Speaker 1: Welcome to the Psychology Podcast, where we give you insights
Speaker 1: into the mind, brain, behavior and creativity. I'm doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, and in each episode I have a conversation
Speaker 1: with a guest who will stimulate your mind and give
Speaker 1: you a greater understanding of yourself, others, and the world
Speaker 1: to live in. Hopefully we will also provide a glimpse
Speaker 1: into human possibility. Thanks for listening and enjoy the podcast today.
Speaker 1: It's great to have Stephen Hayes on the podcast. Doctor
Speaker 1: Hayes the professor of Psychology at the University of Nevado, Reno.
Speaker 1: The author of forty three books and more than six
Speaker 1: hundred scientific articles. He has served as president of the
Speaker 1: Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapy and the Association for
Speaker 1: Contextual Behavioral Science, and as one of the most cited
Speaker 1: psychologists in the world. Doctor Hayes initiated the development of
Speaker 1: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy ACT and of relation frame Therapy RFT,
Speaker 1: the approach to cognition on which ACT is based. His
Speaker 1: research has been cited widely by major media, including Time Magazine,
Speaker 1: The New Yorker, The New York Times, Men's Health, Self,
Speaker 1: The Wall Street Journal, Psychology Today. Oh, Theoprah magazine and
Speaker 1: Salon dot com. Who so great to have you on
Speaker 1: the Psychology Podcast for the return of the new season. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's awesome to be here and to be here. Awesome
Speaker 1: to be here and also to be here at the
Speaker 1: inaugural event. Yeah, new season. I'm looking forward to seeing it.
Speaker 1: I'm a first out of the gate. Thanks. This is
Speaker 1: a big deal because we've never had a video before
Speaker 1: on the Psychology Podcast. Now it comes to Psychology comes
Speaker 1: to Life. Maybe that's what I should rename the podcast.
Speaker 1: I don't know good name, but anyway, So this is
Speaker 1: your new book. Yeah, what a terrific book. It brings
Speaker 1: together your life's work, right, it does? It really is.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's no way of saying there another way
Speaker 1: to say it. I mean I feel the ego poll
Speaker 1: when I say it that way. But it is exactly
Speaker 1: That's what I've been working on in my entire life,
Speaker 1: and it brings it all together. Yeah, me in an
Speaker 1: entire community, but of an age. One reason I decided
Speaker 1: to do it is I said, okay, dude, if you're
Speaker 1: going to do it, you have to do it now.
Speaker 1: Because last I heard people go out horizontal so times
Speaker 1: up and it was quite a left I've been working
Speaker 1: on it for eleven years. Took five years of intense
Speaker 1: work to write it. Well, but money more than five
Speaker 1: years of thinking about it. Yeah, I say, like forty
Speaker 1: years to produce it, eleven years to think about it
Speaker 1: in five years of intense work to write it. So
Speaker 1: I got a lot bound up in it. But I
Speaker 1: hope people find something of use to it. I think,
Speaker 1: you know, I hope it helps liberate their lives. So
Speaker 1: the idea of liberating your lives, libing your mind, was
Speaker 1: that a concept when you started out in this field,
Speaker 1: studying this that you were thinking of? Was that idea
Speaker 1: of liberation in your mind? Or did you have a
Speaker 1: more modest qual No. In a way, it was because
Speaker 1: you know, I came into psychology in part out of
Speaker 1: things like Maslow Peak experiences and really, yeah, I know
Speaker 1: you're you're effect you're working a book, are but you
Speaker 1: know no, because it always seemed to me that psychology
Speaker 1: was about the best of us, you know, about the peak,
Speaker 1: the kind of people that we can be in the
Speaker 1: kind of world we can create. And in clinical psychology
Speaker 1: it's been so much about almost how to fix hidden diseases,
Speaker 1: you know, which is a crazy kind of I think
Speaker 1: a by medicalizing of human suffering. I get the human
Speaker 1: suffering is important, I really get that. But human prosperity
Speaker 1: is important too, And in fact, part of the suffering
Speaker 1: is that people don't know how to take where they
Speaker 1: are and move towards what they really want. And that's
Speaker 1: what's actually in the book. What's in the book is
Speaker 1: I think we've kind of, well, the most arrogant way
Speaker 1: to say it, is kind of cracked the code of
Speaker 1: what the twenty percent is that does the eighty percent
Speaker 1: that can take what's inside our suffering and take the
Speaker 1: energy inside it that's positive because it isn't all negative
Speaker 1: where you end up as negative, but the energy inside
Speaker 1: it's not negative. What people want is not negative. Even
Speaker 1: if it feels negative, it could still be positive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because what's inside it reflects some sort of deep need
Speaker 1: or yearning or motivation being mishandled dramatically. So but when
Speaker 1: you dig down to that, then there's lessons to be
Speaker 1: learned inside your pain and suffering that you can put
Speaker 1: towards the creation of prosperity. And that's that metaphor of pivot,
Speaker 1: you know, you like you take like, if you're dancing
Speaker 1: with somebody, you don't want somebody to standing still, you
Speaker 1: want somebody moving right, then you can you can swing
Speaker 1: them around right in the same way. If I'm in
Speaker 1: there with a client or something and they're suffering, I
Speaker 1: know there's motivation there, and yeah it's going on the
Speaker 1: wrong direction, but I'd rather have that than have them
Speaker 1: to stand it still. And can I can I sort
Speaker 1: of swing that around a positive direction? And when you
Speaker 1: do that, you get to fulfill what has been my
Speaker 1: lifelong dream really, which is how do we promote human
Speaker 1: prosperity and alleviates how do we put those two things together? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's been very prevalent in your life lately, as
Speaker 1: well as your collaborations with David Sloan Wilson because we
Speaker 1: had you both on the podcast. You might be the
Speaker 1: one the most on the podcast of all time. Wow,
Speaker 1: now that I think of it, You've been on the
Speaker 1: podcast a bunch and include you with other people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So this idea of pro sociality again, was this your
Speaker 1: original intention when you first started studying this? What was
Speaker 1: the goal it was? I mean even as a high
Speaker 1: school grads, oven high school student, because mas lom reading
Speaker 1: in high school. Wow. But then as a college student,
Speaker 1: I'm saying, okay, but yeah, but I want to I
Speaker 1: want science because originally went to a psychology because you know,
Speaker 1: I wanted a science that could touch the kind of
Speaker 1: things you touch, are things like art and literature and music.
Speaker 1: You know, I was editor of the literary magazine in college,
Speaker 1: things like that, you know, and it seemed a psychology
Speaker 1: you could do that, which was mostly just kind of
Speaker 1: a mindy guess. But it turns out to be right
Speaker 1: that you can put psychology into human prosperity and and
Speaker 1: and the kinds of things that novelists write about are
Speaker 1: the musicians great music about and so forth. In the
Speaker 1: college days, of course, this is the sixties and seventies,
Speaker 1: and I'm you know, I'm a hippie, dippy guy with
Speaker 1: hairdown here really oh yeah, oh, can you give us
Speaker 1: a picture for usure? That was an absolute freak. But
Speaker 1: part of that, you know that I was telling the
Speaker 1: story not too long ago that I hate what people
Speaker 1: have done who aren't part of it. You know. This
Speaker 1: is about sex, drugs and rock and roll. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: but really what it was about was the spiritual journey
Speaker 1: of an entire generation who are trying to figure out
Speaker 1: a way to take the suffering. They saw inside the
Speaker 1: kind of mad men, kind of you know, aluminum salesman.
Speaker 1: And my dad literally was an aluminum salesman of the
Speaker 1: fifties and channel that in a different direction. And so
Speaker 1: I lived on a commune, you know, I had dreams
Speaker 1: of creating, you know, a utopian community. But draw me
Speaker 1: into behaviorism? Was Walden too? Oh utopian novel It's Gonna Row?
Speaker 1: Did you like that book? I loved it. I loved it.
Speaker 1: You know, some people thought it was creepy because it
Speaker 1: sort of sound like, you know, who's going to control
Speaker 1: the controller controller? I didn't view it that way at all.
