How do you set up a psychologically flexible life?

That's about thriving and taking action towards meaningful goals.

How do you know what your values are and how can you use your values

That's what we're going to discuss today.

On the first episode of Your Life in Process.

Hi, I'm Dr.

Diana Hill.

Welcome to this podcast.

I'm so glad that you made it here.

If you've been following me for a while, you've been hearing me talk a lot about

If you're a parent or a high achiever, or maybe just someone

And if you're new to this podcast, welcome, I'm so glad that you made it.

I want you to think of me as your psychological flexibility guide and

ideas from modern psychology, some ideas from wisdom, traditions that you can

Psychological flexibility is a term that comes from Acceptance and

But the research on it has really been skyrocketing in the past decade.

And what psychological flexibility is, is your ability to stay

Even when life is challenging, even when you're bombarded by anxious,

You continue to be the type of person that you want to be.

In this podcast, we'll be exploring some of these core processes of

But we'll also be talking to thought leaders and scientists and spiritual

I don't want you to think about this podcast as a self-improvement

It's not a quick fix because quick fixes are fragile.

It's about learning the processes that underlie long lasting change so that you

When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a snail.

When I grew up, I loved that snails had their homes on their back,

And that's what I want this podcast to be for you.

I want it to feel like a home to you.

I want it to feel comforting and supportive and a place where you

And I want you to move at your own pace to make changes in your life so that

I believe in the bio-psycho-social model of mental and physical wellness.

And what that means is how you eat, how you move, your mindset, your community,

So this podcast will offer you avenues along all those different dimensions.

We'll be talking about health, we'll be talking about mindset and

connections and the places where you get stuck and really where all

This is how it's going to work every week.

I'm going to either have a solo episode or a conversation with somebody.

and you can watch some of these conversations on YouTube if

And at the end of every episode, you are going to get a practice, a daily

The reason why I'm setting it up that way is because there's a couple

And maybe you can see if this is true for you.

Do you have a tendency of getting really heady about things.

Maybe you read a book, you get all your ideas, you collect all

That's sort of like gathering a bunch of recipes, but never

Or maybe you have a tendency of setting these really big

Getting super motivated.

But then not able to carry them out because it's just too much to take on

One of the biggest challenges I see in my work with folks is

So in this podcast, you are going to get a roadmap for becoming more

And it's going to be slow and steady at your pace.

At the end of every podcast, you will get a set of strategies

They're going to be small enough that you can do them, but meaningful

In today's podcast, we're going to be tackling one of the core processes

And that process is my favorite one.

It's a place that I often start with folks and it's called values.

I'll be exploring with you what values are.

I'm going to be introducing an exercise to take a look at where values

And then at the end, I will be sharing more about why I think psychological

why I named this podcast Your Life in Process, and giving you your

So stay tuned all the way to the end to get that.

All right.

Let's get started with values.

As I mentioned, psychological flexibility comes from Acceptance and Commitment

You have these sort of different sides of the Rubik's cube and

And when you work on one it works on the other and they all together

We're just going to be focusing on the value side of the Rubik's

And over time, we'll be building in the other side of the Rubik's cube.

If you want to learn more about psychological flexibility, I have

One of the reasons why I start with this process of values with folks is

between how you're living your life and how you want to be living your life,

In fact, that's one of the reasons why people come to therapy.

They often say that something they really care about is going sideways for

One of the ways I like to think about values is if I were following you

and you were to watch that video at the end of the day, what parts of the

Would you really feel like you showed up like the type of person you want

Those are clues into your values, to what you care about because values are

They're verbs and adverbs that you can do in your daily life.

Like being present, being compassionate, being humorous.

When I was in graduate school, I had a sticker on my water bottle that said

I was researching Dialectical Behavior Therapy for eating disorders at the time.

And I spend most of my days working with individuals who were doing

them to do to be successful, but they were coming to treatment

These were the Olympians of striving and I'd often point to the sticker and

if you could harness the energy that you put into battling your body and turned

What mountains would you want to climb if you were free to choose?"

and that's what values are really about and what I want to ask you,

You might be contemplating your own mountain right now so much

And what felt so important a few years ago, doesn't feel as important right

So today I want you to ask yourself, what is it that you're striving for and where

If life is not a maze with end points where you have to start all

How do you need to adapt in your life right now?

