On a scale of one to 10, how attractive to you is a life in alignment with your values and with achieved life goals? You rated less than a 7? Just skip this article – it won’t be your thing.
You ratet 7 or higher? Then I invite you to discover more about the power of psychological flexibility.
Psychological flexibility is our ability to feel and think with openness and to voluntarily engage in the experience of the current moment. What does this have to do with creating your life in a way that matters to you? Let’s briefly consider the opposite – psychological rigidity:
It describes how we use our inner protective mechanisms to avoid negative thoughts and feelings in difficult situations when they occur and while remembering them. As a child, this mechanisms make sense. Staying up late at night, not brushing teeth, not showering, skippng school, sweets as main meal. There isn’t too much opportunity to direct one’s own life. 😊
However in the course of life, a high degree of psychological rigidity shows up as a harbinger of self-sabotaging behavior patterns, anxiety, depression or substance abuse.
None of this is your problem – you calmly deal with the pressures and pace of modern life:
- No heated meeting discussions after which you wonder why you reacted so emotionally?
- No conversations with people that you harshly interrupt or that you keep avoiding at all?
- No stress eating or sweet „frustration treat“?
- No procrastination?
- The glass of wine after work is not a necessity to switch off?
Then don’t read any further. You have already decoded the key element to human freedom in today’s V.U.C.A world with your degree of psychological flexibility.
Still there? I understand it. 😊
Allowing for mental openness and constructive sensitivity when the day „gallops away“ is quite a challenge. However, there is good news: Research has proven that we can learn psychological flexibility. One of the most important skills for this is directing our attention.
Aha, what exactly does that mean now? That you can consciously observe what you experience without prejudice, instead of letting yourself be flooded by thoughts and feelings.
Thinking is a great part of your intelligence. However, for most of us, the mind is constantly running like a water tap that we forgot to turn off: We go through a stream of thoughts and feelings non-stop, many of which stress us out negatively, as our brains can be very dramatic due to the „negative bias“.
Just like a mole living blindly underground, we then often don’t realize that we are buried in our thoughts. With your attention consciously directed, you dig yourself free from this avalanche of thoughts. You take a seat on an observation platform that brings light into the quaking of your agitated mind.
Instead of instinctively reacting to your circumstances because you believe you are in the middle of them, you observe your thoughts and experiences. As an observer on this platform, you also learn to distinguish in a non-judgmental way „what is actually there in this moment“ and what your brain is concocting into artificial worries. In doing so, you will find that the urge to lable everything with „good or bad“/“right or wrong“ calms down and so does your inner earthquake. Instead, you take a more detached perspective, similar to a curious scientist. You will approach the daily experiences you have with more openness and confidence.
Directing your attention leads to a more peaceful mind and increases your psychological flexibility in dealing with whatever your life brings. This does not mean passively submitting to circumstances – on the contrary: increasing psychological flexibility calms your habitual defenses/reactions. Instead, you more consciously choose the behavior helping you most on getting closer to what you are actually striving for.
Desire for less head rushes and inner emotional drama out of which you react on auto pilot?
Welcome to the advantages of mindfulness! It opens up a gap between the spark of your emotional reactivity and the flame of distorted thinking and behaviour. With practice, over time, the gap widens. As awareness of your emotions increases your receptivity, your reactivity also dereases.
Mindfulness – meanwhile oftentimes a buzz word. Especially in business people are oftentimes not keen to engage with it – and that’s a choice, too.
Just be aware that people practicing mindfulness will always be a step ahead of you in terms of self-controlled responses.
One of the most effective practices for learning to consciously direct your attention is meditation. A few minutes of practice per day change your ability to observe the mind instead of getting lost in it. MRI scans even show the positive changes quite clearly in our brains.
Still resistant? Give it a try. I promise, your future self will thank you with positive serenity.