Speaker 1: I viewed it as like, not that this was the answer,
Speaker 1: but this was the question, and that what we wanted
Speaker 1: was a psychology that was so well dialed in and
Speaker 1: worked out scientifically that you could go from rats to
Speaker 1: Walden two. You could go from really tight basic principles
Speaker 1: all the way up to how do you create relationships
Speaker 1: that work? How do you raise your kids in ways
Speaker 1: that make a difference? How do we create a world
Speaker 1: that's kinder and softer and gentler and you know, more
Speaker 1: respectful of diversity and all the things that we want
Speaker 1: to do. So, yes, that's actually been the journey I've
Speaker 1: been on from the beginning. But I became a psychotherapy
Speaker 1: researcher almost big accident, really, and I've discovered inside that
Speaker 1: that you can actually find the processes that are really
Speaker 1: powerful to help people walk that journey. And that's what's
Speaker 1: that's what's in this book is how to do both.
Speaker 1: Was that your pivot move? Yeah, that's the pivot move.
Speaker 1: You take these things that are squeezing you down, you
Speaker 1: find the energy that's inside of me. Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1: So you kind of fell in love with behavioralism and
Speaker 1: then cognitive behavioral therapy came out and and you saw
Speaker 1: some limitations in it. I personally I love cognitive herial therapy. Sure,
Speaker 1: and there's this new breed of it, you know, called
Speaker 1: mindful ABT, which I love even more and kind of
Speaker 1: just that might be actually more in line with ACT
Speaker 1: and how you're kind of just sit with these cognitive distortions,
Speaker 1: you know, don't try to feel so much pressure change
Speaker 1: them like right away. Yeah, kind of say, with what
Speaker 1: were some limitations that you saw in that approach? And
Speaker 1: then you know, how's the ACT approach different. Well, two things.
Speaker 1: One is that I wanted a basic theory of cognition
Speaker 1: that was as dialed in as the basic behavioral principles
Speaker 1: that we started behavior therapy with. But we didn't have
Speaker 1: the running start that we had. I mean, people in
Speaker 1: the animal learning labs have been working for decades before
Speaker 1: we tried to apply these things, and they work really
Speaker 1: well as far as they go, but they only go
Speaker 1: so far. And so while I'm a scanarian in the
Speaker 1: sense of trying to get these high precision, high scope principles,
Speaker 1: I always thought, and he did too, that you had
Speaker 1: to get over this mountain of language and cognition what
Speaker 1: you and I are doing right now. And Skinner thirty
Speaker 1: eight said, I'm not sure this'll do it. In fifty seven,
Speaker 1: he writes the book Verbal Behavior, and he says, yes,
Speaker 1: I've saw it in nineteen fifty seven. Yeah, at age
Speaker 1: fifty seven, Yeah, exactly nineteen fifty seven. He says, yes,
Speaker 1: I finally figured it out. But no, what's in there
Speaker 1: will take you to a middle age of three. And
Speaker 1: so we think in the community that is supporting the
Speaker 1: work of ACT and the more basic work on relational
Speaker 1: frame through or t that you mentioned in your introduction.
Speaker 1: We think we figured out a way to take the
Speaker 1: behavioral tradition and really take cognition seriously. So underneath the
Speaker 1: act work is an entire group of very basic folks
Speaker 1: with hundreds and hundreds of studies on how language works,
Speaker 1: how you actually can acquire it. You can use it
Speaker 1: to take kids who don't speak and to speak it,
Speaker 1: don't have a sense of self, develop that. But you
Speaker 1: can also use those exact same principles to say, well,
Speaker 1: how do you reign in the problem solving mind? But
Speaker 1: it overwhelms us when the dictator within gets us completely
Speaker 1: knocked off. The dictator within. Yeah, that's a language that
Speaker 1: in the book is just a way of speaking about what.
Speaker 1: After all, you understoodhen you're four years old, you know,
Speaker 1: like goofy with horns and goofy with a halo, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you understand that when you're four freaking ears, which side
Speaker 1: is the dictator? Yeah exactly, Well you know the other voice? Yes,
Speaker 1: but yeah, so I So one thing with CBT is
Speaker 1: because we had to break out of just animal learning
Speaker 1: principles into what arguably we're the only species that do
Speaker 1: symbolic relational learning. What you and I are doing right now,
Speaker 1: we're doing symbolic relational learning, right, yeah, we are. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're taking exactly We're doing something that you start doing
Speaker 1: in you're twelve months old, being able to drive a
Speaker 1: two way street two way street between a symbol and
Speaker 1: its reference and building that out of the whole network
Speaker 1: of relations not the same but different, opposite better you know,
Speaker 1: if then all those things you know, time, place, et cetera.
Speaker 1: And because of that ability, you can relate anything to
Speaker 1: anything else in any possible way. You know you can.
Speaker 1: You name two things, name a relationship, you'll find you'll
Speaker 1: find it. And either everything is related everything else in
Speaker 1: all possible ways, or this is an illusion of mind.
Speaker 1: And we have such a flexible repertoire, but it challenges us.
Speaker 1: And what is in the act work it's not in
Speaker 1: CBT is the fifteen years of development. You know, I
Speaker 1: did first act trials in the early eighties. I didn't
Speaker 1: write the book until almost the turn of the century.
Speaker 1: And get out of your Mind book. No, the first
Speaker 1: act book called acceptance and Commitment therapy. Well, but you
Speaker 1: know it was, but that dark time, wasn't that we
Speaker 1: weren't working. We were working out the basic theory of
Speaker 1: language on cognition, the principles, the measures, and the components.
Speaker 1: So that's one thing. We've done our homework and we
Speaker 1: have a basic theory that is active, real, and apt
Speaker 1: for what we want to do. And then the other
Speaker 1: one was that it isn't the content of thought. It's
Speaker 1: your relationship to thought determines how it works. And part
Speaker 1: of that comes out of the theory of cognition. And
Speaker 1: so when we had the theory, we understood that, oh no,
Speaker 1: if you get in there and you try to change
Speaker 1: the thought, for example, you and now are elaborating the
Speaker 1: network that allows you to think that thought, and you're
Speaker 1: teetering right on the edge of doing things that could
Speaker 1: even be atragetic, they could be harmful. And you've seen it,
Speaker 1: you know, CBT gone bad turns into the oh I'm
Speaker 1: thinking that again, Oh my god, yourself because you're not
Speaker 1: being So those two things are the things that really
Speaker 1: distinguish the act. I'm not just act. Now, I'm going
Speaker 1: to start a new therapy, self compassionate, mindful, CBT ACT
Speaker 1: well wells brands these days, I just I don't like
Speaker 1: the brand stuff I'm actually trying to reduce that, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm king. No, No, I did not, But I saw
Speaker 1: a meta analysis recently that pitted CB traditional CBT versus
Speaker 1: contemporary CBT. I kind of like that. I noticed they
Speaker 1: use the face traditional CBT in one of your material
Speaker 1: because I'm part of the CB teacher. Yeah, I've been
Speaker 1: president of the turn Back. I gave him an award
Speaker 1: when I was president. I was so proud to do it,
Speaker 1: and I try to mention, you know, we're standing on
Speaker 1: the shoulder of the giants, and try to mention his
Speaker 1: name specifically, but also Albert Allis is on the back
Speaker 1: of the RFT book and all of the early you know,
Speaker 1: mahoney and such of these people that I knew and
Speaker 1: respect respected. I mean, I sent my first student to
Speaker 1: tim Back to be trained. Wow, my first PC student
Speaker 1: to be trained at his center as an intern. Aaron
Speaker 1: Beck have had discussions and I have had discussions about
Speaker 1: you have over lunch. Yes, Well, he's always been kind
Speaker 1: to me. I hope he said something nice because he did.
Speaker 1: You know, he's such a sweet man of ninety eight years.
Speaker 1: He's still going, He's still going. He's still going. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So yes, I'm proud to say that act is part
Speaker 1: of the c Beach tradition written large, but a scientific
Speaker 1: tradition moves and I think, you know, the so called
Speaker 1: third wave shook things and people saw it maybe it
Speaker 1: was really fundamentally a challenge that might burn down the house.
