How valued is being ordered in our culture! If your desk is organized it is because your brain is too, if your house breathes harmony you touch happiness, if you have everything in place you are smarter. These ideas resonate in our brains from the earliest childhood, in the mouth of our educators or camouflaged in the characters of stories like "The Three Little Pigs", where the meticulous animal with his cement house -symbol of an orderly and strong self- is the only one capable of defeating the evil wolf that represents the obstacles and threats of life.
When we grow up, the sanctuaries of order remind us that it helps to acquire healthy habits, facilitates things and develops perseverance (not to mention the enormous inner peace that you will achieve if you learn to fold Japanese clothes). All this is true, in part, because the orderly environment influences our brain that has a rational hemisphere that likes categories, planning and predictions .
For all this, that they call you messy is no compliment. People often feel guilty or ashamed of their disorder . Frequently, it is not because it causes them problems, but rather because it is not the right thing, as it is associated with an inefficient, chaotic and uncontrolled brain.
Its most dysfunctional aspect is the "compulsive accumulators" that cannot throw away the objects that already serve us and live surrounded by dirt and disorder (the extreme version of this problem is the Diogenes Syndrome where the affected is isolated between mountains of garbage) .
RIGIDITY AND CREATIVITY
However, order has a dark side that is stiffness. This occurs when, seeking perfection, the individual loses in detail what prevents rational skills such as the ability to synthesize and know how to set priorities.
Sometimes, the search for total harmony makes us forget the spontaneity, the ability to improvise or that fast humor that knows how to hit the target like an accurate arrow . Also, the desire for extreme coherence leads to the closure and forgetting the initial objective. Stiffness is seen in disorders such as OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). Who suffers it can not continue with his life if everything is not in place and suffers attacks of anguish or irritability if something goes out of place.
On the opposite side, the disorder also has its virtues . Its magic is that it stimulates creativity and helps to find alternative solutions, according to the study conducted by psychologist Kathleen Vohs of the University of Minnesota. The ability to generate original and unusual ideas is born precisely from skipping the established canons to see reality with new eyes.
The changing circumstances of life need people who know how to find different and appropriate solutions (think only of the creative side that turned a bad adhesive into the very useful post it). Creating requires skipping the structures of the rational brain and operating with the irrational hemisphere. It is also very quiet to know that you can improvise and tidy up the mess !!
THE ORDER IN THE DISORDER
How many times have you heard the phrase "I get along very well in my mess". People tend to be disorderly in one environment and more orderly in others. For example, in the closet of a teenager, chaos can reign, while on the screen of his mobile he has everything organized within reach of a click.
This fusion between order and disorder is called mental or cognitive flexibility. It belongs to the so-called "executive functions of the mind" that serve to program objectives, follow a plan, reach a goal and be able to correct the course if necessary. It means the possibility of modifying thinking if situations require it to have more adaptive and effective behaviors. This in itself is a symptom of mental health because it avoids anchoring in rigid and ineffective speeches .
Cognitive flexibility belongs to fluid intelligence, one that is able to reason to solve practical problems. How you will intuit this capacity for change (called shifting) is crucial in learning because it helps to look for alternatives in case of error .
Faced with the "I am like this" of the rigidity with its tunnel vision, mental flexibility has a mosaic vision that allows you to observe from different prisms, without feeling that you are losing your mind or, worse, identity.
Being tidy does not make you a successful person (no matter how much you make parents happy) and being untidy does not make you an artist, however, mental flexibility does open the way to effectiveness , adaptation, freedom and Self expression. As always in balance is virtue. Perhaps that is why the nature of the human being is to be "perfectly imperfect."
How to develop your cognitive flexibility
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The brain does not like uncertainty, so it seeks to find stability immediately in situations of change. The best way to return to the desired balance, without falling into inefficient stiffness, is to develop cognitive flexibility. Here are some ideas:
1. Evaluate your beliefs because your information is not always correct.
2. Modify behaviors to adapt to new objectives.
3. Tolerates outside and own mistakes (through self-criticism).
4. Accept changes in plans because it helps to know how to adapt.
5. Develop empathy because putting yourself in the shoes of the other changes the perspective.
6. Cultivate in tune with others to reach agreements more easily.
7. Skip the routines sometimes to facilitate the ability to improvise.
8. Create spaces without planning and enjoy the dolce far niente from time to time.
9. It favors 'brain storming', brainstorming, because it improves the creativity of the team.
10. Pose the problems with three solutions to learn to make decisions.
Isabel Serrano-Rosa is a psychologist and director of EnPositivoSí.
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