 So, we are bringing back Dr. Steven Hayes, one of the co-founders of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy or ACT for short. You're probably going to hear us use that acronym a lot today, and you've been developing and researching this for several decades now, so there's obviously a lot of ground we're going to cover. And this is one of the foundations of everything that we do at the boot camp here in Los Angeles, and I know Johnny has been a huge fan of yours for a number of years, and it's fun to me now thinking about the way the course has been designed and the way that we've been working with our clients to see all of the overlap in what you've been researching for decades now. To get our listeners up to speed on exactly what ACT is about, you have a great metaphor that we love here at AOC. Can you briefly tell our listeners about the bus driver? I know this metaphor has really been impactful for me and Johnny, and I'd love for you to share it with our audience. Sure, it's sometimes helpful to bring kind of a model for how we can bring our skills to move in our life in the right direction, and the bus driver metaphor is to think of yourself as like the driver of a bus where the bus stops, passengers get on, you don't really get to pick who the passengers are, or whether or not they took a bath or what they're wearing, what they look like, how old they are. They come on, and once they're on there, you get to put what's on front of the bus, where's it going? But as you drive along, it turns out these passengers have attitudes, they have opinions, and they start telling you, you really need to go over there, you really need to go over there. And if you don't, something bad's going to happen. Often the thing that bad will happen is they threaten that they're going to make you see them. They'll come up and stand right next to you. And this is kind of like the situation that we're in as we collect our thoughts, feelings, memories, and bodily sensations, this history that we bring to the moment. We're sitting there, nominally in charge of our life, but easily we turn over the driving to somebody else, like the passenger that maybe says, you might fail at that, or the one that reminds you of the possibility of anxiety, or fear, or sadness. And so, okay, I won't go there. Like, I won't open up and move towards that relationship, because after all, I'm going to feel vulnerable, and I might be betrayed, and I was betrayed in the past, and so I'll make sure I've headed towards the pathway here that leads towards superficial relationships. And then it turns out you're not taking that bus where you would want it to go, you wouldn't have put that on the front of your bus. You know, this bus is going towards superficial relationships. Feel free to get on. That's probably not the way you'd want to do it. And so we use it in our trainings, and then the therapy work we do is kind of a Christmas tree mat for that you can hang the whole of ACT in the Psychological Flexibility Model, which is looking at the six processes that most lead us towards inflexible in lives or flipped around the six that can move us towards the kind of lives that we want to live, and they're all inside this bus driver metaphor. And maybe as we talk about some of these concepts, I'll come back to it and we'll hang the ornaments on that tree. Yeah, I love the bus driver, because to be a bus driver, to get paid as a bus driver, you've got to do two things. The door has to be unlocked, and you've got to make it to the destination. That's right. If you're locking out people, you're going to lose your job. If you're not hitting the destination, you're going to lose your job. So that's life. We are going to have to keep those doors open, and sometimes there's going to be unsavory characters. I know Johnny and I try to avoid the bus in LA. Sometimes there's going to be some people that we're excited to take to the destination, but the door is unlocked, and the destination is in front of us, and we've got to get there. When I present this metaphor to clients and I say, what if your life is kind of like that? What do you can do about it? Almost always the first thing they say is, well, I'm going to stop the bus and throw the passengers off that I don't like. Well, I said, well, you notice the first thing you had to do? You had to stop the bus. Have you done that? And sure enough, they have. Put their life on hold while they fight a war within, and then the next thing. And by the way, did the passengers leave when you grabbed them and threw them out? Did they become bigger or smaller, more important, less important? Did you eliminate them from their life? He says they got bigger, they got more central, and they didn't leave anyway. So you put yourself into this, you abandon your proper role as the driver, and instead you went into this kind of the enforcer who's going to only have the passengers you like. Well, that's going to put your life on hold, and it's going to take you into a struggle that you're going to lose. If you want to play it that way, fine, but at some point you're going to have to look at that and say, maybe this is not working. And that's a really critical moment, and it's your ally actually, because there is a thing that could work. Get back in the driver's seat, put your hands on the wheel, start that engine. You know what's on the front? You put it there and head towards that destination with all of your passengers coming along with you. Some of the things they say could even be helpful. Watch out, there's a tree, that might be helpful. Don't go there. You need to go there. That's helpful. So for very small gains that helped me end up not being gains, we turned driving over to our programming at the cost of our ability to live the kind of lives you want to live. And that