Speaker 1: It's turned out not to be. It's been Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was a challenge, but as on the other side of it,
Speaker 1: we've learned a lot and the whole community has moved
Speaker 1: and so I don't think CBT is traditional CBT anymore.
Speaker 1: So traditional CBT with the differs. The thing that you
Speaker 1: did criticize was the aspect of it that we can
Speaker 1: be too hard on ourselves. That was at the point
Speaker 1: that we can that it's not all about changing the thoughts,
Speaker 1: but kind of living with the thoughts. Two things One,
Speaker 1: I want to basic theory of cognition that says basic
Speaker 1: and fundamental and in the basic lab as stimulus, control
Speaker 1: and reinforcement. That's one. And number two is the relationship
Speaker 1: to thought is so critical that be careful about the
Speaker 1: form of the thought. We takes something like reappraisal central
Speaker 1: to traditional CBT, Yes, but it turns out that reappraisal
Speaker 1: when it works is mediated by cognitive flexibility and diffusion.
Speaker 1: In other words, people spontaneously. When you start doing thought records,
Speaker 1: you get a little little d distancing. That was Beck's
Speaker 1: term for it, right, But that was to set up
Speaker 1: you know, challenging, disputing and changing what if it's actually
Speaker 1: the really the most important part of it, and that
Speaker 1: what it sets up is well, in addition to a notice,
Speaker 1: you're thinking b in addition thinking this, I could think this.
Speaker 1: See this one's more useful than that one, not necessarily
Speaker 1: in a real mindy figure it out way, but just
Speaker 1: in the you know, why not do it works way? Well,
Speaker 1: that's kind of in the CBT. All of that's in
Speaker 1: traditional se but it gets overwhelmed with what's more logical
Speaker 1: but maybe not really psychological, which is, you know, let's
Speaker 1: correct the cognitive errors. I think if you back up
Speaker 1: and notice the thought and look at workability, the thoughts
Speaker 1: that have cognitive errors in them are not very workable.
Speaker 1: And so it's a softer, safer, gentler, and I think,
Speaker 1: more theoretically grounded approach. And it's worked its way into
Speaker 1: CBT through mindfulness, acceptance, values work, you know, compassion work,
Speaker 1: all those things. How to do with your relationship to thought,
Speaker 1: not just the form of the thought. Beautiful, beautiful, But
Speaker 1: let's role play a second, Like, Okay, pretend I'm like
Speaker 1: one of your patients. I'm trying to understand, like how
Speaker 1: you would to help someone with someone like Doc almost
Speaker 1: such a loser. I just keep like thinking every day
Speaker 1: of my I just I'm roomining over and over about
Speaker 1: how I'm worthless. And it's really like holding me back
Speaker 1: from like approaching new friends and potential romantic partners. So
Speaker 1: it's having a cost. Yeah, So could I just ask
Speaker 1: this though, Let's just take that core of it, I'm
Speaker 1: a loser. Yeah, could you just show me with your
Speaker 1: hand when that shows up? How close is it? Is
Speaker 1: it up here like I'm a loser? Or is it
Speaker 1: out there like I'm a loser? Oh? No, it's very
Speaker 1: close to me, very close to me exactly. And what
Speaker 1: does your experience tell you in terms of the times
Speaker 1: when it's like this? Are there any other times when
Speaker 1: it's a little more out there or other times? Is
Speaker 1: it always like this? On percent? No, it's not always
Speaker 1: like that. When I'm actually connected with someone, it's I
Speaker 1: almost forget that I'm a loser. Okay, awesome. Awesome. So
Speaker 1: sometimes when you focus onbody you really care about. Yes, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: that's right. So maybe that's one thing that we can
Speaker 1: put into our work though, about how to get more
Speaker 1: central or really care about. Yes, maybe other things we
Speaker 1: can do, because here's one problem. Can you remember the
Speaker 1: first time you ever had that thought I'm a loser.
Speaker 1: I've had it since I popped out, so there's always
Speaker 1: I can remember I've had that thought. Yeah. So if
Speaker 1: I said how tall you were, you'd have to be
Speaker 1: really small. Yeah you're still thinking yeah, yeah, yeah, like
Speaker 1: even done this small? Yeah yeah, that's like three because
Speaker 1: they put me in special ed when I was a kid. Awesome.
Speaker 1: So they told me I was a loser. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't even want to. I want to want to
Speaker 1: know I was a loser, but they told me. Came
Speaker 1: by it, honestly. Yeah, somebody actually said it to you. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well that voice with that memory, let me ask you
Speaker 1: this the voice of the people who told you you
Speaker 1: are a loser. Yeah, and you remember how that penetrated you?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah right, how much it hurt? Yeah, I cry
Speaker 1: in the bathroom. Yeah, of course, until I was bullied.
Speaker 1: And now here's my question, will that ever go away? Well,
Speaker 1: I've been I've been trying to get it to go away.
Speaker 1: I've been doing the CBT. Yeah, and as you've been
Speaker 1: trying to make it go away mindful CBT, that's just what.
Speaker 1: As you've been trying to make it go away, has
Speaker 1: it got more central? Well, you know, I've been able
Speaker 1: to replace the thought with other thoughts, so you know
Speaker 1: I can give me more mindful of when I'm thinking
Speaker 1: that replacement, well, we'll replace the replacement is not the
Speaker 1: opposite end of the thing. I'm not trying to be
Speaker 1: a narcissist, you know. I think a lot of people,
Speaker 1: you know, compensate that way. I'm a wizardes and no,
Speaker 1: I'm the greatest, you know, greatness. But you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: if I feel my catch myself starting to spiral downwards,
Speaker 1: I'll be like, you know, I'm just who I am,
Speaker 1: and I'm just gonna just be my own quirky self, okay,
Speaker 1: And it usually helps me connect to better with people. Awesome. Okay,
Speaker 1: So sometimes you're able you have a range of thoughts
Speaker 1: and sometimes I'm a loser and sometimes I'll just be
Speaker 1: who I am. Yeah, yeah, yeah, if you are trying
Speaker 1: to do. I'll just be who I am to make
Speaker 1: it go away. Sometimes I bet you've done that. Oh yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: what happens. Well, if I'm feeling particularly a loser, then
Speaker 1: I try to be like who I am. I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: who I am is a loser, So that doesn't really help.
Speaker 1: And then so I got into a quagmire. Exactly, exactly. Okay,
Speaker 1: so let's just learn from the six months. So one
Speaker 1: thing you've learned is when you're able to focus on
Speaker 1: what really brings meaning and purpose to your life, like
Speaker 1: being with other people. You know, this thing sort of
Speaker 1: goes from here to hear. Yeah, it's not like it's
Speaker 1: a race. It's not like it's eliminade, right, just kind
Speaker 1: of here to hear. That's so interesting. Yeah, And when
Speaker 1: it's distance, you know, you could see it if you
Speaker 1: wanted to, but you have you have more interesting things
Speaker 1: to ye. Yeah, but if you end other things are there.
Speaker 1: It isn't just I'm a loser, it's also I'm who
Speaker 1: I am. Yeah. But if you start really trying to
Speaker 1: get it to erase this, I'm who I am, not
Speaker 1: a loser. When you're doing that, doesn't tend to become
Speaker 1: more dominant. Yeah. Yeah, so let's learn from that too. Okay,
Speaker 1: and maybe I don't know how to erase it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: your nervous system doesn't have a delete button. It doesn't
Speaker 1: when you're my age, I'm seventy one. Yeah no you're not. Yes,
Speaker 1: stop it that you're do it look great and well,
Speaker 1: thank you, But when you think about what happened to
Speaker 1: when you're seventy, in the know, you're not. I'm seventy.
Speaker 1: I just shaved, so I look a little bit younger.
