So cognitive flexibility might be the most important tool in your negotiation toolkit.

What is cognitive flexibility?

Is your ability to adapt to changing circumstances?

And so if you are able to predict ahead of time, every move, well, A, that's amazing,

and B, you know you're going to have a successful negotiation.

But most of us can't anticipate every move. Chances are there's going to be one or two turns in the conversation that we didn't expect. Somebody brings from a fact or a want that you didn't know they were going to have, and that throws you off. And so cognitive flexibility would be, I had a plan A. Plan A isn't going to work. We're going with Plan B.

Oh, we need a plan C.

Oh, Plan D.

Let's go to Plan D.

So that's cognitive flexibility.

Dr. Teresa Houston is a cognitive scientist at Seattle University,

and she's made a career out of asking one powerful question.

How can we remove the obstacles that get in the way of smart people?

She's given over 275 keynotes and workshops at places like Microsoft, Amazon, Harvard Business School, and the Cleveland Clinic. And her work has been featured in the New York Times,

Oprah Magazine, Harvard Business Review, NPR, and TED Ideas.

Teresa is a crowd favorite on Negotiate Anything, and today she is back with a game-changing new book called Sharp, a practical guide to using neuroscience to unlock your mental potential

and tackle life's biggest challenges with ease. Because let's be honest, your brain is your

business. Now here's the secret that a lot

of folks in the negotiation industry don't want you to know. It does not matter how many negotiation

tactics or strategies that you have if you can't put yourself in the right mental state to actually

execute upon those tactics and strategies. And because I know that you want to get

better and improve, I also know that you care about how the brain works under pressure, how we can

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