idea of accept, but keep the commitment, keep moving. We don't come from a place of acceptance. We're battling, and we have no commitment to things. You're at a standstill, and it's a losing battle. The commitment part is, if you have the, if you did that metaphor, if you have some, the destination, you know, like we're going to go from LA to San Francisco. Well, then North is more important than South, but you know the freeway might be jammed up. Maybe you have to go East in order to go North. Okay. There's some flexibility there. You can kind of move around that. So commitment is building these larger and larger patterns and habits of hitting in the direction that you choose, what you want your life to be about, what you want your journey to reflect. It's not a commitment necessarily to an outcome. You know, it's your responsibility to driver, let's say, to head North if you're headed towards San Francisco from where we are right now. But who knows? I mean, maybe the big earthquake will hit, aren't you sitting on a fault right here? I think you are. Thanks for reminding me. 18 stories off. Exactly. You know, maybe you, maybe your thing will break down. Maybe you're not going to be headed North very successfully, but you can still orient towards that and where it's possible to build that thing out. That's your responsibility. It's not the outcome. It's the journey and the taking your driving back, your capacity back to direct where your life goes, learning skills as to how to do that is what act is about. And when we make a commitment to something, we choose a destination we're often confronted with two things, negative thoughts and anxiety because it may be new, we've never done it before. How does ACT help us deal with both of those things? Yeah, essentially that would be like sitting in the driver's seat turning around and having an argument with the passenger behind or, you know, good luck with that in terms of being able to navigate the road ahead because after all these negative thoughts and these difficult feelings are echoes of the past, of the past and the present, right? But they present themselves in a way that you have to solve that problem. Maybe not. Maybe what you need to do is notice, take what's of worth in there. Sometimes there are things of worth in there. If you've, for example, had relationships that haven't gone well. And now you're just in the early parts of dating and then you get the sense, wait a minute, this feels very familiar. That might be really important. Maybe you're picking up on something that I've managed to select somebody who's going to not actually be the kind of person that I can build the kind of relationship I want. So you want to have your feelers out, but you don't want to be dictated to by them. It's up to you. So it's not a matter of putting your fingers in your ears and say, I'm not going to listen to my thoughts or I'm not going to feel my feelings. It's a matter of showing up, orienting towards the road ahead and building that out. Now what ACT does is it gives you these processes of emotional openness and flexibility, cognitive openness and flexibility, attentional flexibility from this kind of conscious point of observing and witnessing that allows you to make choices and then being able to direct your attention towards what you care about and building out those habits, the commitment part. So it's a one-two punch or maybe I better think of it three of being aware and open to be present and to be actively engaged in the kind of life you want to live and that those three steps turns out is empowering anywhere that human mind goes. I mean, I was down in Rio. I saw people win gold medals doing ACT, didn't get over where was the last one? Is that in Korea? I forget where it was. But I've watched businesses prosper when they're putting ACT into their business culture or CEOs working on it. You can help yourself step up to the challenges of physical disease or dealing with diabetes or cancer or whatever. And yes, mental health problems. So it turns out that that sequence of open aware, actively engaged is just empowering to human beings anywhere in your life. And now we're sitting on about 2,000 studies that say that. I mean, it's a really vast literature. And I think the psychological community is coming to the point where they pretty much agree that these flexibility principles are critical to human development. Yeah, I feel like when we're rigid psychologically, we're not built to handle life. Exactly. You can't manage the road that has potholes, that has construction that is going to have detours and sometimes some cattle leaving across the road on your way up to San Francisco. Rigidity is the enemy to development. It really is. If you always do what you've always done, you always get what you've always got. I mean, mom's maybe was right about that. So so doing something new that's truly new, not just another form of the same old, same old, and stepping out of this kind of problem solving mode of mind with your own thoughts, feelings, memories into this more witnessing mode of mind, this kind of wow mode of mind, the kind of mode of mind that you bring to seeing the sunset tonight, or, you know, having a crying child in front of you, not the kind of be applied if you had a broken car in front of you. That shift helps with truly new things that are built around a different set of principles that are there for a different purpose than detecting, challenging, splitting and changing your internal world so that you can clean it up so that you can start living. And the clock is ticking. If you're going to start living now would be a good time. Well, it couldn't be more right about that. And and of course, I mean, if we keep putting off living, that's going to have its own set of problems, but also the course of