Speaker 1: You know, at my age, you'll be able to remember
Speaker 1: that special ed kid who had was told you're a loser. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's not going to be deleted. Yeah, could we
Speaker 1: do something else with it? Then? Could we work on
Speaker 1: the things that don't erase it, but that put it
Speaker 1: here so that it's part of your experience, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't dominate your experience. Does that apply to all urges
Speaker 1: like people trying to quit vaping or food, you know,
Speaker 1: eating fatty foods. Like if I have the urge to
Speaker 1: eat fatty food, I woke up. You know, I'm trying
Speaker 1: to get a massive diet right now. I want to
Speaker 1: have a one and a half pack, you know, like
Speaker 1: if I to get a one and a half pack, like,
Speaker 1: what can I do? Yeah? Well, actually similar principle. Yes,
Speaker 1: and some of these methods have been applied to diet
Speaker 1: and exercise in high performance, even Olympic athletes. It's okay,
Speaker 1: it goes all the way up to that. Okay, But
Speaker 1: let me ask you about your experience, not just what
Speaker 1: the research shows. I bet you when you're dealing because
Speaker 1: you've done dieting and exercise before your first time. Oh, yes,
Speaker 1: I absolutely have. Okay, and I've been in great shape
Speaker 1: before in my life, believe it or not. Yeah, I don't.
Speaker 1: And a long time ago. As as you have tried
Speaker 1: to like push thoughts of food away, is it your
Speaker 1: experience if there's someone over there a refrigerator. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: really good. Yeah, you really like Yeah, it calls me.
Speaker 1: It feels like a calling in life if you're trying
Speaker 1: to push that away. Yeah, how close are you to
Speaker 1: eat in the freaking thing? And refrigerator? I get closer
Speaker 1: to it, You're closer. Yeah. Yeah, it's the same. It's
Speaker 1: like the yellow the elephant, the pink elephant. Don't think
Speaker 1: of a don't think of a pink elephant, exactly. You know,
Speaker 1: so could we do this right now with urges? You're
Speaker 1: thinking of a pink elephant right now, aren't you respectfully declining? Okay,
Speaker 1: you could use the I don't care. You know. There's
Speaker 1: a reason Mark Manson called it so not giving up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a space you can go in where maybe you're
Speaker 1: not giving any unneeded attention to I'm a loser or
Speaker 1: dude nuts or whenever. The thing is, so you say,
Speaker 1: the alternative is to like, just to what to just
Speaker 1: like let it, let the urge sit with the urge,
Speaker 1: kind of meditate on it. It's sort of like that.
Speaker 1: It's very subtle. If you turn into a rule, it
Speaker 1: doesn't work because what we have to do is rain
Speaker 1: in the part of your mind that creates these rules
Speaker 1: and solves problems. Because this thing I'm asking you to
Speaker 1: do is something more like what you know how to do.
Speaker 1: If you were to see a sunset tonight, that spectacler
Speaker 1: you'd notice say wow. You wouldn't say like wow, but
Speaker 1: too much pink, God, Yeah, you would too much pink
Speaker 1: want God? Too much pink God o pink. It needs
Speaker 1: a little more blue in there. That cloud is miss shaving.
Speaker 1: You're right, You're right, you just go wou Churl Rogers
Speaker 1: has a quote about that, like when I look at
Speaker 1: the sun, I don't say, let me soften it up
Speaker 1: a bit. And yeah, but when you when you bring
Speaker 1: this critical problem solving a value of judgmental mode, which
Speaker 1: is also great when you're doing your taxes or fixing
Speaker 1: your car, it's terrible with peace of mind, we're carrying
Speaker 1: your history, especially you're painful on your history or relating
Speaker 1: to your urges including fruit, food or and so forth.
Speaker 1: Could we bring this kind of wow mode to mind? Yeah,
Speaker 1: when that's helpful. So face with curiosity, Yeah, I thought,
Speaker 1: I wonder, Wow, I'm all struck that I want to
Speaker 1: eat that pizza. How curious? Look at that? That thought
Speaker 1: came up. Okay, now what's of importance right here in
Speaker 1: front of me right now? So good? Maybe not what's
Speaker 1: in the refrigerator. Maybe it's a podcast. Can one value pizza?
Speaker 1: Can that be their value system? Well? I think values
Speaker 1: are chosen qualities of being and doing, so I look
Speaker 1: for adverbs that have to do with your behavior. But
Speaker 1: you could could that be my highest purpose of value?
Speaker 1: Creating delicious food? You're creatively making but probably not valuing pizza. Okay,
Speaker 1: somebody tells me they value money, pizza, fame, et cetera.
Speaker 1: I go, dude, those are goals or outcomes you could
Speaker 1: value what you could do with it, like with that money, owl,
Speaker 1: with that fame aw. And then I want to add
Speaker 1: verb in there, what are you going to do with it?
Speaker 1: You know, lovingly, genuinely, creatively, compassionately, probably has elite on
Speaker 1: it or something like it. It's an adverb, and it's
Speaker 1: the quality of your action. It's not a quality of
Speaker 1: the outcomes of your actions. That's great. That was also
Speaker 1: my sneaky way of having you define a value. How
Speaker 1: do you define values? And I'm trying to figure out
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think of all sorts of clever ways
Speaker 1: of getting out of you questions I want to ask,
Speaker 1: but in an indirect way. Well, thanks for doing that
Speaker 1: because I can follow it fall into my rants, and
Speaker 1: you're avoiding the rants by doing this, which is a
Speaker 1: good idea because that I just plug in and go
Speaker 1: minus into a ramp. Your rants are great, their epic,
Speaker 1: your answer epic. This is great. So I want to
Speaker 1: step back a second to have you define the phrase
Speaker 1: that you use a lot. You love the phrase psychological flexibility. Yeah,
Speaker 1: did you coin that phrase? Is that possible? Think so?
Speaker 1: I think so, Although I found it kind of out
Speaker 1: there in the literature. Occasionally people have said it, but
Speaker 1: not defined and precise to find the way we mean it.
Speaker 1: And actually a colleague of mine, Frank Bond, you know,
Speaker 1: really pushed it and in my lab, No, Kelly, this
Speaker 1: gift for others, so that I've been kind of part
Speaker 1: of a community. I'm helped by my colleagues. But the
Speaker 1: experienceial avoidance then leading to psychological flexibility that was sort
Speaker 1: of central to the actor. Yeah, amazing. So can you
Speaker 1: define it? Yeah? I can't. Well, I can do it
Speaker 1: with words quick. The three words I would like charades.
Speaker 1: Sounds like I'll try to guess like the definition. No,
Speaker 1: in fact, I'm going to do with charades. Are we
Speaker 1: going to do this? Yes? All right, we're so psychological incorporated.
Speaker 1: Normally you would guess I will act him out and
Speaker 1: you have to guess until I do all three and
Speaker 1: then we can unpack up. Okay, okay, So psychologic flexibility
Speaker 1: is wonder focus and forward motion. Yeah, it's very very good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this fact I wonder you know, I'll normally say open,
Speaker 1: but wonder is even better. It's that open with an attitude,
Speaker 1: the curiosity, and it is a wonder. Maybe we should
Speaker 1: enter into a charades tournament together. Maybe that's our Maybe
Speaker 1: that's our highest value. We didn't even know it. We
Speaker 1: should do psycho charades and yeah, and then focus, which
Speaker 1: means conscious and it means focus on something that's present.
Speaker 1: You can't focus on something that's not present. It's not possible. No,
Speaker 1: it's not so. And then the third is this active engagement,
Speaker 1: you know, so can I push back a second? What
Speaker 1: about imagination? I can focus on things that are in
Speaker 1: present to my senses. But present is your creative thought
Speaker 1: about the future. So the thought is the thought is present.
Speaker 1: But you know what we tend to do when we're
Speaker 1: not like this, when we focus on the thought as
Speaker 1: we go, Yeah, we disappear into it. We disappear kind of,
Speaker 1: you know. Literally you watch the stage eyes when they
Speaker 1: go into imagination and they get and they enter into it,
Speaker 1: their eyes go up. You know. The NLP people are
Speaker 1: quite right like this, a little like that, you know,
Speaker 1: and you will get to tend to look to the
Speaker 1: right depending instead of the stories on that. I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's science. You definitely look at I tend
Speaker 1: to have a lot of romantic fantasy, an inappropriate more
Speaker 1: like Okay, but yeah, but you made a good point
Speaker 1: because learning how to focus on symbolic events or things
Speaker 1: happened with memories or future plans, how to do that
Speaker 1: without entanglement requires this kind of ability to be applied
Speaker 1: even to things that tend to kind of hook and
Speaker 1: pull you into you know, like so like a trap,
Speaker 1: there is a trap. It's exactly a trap. It's almost
Speaker 1: like an anxiety trap. It is an anxiety trap. It's awesome.
