Buddy said:
In the video, Steven Hayes says that when life asks you the question, "what are you going to do about it?", we already have within us a great answer to that question...or at least the seed of an answer. But we also have this arrogant, story-telling, problem-solving, analytic, judgmental mind between the ears that doesn't have the answer and is constantly tempting us into taking the wrong direction.
A form of emotional openness seems to be the core of Psychological Flexibility and of Hayes' approach.
The concept of psychological flexibility, which is used in the ACT model of Hayes, has some building blocks.
From the ACT website:
_https://workingwithact.com/what-is-act/what-is-psychological-flexibility/
It is for this reason that Kashdan and Rotterburg (2010) define psychological flexibility as the measure of how a person: (1) adapts to fluctuating situational demands, (2) reconfigures mental resources, (3) shifts perspective, and (4) balances competing desires, needs, and life domains.
On searching for the concept of psychological flexibility, I came across this paper from Kashdan:
Psychological Flexibility as a Fundamental Aspect of Health
In this paper, the author Kashdan identifies the following building blocks for psychological flexibility
[quote author= Kashdan]
The Building Blocks of Psychological Flexibility
Now that we have demonstrated the benefits of psychological flexibility and the costs of inflexibility, we consider three critical factors that influence the likelihood of being psychologically flexible and gaining access to its benefits::
executive functioning, default mental states, and personality configurations. Our goals in presenting these building blocks are to offer a portal into how psychological flexibility operates and to provide clues as to how it might be better cultivated.
[/quote]
Executive functioning is identified as a critical building block for psychological flexibility and
[quote author=Kashdan]
.. it is hard to imagine psychological flexibility without at least adequate performance in this domain.
[/quote]
Why I am bringing this up is because imo,
[quote author=paraphrased from Hayes]
"we also have this arrogant, story-telling,
problem-solving, analytic, judgmental mind between the ears that doesn't have the answer and is constantly tempting us into taking the wrong direction"
[/quote]
is misleading.
The problem solving, analytic, judgmental mind is a central component of executive functioning. So unless the reader is well versed in the nuances of psychology and neuroscience, it is possible that wrong ideas would be internalized from the above formulation, which is accompanied by statements like "all that is needed is love." It is more complicated than that. The dramatic performance in the video as well as the above line of thought tends to give an overall message which can be misleading. To derive practical benefit from this, the concept of psychological flexibility need to be unpacked, understood with discrimination, and then applied.
The Kashdan paper linked above is dry but more accurate in describing mental processes and showing how psychological flexibility works. It does not reduce things to a one-liner like "all that is needed is love". I could be biased but I look at such across the board simplifications as the mental equivalent of "red bull gives you wings". It can perk us up temporarily without providing long-term benefits. I do not intend to devalue the whole work of Hayes as I do not know much about it. So take the above as a criticism of the presentation. Hayes could have done the presentation in the way he did to attract people to the concept and he made it dramatic enough to be interesting. In that case people following up could potentially benefit. And my point is that this followup is perhaps essential to derive benefit.
OSIT
