Flex Your Ability to be Happier

How do we get to that healthy psychological flexibility?

Thankfully, there are many different patterns that appear to help – and I’ll be looking at the research more in the coming months to get a much more specific handle on the “how”.  But in the meantime, here is a big picture overview of the basic actions that I see working:

First, be aware and honest about where you fall on all of those bullets above – both the flexible and the inflexible ones. Know specifically what those are, and you can begin to see how they show up in your life. It is only when we are blind to something that we cannot confront it well. For example, I’ve learned I have a tendency to catastrophize about what X could mean for Y in the future . . . which usually means I’m probably getting stuck in the weeds about a problem and not looking at the big picture!

Second, practice doing the flexible habits and letting go of the inflexible ones. So using my example, I’ve recently tried to be far more mindful of trying to keep a bigger-picture mentality and talk myself out of getting wrapped up with worry about it. (“OK, I’m worried that my son bombed this very crucial test . . . but just because of that, it doesn’t mean that he’ll get a bad grade in the class . . . and even if it does mean he gets a bad grade in the class, it doesn’t mean he won’t get into his top choice for a college engineering program . . . and even if it does mean he doesn’t get into that particular engineering program, it doesn’t mean he can’t be an engineer and/or won’t have an amazing career or life . . .”)

Finally, in particular, be mindful of “looking for the best.” We have seen the importance of that continuously in our research on what makes the happiest marriages, what brings us joy in difficult circumstances, and a host of other positive outcomes. It is easy to focus on the negative, but a purposeful effort to look for the best even in difficult situations yields great benefits.

All of this strongly reminds me of all that is captured by the old phrase, “Let go and let God.” I think that is just another way of describing psychological flexibility!