that suffering and loss is coming your way. It's inevitable. And without tools, they're going to be sustaining damages you get older. And at some point, it's not going to be enough for you to come back from. Yeah. Yeah, I think suffering is optional pain is not. And we do things that turn pain into suffering. The actual metaphor of suffering is the furry part is like a fairy boat is carrying and stuff and suffering is up and under it has this metaphor of a big heavy sack of stuff that you're carrying. How about if you just put it down, not put it down to get rid of it, but you don't have to carry that weight. You can get with your pain and now direct to her self towards your purpose. And that actually is organically put together, because if you take anything that really pains you anything, I'll ask you this question. It's a weird question that has almost double negatives in it. But what would you have to not care about for that to not have hurt? If you were rejected, you have to not care about relationships. If I don't give it down, then rejection doesn't mean I don't care. Right. If you were not trying to produce something when you tried to achieve something, put a business together, make something to happen, failure wouldn't be painful. I'm not doing anything. Right. So when you flip over pain, when you open up the pain, it gives you like on a sheet of paper that has this painful thing history written on it on the other side of the paper unseen, or the aspirations that the yearnings, the needs, the connections, the values that you have. And I sometimes say to clients, okay, you want to get rid of this side of the paper? You can do that, but you have to throw away the whole sheet. And I have never met anybody who wants to do that. They want the one sided sheet of paper. There is no such thing. Yeah. So, you know, if you love, you're going to know something about loss. If you want to achieve, you're going to know something about failure. You know, it's just built in. That's the way it comes. It's like an Oreo cookie that has both things together. And I think every philosophy known to man has shown that and it's going to be there. And so what, once again, we need to be, well, we have better, we need to have better tools to be that bus driver. Yeah. When we're focusing on rigidity, we're shrinking our comfort zone. Yeah. And we're stationary. And that word comfort is, I love playing at homology, as you probably realize, you know, comfort means with strength, Fortis, they build a fort. Fort, same Latin root. So what helps us get with our strength? It's not running away. It's not a racing. It's not having a different history than the one you have. The strength that you would have would be to take that and channel it towards a life worth living. And it turns out that's possible. It's not very far away. We're kind of living inside cages that are made out of rice paper. They're really thin. They're really close. They look really scary. They're actually not. And so the, the dictating voice within that turns everything into problem solving isn't the only way that we can interact with the pain that we've had. Kind of give you an example of as recent for my own life. Yeah. Sure. Please. My mom died at age 91. If I were just to ask you, you can only say the words good or bad. Okay. I'm going to give you a seed word and you have to say good or bad. If I say happy, good, good, of course. A sad, bad, anxious, bad, joyful, good. Okay. How do you think it felt to sit next to my 91 year old mother and watch her die? Of course, I would imagine very sad. Yeah. And when I got that call that she was in her third day of pneumonia, you know, and I ran to the airport and I blasted and I got there just in time that she did a little shape of her head to know that she knew I was there, but not, not even talking. And I watched her feet turn black and I watched her breath space out. And then that last one came and there wasn't another one. It was incredibly sad and I would have paid a hundred thousand dollars to be there. And you just told me sad was bad. I heard it. You said it and everybody listening would have said it and it's a lie. It's the part of us that fixes your car. Does your taxes? I get if we just draw it up. We don't leap out of the morning and saying, Hey, I want sadness. But you know, think about this. Don't you buy tearjerker books? Don't you go to movies? They're scary. I mean, there isn't any emotion, not one that you don't pay good money to produce. So what the heck are you doing when your mind tells you that's bad? It's a lie. And so we, we, the rigidity comes out of the small tiny little space we tend to live in that the mind that problem solving judgmental mode of mind knows to do instead of this vast space that we have that are more conscious part of us knows how to do where sadness has a purpose. The reason I was sad watching my mom die is because I love my mother. That's the way it comes. And respected, but she stood for. There was a sweet quality to that sadness. It was a bittersweet quality. It wasn't all painful. I mean, I could feel in the pain of it that there was something that honored her that dignified her. It was important that I was there with my sister and my cousins watching. Yeah, so I don't know. The judgmental part of us isn't the whole human being. It's only one thing. One part of us, the passengers in the back don't really know how to drive, but we do. And I want those passengers, but I don't want to turn my life over to them because they tell me things like sad is bad. They're that dumb. Yeah, to go along with that, you're talking about tear-jerker books and some movies that are sad, I mean, for myself, I can name so many artists. Jason Isbell is one artist that who I love, who has made a career out of all country songs that will tear you up and