Flex

About the book

Imagine being able to handle whatever life throws at you with ease.

Our habits, which help form our personality, undermine our ability to rise to new challenges. Most of our actions are based on old behavioural patterns so instead of coming up with new strategies, we're stuck on autopilot. And the more fixed our personality is, the harder we find it to adapt to change or to the new.

No wonder we often feel overwhelmed, unhappy or stressed.

We all have a far greater range of behaviours at our disposal than we realise but we limit our life by using just 1/10th of our personality. The other 9/10ths of our tools for life lie dormant in our brain's toolbox. flex will show you how to start using them.

More about the book

Flex is about taking charge of ourselves and not slipping onto autopilot. A person who can flex, using different behaviours appropriately, will feel at ease in any situation.
The key to being able to flex is to Do Something Different, to disrupt the brain's habits. When you can flex your personality you will feel more in control, happier and less stressed. flexing will help you to achieve more in life too.
Find out about the science behind the Do Something Different behaviour-change technique that is helping to transform people's lives. And experience for yourself the endless possibilities it can open up for you.

View the table of contents

	Section 1 – The human habit machine
1	How many kinds of people are there?	2
2	The personality trap	4
3	People on autopilot	6
4	flexing	8
5	People shrink their worlds	10
6	We are all capable of change	11
7	Shaping a life	13
8	Why the past doesn't help our future	15
9	We are all habit machines	17
10	Habits come in many forms	18
11	The myth of willpower	20
12	Becoming habit-free	21
13	Inertia and the status quo bias	22
14	The pull of the past	23
15	Shaping a new self	25
16	Show me a stressed person and I'll show you a habit machine	26
17	Small changes, big consequences	28
18	Alleviating stress	30
	flex in action – The habit-rater	31
	– Understanding your habits	31
	– Scoring your habit-rater	32
	– Interpreting your habit-rater score	33
	– flex yourself – Do Something Different	38
	Section 2 – Behavioural flexibility
19	The birth of FIT Science	42
20	Inner FITness – constancies	45
21	Awareness	46
22	Fearlessness	47
23	Self-responsibility	49
24	Balance	51
25	Conscience	53
26	Harmony among the constancies	55
27	Outer FITness – behavioural flexibility	58
28	Behavioural dimensions	60
29	Doing the right thing	61
30	The stress and inefficiency zone	62
31	Behaving differently with different people	64
32	The optimal behavioural range	66
33	Making the most of a situation includes you too	67
34	flex transition – relabelling feelings and repetition	68
35	Moving on and expanding tastes too	69
36	Back to stress and the discomfort zone	71
37	New behaviours have effects on others	72
38	Does a leopard change its spots?	73
	flex in action – The behaviour-rater	75
	– Understanding your behaviour	75
	– Scoring your behaviour-rater	76
	– Interpreting your behaviour-rater score	80
	– flex yourself – Do Something Different	81
	Section 3 – Doing something different, personal coherence and decision-making
39	Do Something Different	102
40	What does a Do Something Different intervention look like?	104
41	How does Do Something Different work?	108
42	Interactions between the two selves	109
43	Experiencing and reflecting on our own development	110
44	The ‘golden rules’ for behaviour change	112
45	Bringing about long-term behaviour change	114
46	Coherence comes from doing the right thing	116
47	Towards greater personal coherence	117
48	Levels of coherence	119
49	How personal coherence has consequences over time	122
50	Coherence units	124
51	Apparent and real incoherence	125
52	Why greater coherence leads to better decisions	127
53	Choices do get made, even if we feel we don't make them	129
54	The myth about decision-making	131
55	Choice/decision is illusory	133
56	Why people get paid for making ‘big decisions’	135
57	DSD and decision-making	136
58	Why does DSD improve decisions?	137
59	People are not choice machines	139
60	Self-lying and self-deception	140
	flex in action – The coherence-rater	141
	– Understanding your coherence	141
	– Scoring your coherence-rater	142
	– Interpreting your coherence-rater score	143
	– flex yourself – improve your coherence	144
	Section 4 – Global issues and flex
61	A modest claim – flex can change the world!	158
62	Advantages of flex at a personal level	159
63	Advantages of flex for the organisation	161
64	Advantages of flex in the social domain	163
65	flex and world issues	167
	flex in action – challenge	169
	Appendix	170

About the Author/s:

Ben Fletcher

Professor Ben (C) Fletcher is Professor of Occupational and Health Psychology at University of Hertfordshire.
He in an expert in occupational stress and behaviour change and has published over 100 articles and 8 authored books, as well as having given conference papers all around the world.
Throughout his academic life he has always been involved in the application of his research in community and organisational settings. He has been Head of the School of Psychology twice and also Dean of the Business School for 6 years.
The most recent example of the application of his research is Do Something Different (see www.dsd.me). He has won over £3m in grants from external bodies and has supervised about 30 PhD students in a broad range of areas. He has been on the editorial boards of major journals, has reviewed for many journals and grant bodies here and abroad, and has examined many PhDs in the UK and abroad.

Karen J. Pine

Karen Pine is Professor of Developmental Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire and also Professor in the School of Applied Sciences at Istanbul Bilgi University.

ISBN: 978-1-907396-54-0 Format: Paperback, 184pp Published: Jan 2012

Do something different

About the book

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Ben Fletcher

Karen J. Pine

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