The Tools: Psychological Flexibility

Psychological flexibility refers to our ability to fully contact the present moment and the thoughts and feelings it contains without needless defense, and, depending upon what the situation affords, persisting or changing behavior in the pursuit of goals and values. Psychological flexibility is an important factor in mental health, performance, and overall well-being (Kashdan, 2010).

For elite achievers, psychological flexibility supports a few of the key mental processes we need to perform our best when it matters most, including self-regulation, directing our attention, and being able to respond effectively to feedback.

If there were one thing I’d say I’m consistently working on in my performance coaching, it would be helping my clients develop this ability.

The 6 Core Processes

Psychological flexibility includes six core processes:

Cognitive defusion - This involves relating to thoughts as what they are - transient mental events - rather than as necessarily accurate reflections of reality or self. Defusion techniques help create psychological distance from unhelpful thoughts. Research shows defusion reduces the believability of negative thoughts and emotional reactivity.

One simple way you can decrease the impact of thoughts or learn to see them as more transient is to practice mindfulness. As you do, see if you can just notice your thoughts pass by, like words on a screen, without getting too attached. Alternatively, you can practice repeating a word out loud for about 30 seconds, with varying speeds and pitches. Most people find that this simple, silly exercise is enough to recognize that the words we say to ourselves are nothing more than a collection of sounds (Hayes et al., 2006).

Acceptance - Allowing unwanted emotions, urges, and sensations to come and go without attempts to control them. Acceptance is associated with better emotional regulation and reduces counterproductive avoidance behaviors.

Importantly, acceptance isn’t about just willingly taking anything on. If you can change it, you should. But, most of the world involves invoking the serenity prayer… you know, “ God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Acceptance is an effective alternative to the nefarious antithesis of psychological flexibility - avoidance - and allows us to just “sit with” our experience, without resisting or changing it.

A simple starting point for practicing acceptance is to regularly pause and notice your emotions (e.g., your physiology and how you appraise it). See if you can slow down and feel those sensations, without trying to make them go away.

Contact with the present moment - Paying attention with flexibility, openness, and active awareness of here-and-now experience. This is cultivated through mindfulness practices. Studies link present-moment awareness to reduced stress, improved cognitive functioning, and positive health outcomes (Kashdan, 2010; Levin et al., 2012).

There’s also some compelling evidence that paying attention like this - being mindful of the moment - is a precursor to flow (Schutte & Malouff, 2023). Flow - the elusory, elevated psychological state that can help us do some incredible things - is essentially being open to the here and now, responding effectively to feedback from the environment, and staying in the environment for a long enough time that we “lose ourselves” in the activity.

As I mentioned, there’s really no better way to build this skill than to practice mindfulness. Check this out for more.

Self-as-context - The perspective from which we are aware of our experiences. Rather than getting fused (hence the term “defusion”) with the content of the mind, we can realize that we are containers for our experience - we have thoughts and feelings, but we’re distinct from the thoughts and feelings.

This level of awareness enhances our flexibility.

A cool way to get a sense of your self-as-context is to look back at the history of your life. We’re all aware of what it feels like to be different people at different ages and stages - nobody feels exactly as they did as a kid. In fact, biologically, we get a whole new cadre of cells every 7-10 years.

We’re quite literally not the same, and yet we feel a sense of continuity.

That continuity is your “self”, that has a whole host of experiences and a whole new body, that contains multitudes and isn’t any one of them

Values - Discovering what gives life meaning and purpose for each individual. Connecting with values has been shown to improve goal-setting, motivation, performance, and life satisfaction (Eccles & Wigfield, 2002).

Values is often the starting point for my work with individuals, teams, and organizations. They are organizing principles - ongoing qualities of action that give us a structure to follow and something to work toward.

If you want to discover your values, learn more here.

Committed action - Setting goals guided by values and taking effective action to accomplish them, even in the presence of difficult thoughts, feelings, or other internal experiences. Committed action leads to improved quality of life, and is how we make all this psychological flexibility stuff real.

Committed action is the process that makes the biggest difference, and the fastest. If we can start aligning our behavior with our values, we can leverage the feeling of success and winning, and watch it compound. It feels good to do things that are difficult, and it feels good to live out what we care about.

Taken together, these six processes comprise a state of psychological flexibility that allows people to act effectively even when faced with challenging internal experiences.

Harnessing these 6 processes can take your performance up a level.