make you cry. And in fact, being at some shows where I'm like upset, but yet it feels so right in that moment that you don't want to feel anything else. And how do you even begin to explain that? Yeah, we seek it out. We feel it. We know it's important, and yet we can't explain it because you get to that explained part. You know, now you're into justifying it and you're into this problem-solving mode of mind that is good for doing some things, but not everything. If I even said, oh, I'm going to play you this song. It's the saddest thing you've ever heard. The first thing you're going to think of is, I don't want to hear that. But no, you got to. It's the most amazing song I've ever heard. And I just I just love this feeling. No, I don't want to hear whatsoever. Turn that off. So of course, yeah. Well, if you ask yourself to think about the moments in your life that were most transformational, that are most meaningful, that really impacted your life, make a list. Some of them you were crying. Yeah, I guarantee you some of your crying. In fact, even the positive, unquote, values because they're so close to places where we're vulnerable. My marker when I'm working with somebody, I know they're kind of digging in when I can see their eyes tearing up. I mean, if you say something like I want love in my life, and you really mean it, and you've you've been on a journey that is deliberately almost not because you're evil or trying to hurt yourself, but because you don't know in the alternative creating relationships that are superficial because then they're safe. You don't let people get beyond the the the armor and the barrier you put around you because you've been hurt in the past. I'll never be so vulnerable again. Means vulnerable, vulnerable is vulnerable. When people are close to you, they can wound you. If you just got somebody to the space where they'd say something so sweet, so wonderful, like I want love in my life, they're going to tear up. Why? Because these values are a rich soup of yearning and of need and informed by pain. So it's, you know, the dumb part of us to say, no, no, no, no, don't play that song. Don't bring me down. No, it won't. The places that are really meaningful in your life have that quality. Not always. I'm not, you know, there's joyful moments, the victory moments. It's all those things, all of them. They all have a place. But the the the sorting part of us that sorts it in the good and bad, that part of your of your mind doesn't understand that never will because that's not what it evolved to do. It evolved to solve problems. And I love this concept of psychological flexibility because when we think about rigid, there is no movement, there is no action. If you want to become flexible, you have to do things. You have to experience things. You have to take action. And this is such a huge principle, Johnny and I even literally have it tattooed on our bodies, B over A. This concept that living rigidly is a it's your comfort zone. It's where you feel that sugary soup. But in order to live life, you got to confront the challenge that is B and B is always going to be more difficult than a A is in your comfort zone. B is outside of your comfort zone. But the more you choose B, the stronger you become, the more flexible you are psychologically, physically and it opens up a whole other world to you. Yeah. So we've baked it into our courses, whether it's the boot camp or core confidence comfort zone challenges, putting yourself in a place where, yes, I'm outside of my comfort zone. But through gaining that experience and there's going to be moments where it goes swimmingly well and I'm crying tears of joy and there's going to be moments where I'm crying tears of sadness because I failed. But that's how we start to develop that psychological flexibility that is going to help us in life. There is not going to be this endless stream of high moments. And we've had guests like Sugar 8 Leonard on to talk about it. Someone who's incredibly famous who had everything at a very young age. And what happened? He was chasing that dream and it led to substance abuse, right? When we chased just the positive, just the sugary soup. It puts us down a path that ultimately harms us. We have data now that, you know, avoiding difficult emotions predict this. The other part is clinging to positive emotions. And so the clinging part of us that wants it just one way that fixes it in place. You know, you mentioned substance abuse, not by accident that that word fixes inside the substance abuse addiction to you. It isn't just that you're going to fix what's broken. It's also you're going to hold it in place. You're going to fix it in place like a butterfly stuck to the board with a pin. And, you know, with enough substances in your body, maybe it'll seem like that, but at an enormous cost. So instead, could we have that flexibility to allow ourselves to grow with the wisdom to know that at the edge of growth, it's always going to be hard. The metaphor of use is like a bubble, like a balloon, and you put more into it and expands and then you've got inside that space, more space to live. But at the edge of it, there's a question. Are you willing to have me as I am, as if an emotional thought is speaking to you, are you willing to have me fully and without needless defense as it is not as what it says it is, and still move in the direction of what brings meaning and purpose into your life. And it's a yes or no question. Essentially, am I going to expand out even a little more? So who knows what's ahead of you. No matter how much success you've had or how much love you've had, you may have a challenge just around the corner that you have not yet opened up to. You're not yet done the B over A. And at that moment, you're going to need those same flexibility skills. But