Speaker 1: Well and you know that. And that metaphor pivot is
Speaker 1: you take that kind of narrowing trap of a repertoire
Speaker 1: and narrowing down, but it contains one thing in it
Speaker 1: that's really important. Okay, what is the underlying yearning? What
Speaker 1: do you really want? And then put that out in
Speaker 1: the process that can go from instead of narrow, from
Speaker 1: broad to narrow, or or or the kind of a
Speaker 1: smaller sooner, let's go to the larger later, let's go
Speaker 1: to the expanding over time. Can we zoom in on that?
Speaker 1: Knowing what I really want? It can be very confusing
Speaker 1: Sometimes I don't know about you. But sometimes I want
Speaker 1: two things that feel diametricly opposed to each other. What
Speaker 1: the heck do how do I make it? With the metacognition?
Speaker 1: Make a choice? Yeah, what you want means missing Vaunt's
Speaker 1: an old nurse where and values aren't what you're missing?
Speaker 1: Values are what would you choose to have present at
Speaker 1: the point of which, for example, you really connect with
Speaker 1: You know, I want to be about behaving in a
Speaker 1: loving way. Yeah, that itself is a loving thing to do. Yes,
Speaker 1: think about your valus choices at the point at which
Speaker 1: you make them, You're already connected to You're absolutely right,
Speaker 1: So you're not missing anything. You don't want anything. Most
Speaker 1: of my conscious values do tend to be like moral things,
Speaker 1: very loving, et cetera, et cetera. Then sometimes I have
Speaker 1: moods of selfishness, you know, like I would love to
Speaker 1: not respond to those five hundred emails in my inbox
Speaker 1: right now asking me to read their dissertation and comment
Speaker 1: on a five hundred page thing. But then I my
Speaker 1: values say, oh, but I really do want to help them,
Speaker 1: but I don't feel like I want to. Sometimes exactly
Speaker 1: is that okay to say? It? Is that me human?
Speaker 1: Or a horrible person. In your case, it makes you human,
Speaker 1: but just fast. But one of the things that I
Speaker 1: do in a focus when you have these multiple values
Speaker 1: that seeming to conflict, almost always it's not a values conflict.
Speaker 1: What it is is opening up to the pain of finitude.
Speaker 1: You are a finite being. No, not that, yes, you are,
Speaker 1: so you're not going to be you know, like if
Speaker 1: you have five hundred, okay, maybe you can answer five hundred.
Speaker 1: Suppose you had five thousand, yeah, fifty thousand, one hundred thousand.
Speaker 1: At some point, you know, God herself can't do it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that's painful. There's people suffering who need things from you,
Speaker 1: and you might not be able to be there for him.
Speaker 1: Didn't that hurt? It does hurt, And maybe you can
Speaker 1: do it in some other way. You can create a
Speaker 1: community where people be there for them or something like that.
Speaker 1: You can support processes. And it's just painful. And so
Speaker 1: you know, in imagination there are entities that don't have that.
Speaker 1: Usually God has all of our best chosen qualities. You
Speaker 1: believe in God, and you know the guy with a
Speaker 1: beard no, okay, but some form of it, some larger,
Speaker 1: greater sense of yes being or energy, your energy, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I really am a kound of it and
Speaker 1: I don't know. And it's interesting that we yearn for
Speaker 1: the infinite. Yeah, because I think consciousness connects us to
Speaker 1: the infinite, because consciousness connects us to others at other
Speaker 1: times and other places. There isn't any place in the
Speaker 1: universe that you can't put in imagination your consciousness. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So we are the kind of beings that live on
Speaker 1: that cusp of Yes, we're finite. We can't be there
Speaker 1: and for everyone, we can't do everything, and that's painful,
Speaker 1: and yet we're connected to something that feels limitless and
Speaker 1: having no edges, and it kind of almost mocks us
Speaker 1: a little bit. It does, especially when on LSD. Well,
Speaker 1: that's an interesting thing, I know, the LSD thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, psychodolic therapy is coming and ACT is off.
Speaker 1: I'm not joking. Yeah, of course, I just finished a
Speaker 1: paper psychedelics ACT. That's another doing it. That fact. Here
Speaker 1: in New York, the n y U team, not surprise,
Speaker 1: using ACT in their psychedelic research. The Toronto team is
Speaker 1: using so we'll and you can see why because the
Speaker 1: processes that you know, when psychedelics work well at psychedelic therapy.
Speaker 1: Almost always they include experiences of kind of oceanic awareness
Speaker 1: and kind of connection across time, papes of person's sense
Speaker 1: of timelessness, et cetera. And often it changes people's values
Speaker 1: and not really changes their values. It reconnects them, reconnects
Speaker 1: them to their deepest to their deepest values. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: so interesting. So I and you know, as a child
Speaker 1: of the sixties, I was telling a story not too
Speaker 1: long ago. I was at a conference and I had
Speaker 1: to be a discuss and and a had to I
Speaker 1: agreed to it. I wanted to on a session on
Speaker 1: psychotic therapy. And I stood up and these magnificent papers
Speaker 1: have been presented, and I began to talk and I
Speaker 1: started just crying because you're going at an old hippie
Speaker 1: who you know this. We didn't do this as sex
Speaker 1: drugs in rock and roll. We did it as a
Speaker 1: spiritual journey and it became something else, but that's not
Speaker 1: where it started. And it's kind of cool to see
Speaker 1: people coming back to it. And for me, one of
Speaker 1: the things important to me about ACT and maybe one
Speaker 1: of the things that maybe expands the evidence based therapy
Speaker 1: tradition a little bit is that we do get to
Speaker 1: care about things as basic as who are we? Spirituality values,
Speaker 1: I mean, the deepest, the most complex, the Maslowian kind
Speaker 1: of you know, go for it kind of psychology can
Speaker 1: be brought over into this very careful, kind of highly polished, hyped, precision,
Speaker 1: careful kind of psychology. That would be kind of cool.
Speaker 1: It's so cool, you know. I'm thinking right now of
Speaker 1: a guy, Paul Emilcamp, who's a well known researcher in
Speaker 1: the Netherlands, and he looked at me once and said
Speaker 1: about actor. He said, hey, this is just damn hippie stuff.
Speaker 1: The hippies grew up. Really, I said, yeah, that's right,
Speaker 1: and the crazies are driving the bus. Deal with it. Well.
Speaker 1: He said it with a smile. He wasn't mean hesed
Speaker 1: to saying that He's right, you know that generation. And
Speaker 1: it's not just that generation, the kids too. I mean
Speaker 1: the kids look at this materialism and what's going on
Speaker 1: in the modern world and they say, I want to
Speaker 1: do something that's meaningful. Yeah, you know, that's wonderful, isn't it.
Speaker 1: It is so wonderful. I the notion of reconnecting with
Speaker 1: your highest values. Whenever I do that my all my
Speaker 1: priorities do change in that moment. It's a priority changer,
Speaker 1: you know. It's like like your whole like coal, hierarchy
Speaker 1: con figures in almost in a snap. Same with inspiration
Speaker 1: when I'm inspired more morally elevated. Yeah, well that's that
Speaker 1: kind of pivot moment. Is that a pivot? Yeah, because
Speaker 1: you're taking energy, it's taken in one direction. You dug
Speaker 1: down what that energy was, and you swipped it in in
Speaker 1: another direction. I really care about these deep values, you know,
Speaker 1: I really and over here I get to bring these
Speaker 1: out into the world in the way that opens up
Speaker 1: and builds out over here the journey I'm on. Part
Speaker 1: of what I don't like about this journey is I
Speaker 1: don't get to do that. Well, then let's change the direction.
