How Do You Build Psychological Flexibility?
Psychological flexibility essentially means being able to be present and thrive every day, navigating challenging emotions instead of avoiding them. According to Psychologist Dr. Diana Hill, your psychological flexibility is directly related to your work performance, ability of cope with illness, sports performance, interpersonal relationship health, and parenting, When you are psychologically flexible, you’re more likely to respond better to stressors and keep healthy habits. How do you do this? Here are six practices to become more psychological flexibility.
Be present: Being present means allowing yourself to really experience the moment you are living in as it is. You are able to notice thoughts and emotions without pushing them away or ignoring them. You center yourself in the now, not in the future or the past.
Know your values: What brings you to life? What matters most to you? Being able to answer these questions helps you become psychologically flexible. Values are things that are important to you and that you don’t need an external reward for doing them. Some examples are being a hard worker, kind, empathetic, or honest.
Accept your emotions: This means that you explore your full experience including difficulties and challenges as it is without controlling it. Allow yourself to become curious and explore emotions and uncomfortable thoughts without avoiding them or pushing them away.
Diffuse your thoughts: Cognitive diffusion is the process of recognizing what your thought really are - images and words that your mind creates. This process allows you to choose how to act instead of being controlled by your thoughts.
Take action: This purposeful process means you are building a life, setting goals, and maintaining habits all on the foundation of your values. You are connecting your actions to what matters most to you.
Find perspective: By taking a step back and examining the stories that you have about yourself and others, you can gain empathy and psychological flexibility. You can learn to take other views of a situation and look at different contexts. This will help you with communication and conflict management.
Practicing these methods will increase your psychological flexibility, allowing you to respond to stress and challenges with more elasticity and resilience.