What changes do you need to make so that when you look back on your day, you feel

Values are about you harnessing your energy that maybe you've been using

You're going to hear me talk a lot about values on this podcast.

And it actually may become a little annoying to hear, but there's a

What energize you?

What keep you afloat when life falls part, and there are going

Even when you have nothing left, they're going to be what helps

They're both your anchor and your direction.

On the podcast today, I'm going to ask you three questions and I want you to

They're kind of unusual questions.

So stick with me.

And at the end, I'll give you a practice that you can apply

I want you to kind of think of it as going to the store and actually trying on

Right?

So we're going to try on this pair of jeans and values and

That's what I care about.

I care about taking these ideas and principles.

Have a tremendous amount of research behind them and that until now really

As I ask these questions.

I just want you to contemplate them for yourself.

But after this podcast, I encourage you to sit down and either journal about it

It's a really great way to have an intimate and deep

When you start talking about values, it really builds intimacy.

So share this podcast with someone and make a date to have a values conversation.

Hey, this is Diana.

And I want to remind you that you can leave a message for me with any

I'd love to hear from you and you can also email at podcast

Okay.

Back to the episode.

All right.

So here are the three questions that tap into three aspects of

And the first question has to do with sweet spots.

The concept sweet spot comes from a training that I did with Kelly Wilson.

A number of years ago, who's one of the founders of act and he does this

books called mindfulness for two it's a great book for therapists,

And here's what I want you to do.

I want you to think back over the past.

And if you were to just rewind the past week and think about a moment that was

Maybe you got lost in flow.

You know, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi concept of flow when you lose time and

Or maybe it's a moment when your heart just got filled up and you

So for example, for me as sweet spot, this past week was when my

been working really hard at learning how to swim and he's at a different

And he was really motivated to face some of his fears because he wanted to

And he'd spent a lot of time in the shallow end watching other kids play.

So he was really motivated to learn, but it was also really hard for him.

And the moment, the sweet spot for me was when he jumped in and then he

And then he did like this scan around the pool, looking for me.

And when he saw my face, I could see his eyes just light up a little bit.

And my heart just melted.

It was this moment where I was so proud of him and he knew that I was so

I could see that he knew that I was proud.

And I could also see how proud he was of himself.

So this sweet moment, and you can think about what this sweet

I value connection.

I value being present.

I value being courageous.

I also value vulnerability.

So when you consider your sweet spot, I want you to first just

And then I want you to think about really boil it down to a few values for yourself.

What is the sweet spot say about what matters most to you?

What are the qualities of action, the descriptions, the verbs and adverbs

Okay, so there's your first question.

I've done this exercise with a number of people in groups and workshops with

And what I find is really helpful for you is to begin to see how your values are

We often go about our lives, just skimming the surface without really recognizing or

And that takes another side of that rubik's cube called being present that

Okay.

So here's your second question.

I want to ask you again, think back over the past week and this time, I

Maybe it was a moment that was emotionally difficult.

You felt uncomfortable, you felt challenged.

There was maybe some friction between you and somebody else

Maybe you had that sort of impulse to avoid escape, runaway or check out.

Oftentimes we're quick to run away from our discomfort and we miss out

And when you run away from your discomfort through maybe checking out with substances

about things, you're doing something called experiential avoidance, which is

It's actually psychological rigidity because it's not

And you also miss out on the values that are showing up for you in that.

Stephen Hayes who's one of the founders of ACT says that values and

What is bothering you often is an arrow pointing to what is important to you.

So uncovering your painful spots, you may find that there's

It's painful because there's something that matters to you in the discomfort.

So for example, for me, in this past week, I've been getting this podcast ready.

And it's been pretty darn uncomfortable.

It's uncomfortable because I'm putting myself out there in a number of ways.

I want to do a good job for you.

I want this to be helpful to you, and I don't really know how it's going to go.

So my mind has been giving me a pretty hard time, pretty judgmental,

All those things that I know your mind does too, when you're taking on

And when you look at what's underneath that discomfort, it's really some values.

It's my values of wanting to be of service in the world.

It's my values of wanting to help people.

And it's also my values of, in my relationship with myself of caring for

is pretty vulnerable and sometimes our self critic gives us a hard time

Right.

So when you think about this concept of values and discomfort, and you

week, when your pain is dialed up pretty high, there's probably

There's a beautiful poem by Mary Oliver, that sometimes I'll have

She writes in my sleep, I dreamed this poem.