Speaker 1: And that's the pivot metaphor of you know, where people
Speaker 1: are trying to whatever they're doing in this case, you know,
Speaker 1: like on the values and committed action piece. You know,
Speaker 1: people have this idea that you're going to get applause,
Speaker 1: you're going to get the money, you're going to get
Speaker 1: all this kind of stuff. And by the way, it's
Speaker 1: going to happen because you sprung forth from the head
Speaker 1: of zeus. No, it's not. It's not going to a
Speaker 1: It's not about those things anyway. It's about your deepest
Speaker 1: values b one step at a time, because you're gonna
Speaker 1: slip and fall and slip and fall and slip and
Speaker 1: fall and slip and fall. The issue is do you
Speaker 1: get up again and step forward? Do you do what
Speaker 1: you knew to do when you were learning how to walk,
Speaker 1: or when you're learning how to open a door knob,
Speaker 1: or the least little thing you did is a child,
Speaker 1: you knew when you slip and fall, you stand up again.
Speaker 1: Nobody had to come around, dude and say, by the way,
Speaker 1: you've never learned how to walk, and let's just stand
Speaker 1: back up again. You know, at our age, we're going
Speaker 1: like eh, and I tried. It didn't work, dude, What
Speaker 1: are you doing? So you're not perfect? So you're still
Speaker 1: struggling with things that you struggled with like time, like
Speaker 1: for seventy years, talk to my wife. But what I
Speaker 1: always say to my wife, though, is you should have
Speaker 1: known me earlier. He that was far worse. I love that.
Speaker 1: That's you know. Maslow did believe that human development or
Speaker 1: human growth was a two step forward one step back, constant, contiguous, dynamic.
Speaker 1: He really wrote about that. He was really a developmental psychologist,
Speaker 1: although people misrepresent him so much. Oh beautiful, you were
Speaker 1: hinting at some of these aspects of characteristics of pivoting.
Speaker 1: You said diffusing earlier. I don't know if people are
Speaker 1: going to know exactly what you mean. Do you mind
Speaker 1: going through the six quickly? I can do the six quickly.
Speaker 1: Let me let me do it first in a way
Speaker 1: that it don't normally, which is what we really yearn for.
Speaker 1: If you look at things like self determination theory, some
Speaker 1: of the best science on the planet about human motivation,
Speaker 1: they'll click out three big things that you care about. Belonging,
Speaker 1: chosen meaning or autonomy, and competence. Okay, you want to
Speaker 1: be a part of the group. You want to be
Speaker 1: connected to others. That's the kind of monkey beer. You
Speaker 1: want to be able to have something of importance by
Speaker 1: your choice, not just because you're complying and have to
Speaker 1: do it. But it's babies, not that way, not I mean, no,
Speaker 1: I want to do it. I mean you don't have
Speaker 1: to be like Cartman. And then competence, I mean you
Speaker 1: just look at a little baby. You will work for
Speaker 1: hours and hours and hours and hours just to put
Speaker 1: something in their mouth. And good thing. We'd never learned
Speaker 1: how to do these complexes that we just do now.
Speaker 1: We spent so much time. So those are the big three.
Speaker 1: We've added three more. Feeling. Okay. You know, little kids
Speaker 1: too come into the world. They want to taste, lick, smell.
Speaker 1: When that's built out, it isn't just sensation, it's also emotion.
Speaker 1: Is there any emotion that you don't pay good money
Speaker 1: to produce? You buy books, you buy music, you go
Speaker 1: to films, you look at art. Every single emotion, including
Speaker 1: the ones you say you don't like, look at it
Speaker 1: and you see it. Okay, So we yearned to feel
Speaker 1: understanding or coherence. We want things to somehow fit together
Speaker 1: and make sense. We don't want to live inside kafka.
Speaker 1: Nobody likes living in side coffin. No, we want to sit,
Speaker 1: and then we want to know kind of where we are.
Speaker 1: We want to be oriented. If I just suddenly picked
Speaker 1: you up, plopped you down in a grocery store somewhere,
Speaker 1: and you'd go under, how did I get here? And
Speaker 1: how do I get back to the podcast? You know?
Speaker 1: You I go to the pizza isle, and if you're
Speaker 1: now this is seriously, seriously, if you have this the skills,
Speaker 1: you might be able when you're plopped down there pullick
Speaker 1: around and see what's on sale or what's good to eat.
Speaker 1: But then I'll think about my chosen values, which is
Speaker 1: being on the podcast, and then I'll return to that.
Speaker 1: So those are so we added three feeling, orientation, and
Speaker 1: understanding or coherence, and they come out of now when
Speaker 1: we mishandle that. What do we do with belonging? We
Speaker 1: tell a story about how special we are. We climb
Speaker 1: into a clown suit of specialness so that we can
Speaker 1: belong You need me or I need you? I'm so help.
Speaker 1: This help is helping right number. That's an inflexibility process
Speaker 1: with regard to meaning. I grab it things like money,
Speaker 1: fame and things like that. Maybe that's meaningful. I love
Speaker 1: that stuff. Well, it's cool when you have it. If
Speaker 1: you try to actually play that out you you know
Speaker 1: that unclear? It empties Yeah, and then competence. We don't
Speaker 1: want to do a trial and error. We don't do
Speaker 1: it to a process. We want to. We want to
Speaker 1: If you ever tried to train a psychotherapist and say here,
Speaker 1: I'd like you to bring into tapes. They don't want
Speaker 1: to bring into tapes, and they bring in the best
Speaker 1: ones and then or if they bring into ones bad,
Speaker 1: they take it to the part of the tape that
Speaker 1: isn't the worst, you know. In other words, the way
Speaker 1: I'll learn is I'll just show you that, or I
Speaker 1: don't need to learn. Those are inflexibility with regard to feeling.
Speaker 1: I know how I'll solve the problem of feeling. I'll
Speaker 1: just feel good things. I won't feel any bad things.
Speaker 1: It doesn't work, doesn't come package that way. Number one,
Speaker 1: too many so called bad feelings are precious. Yeah, getting
Speaker 1: a little anxious before your podcast important. Yeah, Crying when
Speaker 1: your mom dies important. I mean all those emotions, getting
Speaker 1: angry when somebody's hurting, somebody that you care about important.
Speaker 1: All of those emotions have a place, yes, understanding instead
Speaker 1: of trying to just you know, figure it out, figure
Speaker 1: it out, figure it out, figure it out. That puts
Speaker 1: it like here, can we notice and learn from it
Speaker 1: and do a little bit of wow even with our
Speaker 1: thoughts and allow us to take the things that are useful.
Speaker 1: So instead of just trying to hang on to only
Speaker 1: the good thoughts, not the bad thoughts, constantly trying to
Speaker 1: rewrite those sentences, and now focusing only on the bad ones,
Speaker 1: because no matter how hard you work, they don't erase,
Speaker 1: they don't go away. They're still in our history. See
Speaker 1: in terms of orientation, rumination, and worry. I'll be oriented
Speaker 1: when I know why why have you everard a client command? That?
