A Liberated Mind: How to Pivot Toward What Matters

by Steven C. Hayes

Psychological flexibility is the ability to feel and think with openness, to attend voluntarily to your experience of the present moment, and to move your life in directions that are important to you, building habits that allow you to live life in accordance with your values and aspirations. It’s about learning not to turn away from what is painful, instead turning toward your suffering in order to live a life full of meaning and purpose.

Psychological rigidity is at its core an attempt to avoid negative thoughts and feelings caused by difficult experiences, both when they occur and in our memory of them.

The flip side of fusion is seeing thoughts as they actually are—ongoing attempts at meaning-making—and then choosing to give them power only to the degree that they genuinely serve us.

See our thoughts with enough distance that we can choose what we do next, regardless of our mind’s chatter. Notice the story we’ve constructed of our selves and gain perspective about who we are. Allow ourselves to feel even when the feelings are painful or create a sense of vulnerability. Direct attention in an intentional way rather than by mere habit, noticing what is present here and now, inside us and out. Choose the qualities of being and doing that we want to evolve toward. Create habits that support these choices.

Pain and purpose are two sides of the same thing.