Someone I loved once gave me a box full of.

It took me years to understand that this too was a gift.

So the question that I want you to ask yourself around this painful moment from

What is it pointing to for you?

What is the box of darkness and what is the gift inside the box?

If you want to live a life that is meaningful and purpose driven, you are

helpful to know what your values are so that you can continue to move forward

Okay.

I said, I was going to give you three questions.

And the third question is sort of a, it's a fun one, but it's uncomfortable

So we've had sweet spots and we've had painful, uncomfortable

And now I want you to look at your envy spots.

Envy is probably one of my least favorite emotions.

I'm a Scorpio.

And my mom swears that Scorpios are really jealous.

She's a Scorpio too.

And I think sometimes we say these things just to explain our behaviors, right.

But envy is a great one to tackle with values because when we are psychologically

All emotions are welcome here, especially the emotions that we don't like.

Instead of getting rid of them or getting rigid around them.

I want you to take a look at it.

Let's take a look at your envy.

So I want you to consider somebody in your life.

It could be a famous person or a friend or a colleague that you

It's somebody that you admire and because you admire them,

Maybe they're doing some things in the world that you wish you could do.

Maybe they played big in certain ways that you wish you could play

My envy is kind of a funny one.

It's linked to one of the people that I really admire and I look

She's a meditation teacher and a psychologist, and I've been listening

And one of the ways that I feel envy about is that she's really stepped

It feels like this bold move that you're kind of not allowed

And I really envy that.

And you can see how that may link to my values and may actually

So I want you to think about this person that you envy and start to look at

What is it that they're doing that maybe you want to be doing more of?

And then you have another list.

So you'll have a list of values that you came up with from your sweet spots.

You'll have a list of values that you came up from your

And now you have a list of values that you come up with from your envy spots.

This last one with envy, I want you to be careful with, because one of

spiral with is they can get into their envy and then they do all sort of

That's what Buddhist call, a second arrow.

When we add another pain to our original.

And you do things like maybe you blame yourself or you get bogged down by

And then you kind of get lost in the forest as opposed to really being

Psychological flexibility is helpful here because it's helpful to kind of

And we'll be talking more about some of these other processes of psychological

So just notice your stinking thinking as they would say in 12 step programs and

So, this is just an example of some of the ways in which we'll be taking deep

This is what Your Life in Process is about.

It's about ways of being in the world that will help you be the best version of you.

And I want to tell you a little bit more about this concept of psychological

This whole season, season 1 of the podcast, we're going to be taking

So we'll be looking at it through the lens of addiction.

We'll be looking at it through the lens of raising kids.

We'll be looking at it through the lens of developing a meditation practice.

And over the next three months together, I hope that you will be strengthening

So the first reason why I think psychological flexibility is such a

I was a bio-psychology major in college.

I attended a research one university for my graduate training, and I conducted

I really believe in research.

I really believe in science.

And I also believe in science that evolves over time with new information.

I want you to use science to inform your choices.

And I also want you to evolve as science evolves and be open to

ACT is an approach to living that has been evolving over time.

There's been over 650 randomized clinical trials at this point in time.

I'm sure it's going to continue to skyrocket demonstrating that when you

beneficial for your mental health, your athletic performance, your parenting,

For example, during COVID psychological flexibility mitigated the effects of

It was associated with better sleep.

And if you are a parent who is psychologically flexible, you're less

Psychological flexibility is also personal.

We can move from the science of thousands to an N of 1, which is just as important.

How does this work for you?

I first learned about psychological flexibility in my graduate training

I was in a cognitive behavioral program at the time.

And I had hidden my recovery from an eating disorder from the students in the

I was studying something that I clearly had personal reasons to

And so in walks Kelly Wilson, he's wearing a t-shirt and.

And he started to talk about his own history of addiction, his mental

And he cried.

He laid it all out there for everybody, and I felt completely humanized.

I realized that maybe I could be more fully me while doing the work that I

You don't have to hide that you are human.

You don't have to hide that you struggle.

But rather you can work on your humanness to get to know the

You can see yourself through it and be on your own side.

And this is personal in that I know that you have struggles,

Things that you're addicted to, relationships that are painful for you.

Everybody has shame spots, and I know that you have them too, and all is welcome.

