Flexibility

I am not a particularly flexible person. Physically or psychologically. The good news is that flexibility is something you can develop with practice. And, in my opinion, it’s probably the most important skill you can learn.

In psychology, psychological flexibility is your ability to stay open, aware, and engaged with life, especially when it’s is difficult.

It means you can have uncomfortable thoughts, feelings, sensations and experiences, while also moving in the direction of your values.

You can say yes to things you are scared of.
You can change when changing serves you.
You can persist when persisting matters.
You can stop obeying every single thing your mind says.

There’s over 1400 randomized controlled trials on psychological flexibility to date–across all sorts of mental, physical and performance domains. And collectively they show hands down, when we become psychologically flexible, we tend to do better. Our mental health improves. Our relationships improve. We navigate hard things with more skill. Our work and physical performance improves. And we navigate transition, change, crises with mental and behavioral agility.

These skills are now being used in therapy, sports, medicine, chronic pain treatment, schools, workplaces, and humanitarian settings. The WHO teaches psychological flexibility skills to refugees, and sports psychologists teach it to their olympic athletes. Which tells us something important: flexibility is a survival skill, a wisdom skill, and a way of navigating the highest stakes circumstances.

Let’s Get Inflexible

There are six core processes involved in being psychologically flexible. They work together like sides of a rubix cube, and it can help to look at each side individually. 

1. Cognitive Flexibility: Thank Your Mind, But Don’t Always Obey It

When you are cognitively inflexible, you believe whatever your mind says. 

And unfortunately, our minds evolved to keep us safe. They did not necessarily evolve to help us live a brave, meaningful, values-filled life. So if you follow your mind, your life will get smaller, not bigger.

Consider a problem that is bothering you right now,: What does your mind say about it?

Is it helpful?
Is it kind?
Is it motivating?
Is it wise?
Or is it just trying to protect you?

I was recently in Reno teaching an ACT Bootcamp to hundreds of therapists who had come from all over the world. They came from Peru, Australia, even Turkey (and brought me Turkish delight!) These training sessions are intense–I demonstrate ACT in real time in front of hundreds of therapists. And, I often have a strong self-critic after. All the things I should have done differently run through my mind. At the end of one very long day, a group of researchers and trainers were going out to dinner. I felt unsure about the work I had done on stage, and I wanted to say “Can you just drop me at the hotel?” so I could hunker down with the TV and and take out.

Psychological flexibility is noticing our mind, it’s tendency to criticize, make rules, complain, and judge, and stepping back from it to ask Is this helpful?  What are my values here? And then being able to say, “thank you mind”, while getting in the car and going to dinner.

2. Emotional Flexibility: Let the Wave Move Through

As humans we will experience a variety of emotions on a daily basis: fear, sadness, anger, embarrassment, joy, love. To be emotionally flexible is to allow for this full range of emotions to move through us without fixing them or being flooded by them. 

Fixing is when we try to make the emotion go away. We engage in what’s called emotional avoidance when we distract ourselves from what we are feeling, numb out, get caught up in our heads, try and problem solve or over-analyze everything.

Flooding is when we are so inside the emotion that we cannot see clearly. We swim in our fear, hurt, or anger and cannot separate ourselves from it. 

Emotional flexibility is your capacity to let the wave of emotion move through you without needing to erase it and without needing to drown in it.

You can feel scared and go to dinner.
You can feel uncertain and make the call.
You can feel grief and still show up with love.
You can feel anxious and still do what matters.

When you are emotionally flexible, you still feel afraid, uncertain, anxious, sad, and you are  willing to carry these feelings with you into a bigger life. And, you can learn from your emotions. Emotions often carry important information–signals that you may want to listen to. You hurt because you care, you are anxious because there’s something important to you in what you worry about, you are angry because you want to protect something. 

3. Attentional Flexibility: Put Your Attention Where You Want It To Go

Another place we get rigid is attention. When we are attentionally inflexible, our attention either scatters everywhere or locks onto one thing.

Scattered attention is when you cannot focus your attention where you want it to go, you are . distracted, half-listening, starting five things and finishing none of them.

Over-focused attention is when the problem becomes the whole world. You zoom in on your mistake, your physical symptom, your worry, and cannot see beyond or around that one thing. It dominates your whole view. 

Attentional flexibility is the ability to shift your attention on purpose.

For example, right now can you

Place your attention on your breath?
Expand your attention to the room?
Bring your attention to your heart?
Notice what is happening in your mind?

Focus your attention on something you see or hear that is centering?

You can learn to train your attention with mindfulness, and choose to put your attention on what is most helpful and relevant. 

Because what you attend to shapes the world you inhabit.

4. Perspective Flexibility: Get Bigger Than Your View

When you are struggling, notice what happens to your perspective.

Can you only see your side?
Can you only see the other person as wrong?
Can you only see yourself as failing?
Can you only see this moment as the whole truth?

Perspective flexibility is the ability to shift where you are looking from.

What would this problem look like from the perspective of someone sitting across the room from you?

What would this problem look like from the perspective of yourself thirty years from now?

What would this problem look like from the perspective of the tree outside your window?

When you change perspective, the problem changes. Not because you are pretending it is not hard, but because you are no longer trapped inside the smallest view of it.

A flexible perspective gives you more room. Ultimately, a flexible perspective an also become a more compassionate one. When you can move freely from other people’s points of view, or see yourself from multiple views, you will become more understanding. Flexible perspective taking is central to compassionate communication, but also to becoming wise.

5. Values Flexibility: Choose What Matters, Not Just What Is Expected

Sometimes we do not know what matters to us, other times we are so busy doing what we “should” do that we lose contact with what we actually care about.

This is values inflexibility. When you are inflexible in your values, you follow the rules, pursue approval, do the thing that looks good from the outside, or perform a role, as opposed to checking in with your heart. 

In ACT values are personal and chosen by you. They are deep down inside what you care about, and they give you a direction to head. Instead of being pushed around by problem solving, you ask bigger questions like: 

If anxiety were not running the show, what would you do?
If resentment were not running the show, what would you do?
If the need to be liked were not running the show, what would you do?

There is no end point to living your values, they are a direction to head.

You never “finish” being loving.
You never “complete” being courageous.
You never “arrive” at integrity.

The more you practice living your values, the more flexible you become. Because values travel with you and give clarity to how you want to use your time and energy.

6. Behavioral Flexibility: Make One Small Move

Finally, there is behavioral flexibility.

This is the ability to take small, values-based actions, even when your mind is loud and your feelings are uncomfortable.

Often the move is tiny, but the impact on your life is big. As Kelly Wilson, one of the founders of ACT, says: “When we describe that which is unacceptable, we describe the edges of the world we are free to inhabit.”

The reverse is also true.

When we describe what we are willing to experience, we describe the edges of the world we are willing to inhabit.

If you are willing to feel awkward your world will get bigger. And if you are willing to experience fear, you will be able to do all sorts of things that will enhance your relationships, physical performance, and work life. 

With behavioral flexibility–using your hands and feet to build your life in the direction of your heart–your world will expand.

Practice for the Week

This week, choose one place where you feel rigid.

It could be a thought you keep believing. An emotion you keep trying to fix. A problem your attention keeps locking onto. A perspective you cannot seem to shift. A “should” that has gotten the the way of your values. A behavior you keep avoiding.

Then ask yourself:

Where could I practice one degree of flexibility?

Flexibility begins there.