Speaker 1: All I want to know is why my heart sinks
Speaker 1: when I hear that kind of Oh, that is not
Speaker 1: going to be a fun you know, we're going to
Speaker 1: have to deal with that. Sometimes that's a religious sort
Speaker 1: of undertone as well. You know, why would God create
Speaker 1: so much suffering in the world? And it can be
Speaker 1: put in a positive direction, but we're gonna have to
Speaker 1: shift that question a little bit. Yeah, probably we're gonna
Speaker 1: have to pivot. We're gonna have to find what's inside
Speaker 1: the wise I forgot your own. Well, so each of
Speaker 1: those six now of the rigidity ones, the conceptualized self,
Speaker 1: experienceial avoidance, fusion with thoughts, rigid attention, absence of chosen values,
Speaker 1: and failure to follow through in a way that builds
Speaker 1: the patterns of values based habits. That's beautiful. If I
Speaker 1: can take those energy, it's inside those sixth bad things
Speaker 1: and flip them around, and I can find a sense
Speaker 1: of self that is more transcendive, that belongs inherently. I
Speaker 1: can find the capacity to feel by being more open
Speaker 1: to feelings, and instead of just feeling good, I can
Speaker 1: do a good job of feeling. I can find a
Speaker 1: kind of understanding that isn't this mind you figure it
Speaker 1: out and get them all nice and little, but instead
Speaker 1: kind of back up and take what's useful and leave
Speaker 1: the rest. That's a kind of understanding this is helpful
Speaker 1: this soon. It's not thank your mind very much for
Speaker 1: trying to help me. I've heard that before. That thought
Speaker 1: is actually not very helpful. Thank you. But I think
Speaker 1: I'll do doing this where you just you know, pick
Speaker 1: things away, pick fruit at the fruit stand. You know,
Speaker 1: if it's not helpful to leave it there, you don't
Speaker 1: have to like get rid of it just to spend
Speaker 1: a lot of time eating it, you know. In regard
Speaker 1: to orientation, kind of teach flexible attention to the now.
Speaker 1: I love that. With regard to meaning, can I teach
Speaker 1: people how to have meaning by choice, meaning values, how
Speaker 1: to connect with their deepest values. And with regard to action,
Speaker 1: can we build habits of values based action. Can we
Speaker 1: commit to larger and larger patterns, which is not a
Speaker 1: commitment to perfection. It's not a conviction. Conviction tomorrow, I've
Speaker 1: learned everything. It's a commitment to a process of slip
Speaker 1: and fall on, step and fall, and each time you
Speaker 1: stand up and you step again, always in the service
Speaker 1: of what you deeply care about. Those six those are
Speaker 1: the six pivots and the six yearnings and both the
Speaker 1: inflexibility and flexibility side, and they will change your life.
Speaker 1: And just gave that they cracked the guy. I mean,
Speaker 1: they really just kind of crack on the code. I
Speaker 1: think we think it's arrogant, but not really, because the
Speaker 1: data are so strong that we think that it's the
Speaker 1: twenty percent that does the eighty percent. It's amazing, so
Speaker 1: much of that it sounds like you're saying is psychological.
Speaker 1: I mean, what about people who may counter that, people
Speaker 1: who focus on like systemic like discrimination and all these
Speaker 1: environmental systemic factors and say, like, wow, psychologists really overestimate
Speaker 1: the extent to which they could change just from within. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what do you say to that kind of thing? Ay?
Speaker 1: I agree with that, and I'm actually trying to build out.
Speaker 1: So this is the psychological side. I agree, there's a
Speaker 1: social side that extends this and those there's a some
Speaker 1: additional principles there. And in fact, I have a book
Speaker 1: that just came out like three days ago, Social pro Social,
Speaker 1: that takes David Sloan Wilson, takes ACT and combines it
Speaker 1: with Eleanor Ostrom's Nobel Prize winning designed principles for small
Speaker 1: groups and then puts that extends that. But it's a
Speaker 1: direct extension. I mean, you're things like acceptance extend to compassion.
Speaker 1: Values extend to shared community values, group values, our values.
Speaker 1: Committed action extends to cooperative action in the group that
Speaker 1: can only happen because of a group of you know,
Speaker 1: relating and cooperating or working together. And so principles for
Speaker 1: how to do that we have to add a bit,
Speaker 1: but we if you build it on a strong foundation,
Speaker 1: it empowers it. I'll give you an example. The very
Speaker 1: first act study ran my study done in the modern era,
Speaker 1: because we did three at the very beginning after my
Speaker 1: Panic disorder transformation kind of thing. And then there was
Speaker 1: fifteen sixteen seventeen years where we didn't do any outcome
Speaker 1: studies because we wanted to work out the basic measures,
Speaker 1: the theory, the kernels of intervention, philosophy of science. And
Speaker 1: then we finally came back and we started again now
Speaker 1: doing randomized trials. Sitting here right now, there's about three
Speaker 1: thousand studies and three hundred and twelve randomized trials when
Speaker 1: I wrote the first act book in ninety nine or
Speaker 1: four randomized trials, so there was one coming out every
Speaker 1: eight days. Now, wow, over the last three years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And you know, inside you know all of that, you know,
Speaker 1: churn of research and the creative things that came out
Speaker 1: of that. You know, there's this core connection to these
Speaker 1: underlying principles that allow us to scale it into all
Speaker 1: these other areas. So that because we did our homework
Speaker 1: in the kind of dark time, we can put those
Speaker 1: into all these different areas of life and find that
Speaker 1: they work here, and they work here, and they work here,
Speaker 1: and they work here and they work here, and then
Speaker 1: socially extend them. So the game is is to try
Speaker 1: to simplify, get it down to the simplest amount that
Speaker 1: you can do, and then build out those data. And
Speaker 1: it turns out that these flexibility principles are relevant everywhere
Speaker 1: that the human mind goes and if you want to
Speaker 1: scale them socially, you got the ad additional principles to
Speaker 1: do that. But back to the randomized trout, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: tell the story first one in the modern era Bond
Speaker 1: and Bumps two thousand. What he did was he went
Speaker 1: into a bank call center, and people are highly stressed
Speaker 1: doing this terrible work. They'll call people up and say,
Speaker 1: you haven't been paying your loans, blah blah blah. This
Speaker 1: is awful, you don't want to be doing it, and
Speaker 1: highly stressful in a work. So he had two conditions.
Speaker 1: In one case, what they did was change the context
Speaker 1: of the bank center, teaching people to take charge of
Speaker 1: their environment and by doing that be less stressed and
Speaker 1: more mentally healthy. The other alternative was act. But to
Speaker 1: make normally in that behavioral action part, you'd put in
Speaker 1: some push to do something like that, right, we didn't, Okay,
Speaker 1: well Frank Bond didn't because you wanted to be a
Speaker 1: clear comparison. But here's what happened. What happened. Stress went
Speaker 1: down way more in the that condition than it did
Speaker 1: in the change your environment condition. Nice number two. At
Speaker 1: post changer environment, people are changing your environment more and
Speaker 1: follow up in the condition they were changing the environment
Speaker 1: as much or more. Why the reason why you don't
Speaker 1: step forward and challenge discrimination and confront unfairness or injustice
Speaker 1: is because you're feeling emotionally small. You're hooked by these
Speaker 1: thoughts that I'm not good enough, You're kind of not
Speaker 1: fully connected to the values that are involved, and you
Speaker 1: do I to whom I take a change in the world? Exactly.
Speaker 1: It's almost like a locus of external locus of control. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're playing It's you know, it's like out of the
Speaker 1: Nelson Mandela thing. You know, who am I that initial
Speaker 1: inaugural address that is linked to somebody else's quote? I
Speaker 1: forget who was that he was borrowing? But well, who
Speaker 1: are you not to Marian Williams. Yeah, exactly, something like that,
Speaker 1: but not you know, playing small in the world is
Speaker 1: not good for the world. So yeah, it's yeah, I
Speaker 1: like it. I like it. So it's a both and
Speaker 1: and I take the point that the psychological side isn't
Speaker 1: the whole of it. There's also the social side and
Speaker 1: the cultural side, and let's get the psychology side going
Speaker 1: and then link it. And that's what I've been trying
Speaker 1: to do with the work in pro social and and
Speaker 1: you know, ACT people are trying to bring ACT into
Speaker 1: things like working with perpetrators of violence the domestic bonds
Speaker 1: for the first time in the history of psychology, reducing
Speaker 1: actual biance by the perpetrators, even like psychopaths. Yes, I wonder,
Speaker 1: you wonder how many are on the you know, the
Speaker 1: real full psychopathic thing. But do you think Ted Bundy
Speaker 1: if he did act approach, she'd kill us people? Well,
Speaker 1: I'll say this, you know, of course the right answer
Speaker 1: is probably not. And I don't know, but I would
Speaker 1: say this, what does it gain us to give up
Speaker 1: on people? Yeah? Yeah, I love that. You know, I
Speaker 1: would rather make if you give me Pascal's wager on this,
Speaker 1: I would rather guess that there's a human being in
Speaker 1: there and you know, get out of your mind. In
Speaker 1: your life was written for prisoners. My first job was
Speaker 1: working in a federal penitentiary and what I saw there
Speaker 1: were human beings. And when I dug down to their values,
Speaker 1: I didn't find some criminal psychopath. I found Betty Crocker.