Here.

All is welcome here.

So there's a little bit of relief, a little bit of an exhale, knowing

Sometimes I have clients tell me that it feels like I'm in their heads.

And that is because I am.

There's a common humanity to this work.

We all struggle.

We all have human brains in a modern world.

That's a bit of a mismatch evolutionarily for our human brains.

I am psychologically inflexible too.

Sometimes I think that I'm one of the most psychologically

And the strategies that I'm going to talk with you about here will help you so that

So the first two aspects of psychological flexibility that are

And third, psychological flexibility is process-based.

When I decided on the title of this podcast, Your Life in Process, I

There's a double meaning to them.

The first is related to working in the field of eating disorders

It's about process, not the outcome, whether you are starting a new job

If you get bogged down by the outcomes, you will lose motivation when the

I think about my kids shooting baskets, right?

He's a little guy and the basket is really high up.

And if he got sidetracked by every basket he missed, he would totally give up.

But instead he's focusing on the process.

He's focusing on where to put his body, how he's positioning his hand.

Is he ending with a little bit of an arch in his fingertips?

That's what he's learned from really good coaching.

I want you to have really good coaching as well.

When we're thinking about your psychological flexibility, it's

So that you don't miss out on the beauty and the journey and you don't give up.

I've talked with a number of leaders in the field of psychology, and

Process, process, process.

If there is a word that will define psychology in the next decade,

There was a paper written by Steven Hayes who's one of the co-founders of

I'll link to it in the show notes so you can take a look at it if you like, and you

What the paper says is that psychology has reached a tipping point, a new paradigm.

One that no longer sees people through a lens of a medical model

A model that looks for the processes that underlie many of

So, for example, you'll hear that mindfulness awareness and

You'll hear them in Buddhist psychology.

You'll hear an essence of them in Rogerian psychology in DBT or Dialectical

And these letters are meaning less and less.

What really helps you live well matters more and more.

A lot of times I have folks coming in to ask me what type of therapy

And I really think that this process based model will eliminate that problem.

It's about the processes.

Are you stuck in processes like avoiding things or being harsh

Or are you engaging in some of those really positive processes?

Like being able to take committed action towards what you care about.

So I think it's really exciting because once you have this way of

And it's something that you can practice and grow over time like

And when you practice these psychological processes over

This week, you're going to try on the process of values.

You're going to practice spotting your values in your life.

And I guarantee you, if you do that every day, this week, by the end of

It'll start to encode in your brain and your behavior that

I'm really excited about this for you.

I think it's going to be a different way of living in the world.

That's going to help you tremendously.

I really do.

And that's really my mission for this podcast.

Because I want you to be the version of you that you

Every week, I'm going to end these episodes with a little bit of a recap.

And the fun thing about how I set up these episodes is that

So if you're busy and you just want to cut to the chase or in the future,

notes and look at the timestamps where everything's been outlined and go

All right.

So here's what we talked about today.

We talked about psychological flexibility as a modern approach to living that

And we took a deeper dive into values.

I asked you three questions to explore your values.

I asked you about a sweet spot.

I asked you about a painful spot.

And I asked you about your envy spots.

And in the end, we talked about the reasons why psychological flexibility

It's science-backed.

It's personally beneficial.

It's process-based and it's something that you can practice and grow.

So here's what I'd like for you to do this week.

Here's your daily practice to get started.

Complete the exercise that we did together with those three questions, either do it

about it and see if you can boil down your values to maybe five or 10 words

Make a list.

I want you to write it down somewhere where you'll set it.

You can put it in the notes section of your phone, you can put it on

Heck you could even put it in your email signature.

Or share it with me on Instagram at Dr.

Diana Hill or put it in the comments section of this episode.

I want you to feel like this is a community and we're

And then what I want you to do is go about your week , being a bit of

Pay attention to when you are acting in line with those values and also see if you

Remind yourself what your values are, and then start to act them out in your life.

So get your list of values, put them somewhere where you can

See where they show up and how you can evoke them.

So I'll see you back here on the next episode, which is with Anna Lembke,

Can't wait to share.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Your Life in Process.

When you enter your life in process, when you become psychologically

If you like this episode or think it would be helpful to somebody, please

If you have any questions, you can leave them for me by phone at (805) 457-2776 or

And it's not meant to be a substitute for mental health treatment.