Episode 24. In this episode we talk about the concept of psychological flexibility. Do you ever feel like you are playing whack-a-mole with your negative thoughts? Like ok I'm supposed to feel worthy, and energized, and have internal motivation, and never have diet mentality thoughts. Then having negative thoughts or self-doubt becomes another way to feel like you have failed? Do you ever think, "Why can't I just be confident?" or "Why do I care so much what other people think?"

Today's episode is all about the concept of psychological flexibility. This has overlap with the concept of acceptance. It does NOT mean accepting all as it is and becoming complacent and it also does not mean accepting things won't change. It means being willing to have uncomfortable thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations in service of your most important values, your WHY, your reasons and purpose for living.

This conversation builds on our previous ones about support and accountability. Accountability can be incredibly useful as we work through discomfort.

We are going to talk about:

Why "just think positive" is a major problem and rarely moves us in a positive directionThe concept of toxic positivity and how it keeps us from emotional agilityHow to use the concepts of psychological flexibility and willingness from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to get you unstuck and moving forward regardless of how "motivated" you feel

Want to start from the beginning? Check out the Foundational Episodes of the Motivation Made Podcast here!

Introduction: What is this podcast all about?Episode 1: Want to Get & Stay Motivated? A Crash Course on Motivation, Weight Loss, and HealthEpisode 2: How Dieting Steals Our MotivationEpisode 3: How To Get Motivated To Improve Your Health (Motivation 101)Episode 4: How to Transform Health Fears Into Forward Progress

Clarify Your Values

Want a step by step guide to help you reflect on your most important values so you can remind yourself WHY you are getting comfortable with being uncomfortable? My free values and goals guide does just that. Check it out for free here!

What if I Can't Change My Thoughts?

Have you heard of cognitive-behavioral therapy? It's an evidence-based and incredibly effective therapy that works for a wide-variety of conditions.

The idea goes like this. If you have an event happen to you, like someone walks by you on the street and makes a frowning face, your interpretation of the situation will impact how you feel, and perhaps how you behave.

If you assume they frowned because they think you are fat or unattractive, then you may feel angry, or sad, or ashamed of your body. You might feel depressed, and you might stop walking as a result.

Alternatively, if you assume that they probably were thinking about something unrelated to you and just randomly frowned while they happened to be looking at you, you might feel neutral, not feel down, and go on with your day and continue walking in that area in the future.

Change How You Think to Change How You Feel

So the idea in CBT is, we identify unhelpful thoughts like "he thinks I'm fat and unattractive" and examine whether that is likely true or not, and even if true, whether it's helpful. We change the thought and practice thinking differently, then ideally we feel better.

But what about when thoughts are really hard to change? We argue with them, but it doesn't really make us feel better. What about when they just won't go away? When we are really down or really anxious, it can feel impossible to change our thoughts or beliefs. Particularly when they are entrenched in feelings of shame, as most of our really difficult stuff often is. Then what do we do?

The energy required to challenge each and every thought we have might feel daunting, or darn near impossible. We might be so tired of fighting our thoughts, we have no energy left for actual things we need to do in our life,