindset
The political ground keeps shifting. Economic forecasts change week to week. Decisions that affect millions of people are being made at a pace that makes it hard to keep up, let alone make sense of things. And then Monday morning arrives, and you’re expected to show up, focused, steady, capable, while quietly carrying the same ambient dread as everyone else in the room.
If you’re leading people, there’s an added layer. The unspoken pressure to stay composed. To project confidence even when you genuinely don’t know what’s coming. To hold space for your team’s uncertainty while managing your own.
That’s not weakness, that’s an enormous ask, and not many people acknowledge it. This is exactly the context in which Psychological Flexibility matters most.
What It Actually Is
Psychological flexibility is the capacity to remain present and engaged with what’s actually happening, including the difficult, uncertain, uncomfortable parts, while still choosing actions that reflect what matters to you.
It’s not resilience-as-performance. It’s not “stay positive” or “focus on what you can control” as a way of bypassing legitimate worry. It’s something more honest: the ability to function well in the presence of discomfort, rather than only after it passes. Or “when I’m in a better mindset.”
When flexibility is low, we get stuck. Avoidance. Rumination. Emotional reactivity. The all-or-nothing thinking that makes a hard week feel like a verdict on everything.
Thoughts are not facts. They are just thoughts.
One of the core concepts here is cognitive fusion, getting so entangled with a thought that it feels like fact. When you’re fused, “things are falling apart and I can’t hold this together” doesn’t register as a thought. It registers as reality. And you respond accordingly, withdrawing, overcompensating, going through the motions while something tightens in your chest.
Defusion is the practice of stepping back from that entanglement. Not arguing with the thought. Not forcing positivity over the top of it. Just noticing it as a thought and not a fact:
From: “Everything is uncertain and I’m failing to hold it together.” To: “I’m noticing the thought that everything is uncertain and I’m failing to hold it together.”
That shift sounds small. It isn’t. The gap between having a thought and being consumed by it is where agency lives. You can carry real worry about the world and still show up with intention. You can feel the weight of what you’re holding and still choose how you respond to the person in front of you. These two experiences, can co-exist.
While the feeling is real, It doesn’t have to be the whole story. You get to choose how the story ends.
Experiential Avoidance, And Why It Costs Us
Research consistently shows that trying to suppress, escape, or control internal experiences, pushing the worry down, performing confidence you don’t feel, staying relentlessly busy, tends to increase distress over time, not reduce it. This is called experiential avoidance, and it’s completely understandable. Especially when you feel responsible for the people around you.
But the cost accumulates. Energy spent managing the performance of okayness is energy not available for actual leadership, actual connection, actual problem-solving.
Flexibility doesn’t ask you to feel fine. It asks you to stop fighting so hard to mask or delete feelings and thoughts, so that something more useful can happen instead.
What This Looks Like In Practice
Rigid responses under pressure tend to show up as defensiveness in hard conversations, avoidance of the decisions that matter most, or a kind of brittle cheerfulness that the people around you can see straight through.
Flexible responses look quieter. Asking a genuine question instead of giving a rehearsed answer. Saying “I don’t have certainty on that, and here’s what I do know” rather than projecting false confidence. Making a considered decision rather than a reactive one.
You don’t have to have all the answers. You just have to be actually present for the question.
This Is A Skill, Not A Trait
Psychological flexibility is not something you either have or don’t. It’s built through small, repeated practices, noticing when you’re fused with a thought, naming an emotion without judging it, choosing a values-guided response rather than a mood-driven one.
It’s also worth saying: the patterns that make flexibility hard, self-protection, managing how you’re perceived, keeping the lid on, are usually learned, not chosen. They often made sense at some point. A flexible approach doesn’t criticise those patterns. It just offers something broader.
Today’s Small Challenge
Notice a moment of internal resistance, the low-grade anxiety, having to be ‘okay’, the worry you haven’t named out loud.
Silently acknowledge it: “I’m noticing the thought that…” or “I’m feeling…”
Then ask: “If I were being flexible here, not perfect, just flexible, what would the next small, workable step look like? What step aligns better with my values?”
You don’t have to resolve the uncertainty. You just have to take the step.
This is one of the frameworks I draw on most in my work, with leaders carrying quiet pressure, and with teams trying to stay grounded when the ground keeps moving. If it resonates, I’d love to hear where it lands for you.
Margie Ireland | Leadership Psychologist (MAPS) (COPS)
If you are a senior executive experiencing these challenges, I offer a confidential assessment that helps get underneath what might be going on, so we can determine the best next steps together. Sometimes the most strategic decision you can make is getting the right support for yourself. Email me directly margie@margieireland.com.