Speaker 1: I mean, people started saying the things that were right
Speaker 1: out of a freaking red book or something like Oprah
Speaker 1: would have been proud and they did. Really, you know,
Speaker 1: rapists and murderers, and I've worked with rapists versus. But
Speaker 1: that label is not the person. That's what the person did.
Speaker 1: And by the way, they almost always were abused themselves. Yeah, oh,
Speaker 1: so what are we doing shaming and blaming? Why are
Speaker 1: we doing that? How are we shame serial killers? Well?
Speaker 1: Really seriously not but you know, our religious traditions would
Speaker 1: say yeah, yeah, you know, even the worst of the worst,
Speaker 1: even the lowest of the low. Yeah, it's on the beatitudes, right,
Speaker 1: you're supposed to go like visit and take care of prisoners.
Speaker 1: So how did we get into it's really cool to
Speaker 1: just lock feed and count. Yeah, it's really cool. Three
Speaker 1: strikes and you're out. It's not really cool to give
Speaker 1: up on people. No. My answer that is no, I
Speaker 1: don't want to be polyannaish about it. I get dangerous people.
Speaker 1: We need to do harsh things, and can we do
Speaker 1: something else other than just harsh? Yeah, we provide therapy
Speaker 1: for you know, we get out of your mind. Of
Speaker 1: Her life was originally written to be printed on newsprint
Speaker 1: and given out with a total expense about twenty cents
Speaker 1: per book to prisoners. Because I did the math, and
Speaker 1: I figured out we can print this on newsprint and
Speaker 1: give it out one lesson at a time. If you
Speaker 1: bring it back and you filled it out, you don't
Speaker 1: have to turn it into show I did something that
Speaker 1: it will give you the next sheet. I love your
Speaker 1: I love your humanity, the spirit of why not try
Speaker 1: to make anyone be a better version of themselves? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it takes a lot of openness of heart to
Speaker 1: do that. And you you have a huge, huge heart.
Speaker 1: You're a very emotional person. I've seen you in different content.
Speaker 1: You know. I saw this ted X talk you gave
Speaker 1: about your panic attack and you screamed. You know it
Speaker 1: kind of try to recreate that feeling. It was the
Speaker 1: most raw thing I've ever seen in my life. And
Speaker 1: that was hard. Do you feel I imagine it's really hard. Right.
Speaker 1: I got in front of my wife right before it
Speaker 1: was like five minutes before. I said, are you terrified?
Speaker 1: Almost terrified? Yeah? I said I cannot do this, and
Speaker 1: that this wasn't the talk. I've given many talks before
Speaker 1: I practiced that. You can see that talk was prettied
Speaker 1: out in it was a scream. I mean, it's not
Speaker 1: like the dress rehearsal. You did that scream, right, I
Speaker 1: never did. Right, it's not that's the thing. You want
Speaker 1: to do it, of course, because you want to keep
Speaker 1: it wrang. Yeah, you know, and I haven't three times
Speaker 1: in my life, once when I was caught in a
Speaker 1: machine making a luminofoil almost chopped in half, once at
Speaker 1: the bottom of my panel disorder, and then once in
Speaker 1: that Ted talk and just so that normal people could
Speaker 1: hear what it sounds like to have no way forward. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, life is over. I've admitted that sound before
Speaker 1: in my life. Yeah. Yeah, people who've been desperate, and
Speaker 1: they all recognize that sound. You can absolutely there's a
Speaker 1: fundamental humanity there, you know. You know it's you have
Speaker 1: such an open heart. And I and you talk about
Speaker 1: social transformation in the book, and you end on perhaps
Speaker 1: the most important topic of all. And I want to
Speaker 1: give you the last word today on that topic. So
Speaker 1: what is love? Tell me what love is? Well, the
Speaker 1: last line of the book is love is and everything.
Speaker 1: It's the only thing, but the only thing. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I really do think. I mean, somebody asked me not
Speaker 1: to talk about it, like, well, what is a significant line?
Speaker 1: What is a good life? And I said, it's being
Speaker 1: who you are. And then what I didn't add I
Speaker 1: wish I had, But what I believe is and what
Speaker 1: is that The closest word we've got Toto's love. If
Speaker 1: you are if you just take what our humanity gives us,
Speaker 1: it gives us the capacity to connect with others. Consciousness
Speaker 1: is that we're not conscious alone and cut off, stuck
Speaker 1: in the corner somewhere. We were conscious because we were
Speaker 1: drawn in by the community who looked our eyes and said, oh,
Speaker 1: you're sweet baby. Yeah, and you know you dump natural
Speaker 1: and Mopiate's when that moment happened, because you know, I'm
Speaker 1: being seen by these kind eyes I belong. That's the
Speaker 1: kind of monkey we are. And when you build that
Speaker 1: out into values. You know, when people dig down to
Speaker 1: when you talked about your deepest values, check this out.
Speaker 1: I've never found anyone when they dig down to their
Speaker 1: deepest values that the values doesn't have something to do
Speaker 1: with people. Even if it's just beauty or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's beauty shared, it's beauty given, it's beauty contributed.
Speaker 1: Isn't this the last person in the universe with beauty?
Speaker 1: It's you want to share and appreciate and bring something
Speaker 1: to yourself but also to others. And you know, so
Speaker 1: if you walk around all of these things where we
Speaker 1: get kind of screwed up, I mean, even this capacity
Speaker 1: to feel and so forth, all of these things are
Speaker 1: facets and faces of creating a loving space for yourself
Speaker 1: and others. If you wanted a single word psychological effects
Speaker 1: of moody, I gave you a six person thing definition
Speaker 1: and then we went down to the charades version, you know,
Speaker 1: open awareness. A single word, a single it would be love.
Speaker 1: And if you want it to a single letter, I'll
Speaker 1: give you the letter b oh like be love be,
Speaker 1: just be, because that's the sense of it's not everything.
Speaker 1: That's the only thing I think if you were to
Speaker 1: put words to the quality of us when we're just being,
Speaker 1: it means creating this loving place with yourself and by
Speaker 1: extension with others. And to me, that's what psychology is
Speaker 1: for it. I love it. Well, thank you for all
Speaker 1: the amazing work you've done and all this is the book.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you could see it in the frame,
Speaker 1: but you talk about applications just there's relevance for anyone's
Speaker 1: life in here. You go through so much of all
Speaker 1: the human conditions that we have right, and your work
Speaker 1: has impacted so many people, has impacted my work of course.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for being here today. That was
Speaker 1: awesome and I'm really proud that I'm here. On the
Speaker 1: first video, I don't know how it came out, but
Speaker 1: I hope it came out well. But I know our
Speaker 1: conversation really was meaningful and moving for me. Thank you
Speaker 1: like who you are and for this playful space that's
Speaker 1: your good great thank you. I feel very much the
Speaker 1: same about you. Thank you so much. And if people
Speaker 1: want to watch this video, if you're listening to it
Speaker 1: on the podcast and you want to watch it, go
Speaker 1: to the YouTube channel the Psychology Podcast on YouTube. Thanks
Speaker 1: everyone for tuning in, and thank you Steven. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to this episode of the Psychology Podcast. If you'd
Speaker 1: like to react in some way to something you heard,
Speaker 1: I encourage you to join in the discussion at the
Speaker 1: Psychology Podcast dot com. That's the Psychology Podcast dot com. Also,
Speaker 1: please add a reading and review of the podcast on
Speaker 1: iTunes and subscribe to the Psychology Podcast YouTube channel, as
Speaker 1: we're really trying to increase our viewership on YouTube. In fact,
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Speaker 1: for being such a great supporter of the podcast, and
Speaker 1: tune in next time for more on the mind, brain,
Speaker 1: behavior and creativity.