The Forgotten Psychological Tool That Can Make You Happier Today
Once the “Dark Horse” of Happiness, Flexibility Is the Skill We All Need Now
Thanks for reading The Nonlinear Life. If you're new around here, read my introductory post.
Everyone agrees we’re in a massive transition, but few agree on the best way to navigate it. Every Wednesday at The Nonlinear Life we focus on how to turn this period of uncertainty and stress into one of growth and renewal.
---
Join me in a thought experiment. It's one I was putting myself through just the other day. Make a list of all the things you're dealing with right now. Go ahead; I'll wait. If you need some help, I'm attaching my deck of disruptors.
For me, it's the death of a loved one, starting a new project, a pandemic, two tough business negotiations, parenting teenagers, and speaking at a parade of public events. If I were a body, I would ache all over.
As it happens, I do have a body. And I spent this week reflecting on an overlooked connection between our physical selves and our emotional selves.
Yesterday was my annual visit with my orthopedic surgeon, Dr. John Healey. Thirteen years ago, he rebuilt my left leg—removing my left femur, replacing it with titanium, relocating my fibula to my thigh, then removing half my quad. In our checkups, he likes to put his hands on my leg, feel the muscles, and evaluate the tendons. Then he always does the same thing.
He tests my flexibility.
In recent years, psychologists have begun to appreciate how invaluable flexibility is to our emotional health, too.
Steven Hayes was a young psychologist in the late 1970s when he had his first panic attack.
Suddenly, I felt I was going to pass out. My heart was racing so fast I couldn’t count the beats. Something in that awful fighting had triggered an anxiety attack the likes of which I’d never felt before. As I tried to come up with an escape plan, the room suddenly quieted and looked at me. I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. My eyes darted helplessly around the room, taking in the horrifying sight of so many others looking at me. I struggled to breathe.
A trained behavioral therapist, he found himself wounded and humiliated. After first trying to flee his emotions, he ultimately chose to confront them and help pioneer a new field of study on what came to be called psychological flexibility.
Psychological flexibility is defined as being in contact with the present moment, fully aware of emotions, sensations, and thoughts; welcoming them, including the undesired ones; and moving closer to acting on our truest values. “In simpler words,” explains Tiziana Ramaci, a researcher at the University of Enna in Italy, “this means accepting our own thoughts and emotions and acting on long-term values rather than short-term impulses.”
Hundreds of academic studies in the last 30 years have found robust empirical evidence that targeting psychological flexibility is beneficial for a range of clinical disorders, including anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorders. Flexibility also has been shown to help with another urgent matter these days—reducing stigma and prejudice.
Michael Levin, of the University of Nevada, has found that those who face discrimination because of race, sexual orientation, or mental health and who identify their feelings of shame or anger and remind themselves that those are feelings and not truths, can more easily diffuse their feelingts and resume their normal activities.
But there’s yet another benefit of honing our psychological flexibility that resonates most with me right now. Flexibility improves coping and managing stress. It does that by encouraging us not to run away from these feelings but to run toward them. To embrace the messiness, the pain, the desire to disconnect, the nagging sense that you’re not doing everything as well as you’d like.
As Hayes, who was named by the Institute for Scientific Information as one of the 30 “highest impact” psychologists in the world, put it in his popular TED Talk:
We hurt where we care, and we care where we hurt. These two pivots, these two turning towards, are the same thing. When you stand with yourself, even when it’s hard, you’re doing a loving thing for yourself, and out of that, you can afford the risk of turning towards bringing love into the world, beauty into the world, communication, contribution into the world.
“That’s psychological flexibility,” he says.
Not long after I watched Dr. Hayes's talk, I arrived at an appointment a half-hour drive from my home. “Would you like anything?” the attendant said. “We’re running a little bit late.
Dr. Steven C. Hayes
As it happens, that’s exactly what I wanted—a few minutes by myself. No sooner had I put down my phone and closed my eyes than “Moon River” came on the Muzak. As I listened to Frank Sinatra sing the familiar words—“Oh, dream maker, you heart breaker / Wherever you're goin', I'm goin' your way”—I was transported back to my childhood on Tybee Island, Georgia, where the original Back River that inspired this song is located.
And just like that, I was reminded that Savannah’s beloved Johnny Mercer, who wrote that song, is buried in Bonaventure Cemetery. The last time I was in that cemetery, I visited his grave.
The last time, that is, before five days earlier when I was there to bury my dad. As I skipped along this stream of coincidences—these heart-breaking waters, wherever they were going, now going my way—I felt the impulse to turn away. But I didn’t. I turned toward. Within seconds, a tear was streaming down my face. And instead of wiping it away, it thought: That’s OK. I'm not being weak; I’m not being silly; I’m not being indulgent.
I'm being flexible.
☀
Thanks for reading The Nonlinear Life. Please help us grow the community by subscribing, sharing, and commenting below. Also, you can learn more about me, read my introductory post, or scroll through my other posts.
You might enjoy reading these posts:
Week 1 in this series: Farewell to the Linear Life
From High-School Dropout to Ph.D.
Or these books: Life Is in the Transitions, The Secrets of Happy Families, and Council of Dads.