even flexibility, your mind will turn it into, okay, I'm going to go from inflexible to flexible, and then I'll have flexible and be able to hold it like I can hold on to this cup. I've got it. I've got it. I've got the solution. I'm flexible now. Bull, that very statement doesn't include the things where you're not yet flexible about. And unless you're, you know, some deity or something, they're always going to be hitting a zone that you're not yet comfortable with. You're not yet with your strength. Right. So you got to look at more like of a process that never ends. Yeah, you look at a yogi. He doesn't get flexible and done checkbox. I'm flexible the rest of my life. Life is all about forcing rigidity on you, whether it's the physical, whether it's the emotional, whether it's the mental. So it's the process of gaining the flexibility of doing the exercises, doing the stretches, stepping outside of your comfort zone. That is the process. There's no getting around it. And you could think about being more flexible all you want. You could think about being stronger all you want, but it comes to pushing the weight up, actually taking the action that builds the flexibility. If you could do this one thing, just one thing. I'll give you two. Do one new thing every day. Yes. Fundamentally new thing every day. You know, push your own buttons every day. And I said, if I give you to do one kind of thing every day too. And, you know, so you're always growing and you're never finished. And who knows where that takes you? Let's find out. Well, I think what's so important about act and the work that you've done is when you're able to implement these ideas, then that thing that is new every day that you're going to do doesn't have to be daunting. It doesn't have to be frustrating. It can actually be fun. And and once you flip that that script, then the whole world starts to open up to you. And then you find yourself doing all kind of wonderful things. I mean, that's one of the reasons why AJ and I a few months ago had taken on the challenge of the half marathon because we were walking into the unknown. There was going to be training that we've never done before that we were going to have to do to make that happen. And some of which we dread, you know, that was terrifying for us. What is that going to entail? And that's going to be up from the normal sort of workouts that we do. Have we've ever run that far? What's that going to be like? What's the toll that it's going to take on our body? Telling a few hundred thousand people we're going to run that far. Every accountability goes along with that. Let's check in on social. What are your times? What are your splits? And for a lot of people who heard about that, we're like, you guys are crazy. What you get yourself into. You've never done that before. And while all that was going on, we were getting excited like, this is going to be fun. I know it's going to be challenging. And I remember it was what is that first beer going to taste like after we've just run 13.1? That is going to be the best beer we've ever had. And that was how that was enough to fuel me to do it. I guess we'll find out Sunday right. You're running on Sunday. You know, at this one of the things I want to caution people about is that although it feels as though at the zone of growth, that it's brand new, I call it God. I've never done. In fact, if you've worked on walking through it, walking through it, walking through it, you have resources. You just have to connect into it. So the cool thing about flexibility is flexibility training gives you resources you can use and you need it. And it's always going to be a challenge. But it's not a challenge from fresh start. You have you have skills in hand. If I can use an example. I'm an old dude that I kind of like punk rock and I lived in Greensboro and they would cut the bands. The early bands would go from Atlanta to D.C. So Wednesday nights in Greensboro because they were not popper enough yet they could fly. They were driving their bands up, right? So the speakers would come out and these tatted did a bare chested who were, you know, like roar like aircraft engines from 30 foot tall speakers. And I'm who's standing right in front of the 30. You know, well, people who like loud music, can you get to be 70? I can tell you what it sounds like. It sounds like 24 seven. Is that what I have the 24 seven. Well, so I'm going to notice this. Some years ago, I'm going to notice it, notice it, notice it. Oh, God, is it? And I'm doing I'm doing this stuff. The audiologist tells me to do I'm wearing earplugs. I'm trying not to make noise. And, you know, I'm I shouldn't have more ear damage. It's getting worse. And then I have this thought I should just shoot myself and the noise will go away. And then this other voice comes in, dude, that's a suicidal thought. When did you apply your life's work to it? Like it didn't occur to me for three freaking years. Yeah. I go out for a walk. I come back. The problem is like 80 percent solved, but then next day it's 100 percent solved. And the solution is it's very much like Manson. I don't give up. Sometimes acceptance of next lifetime, I'll be more careful about standing in front of the speakers. OK, so I extracted what I have to learn from that. And in some future lifetime, I hope I apply this. But meanwhile, what I've got is ringing ears. So what? Do I need to attend that? I bet you there's an air conditioner on somewhere here. Do you hear it? I don't hear it. If you focus on it, you might be able to hear it. Here's my point. When you have the resources of walking through these flexibility processes of opening up, extracting what's of value, then moving your attention towards what's ahead of you, you can apply that to anything. And life's going to give you curveballs, new things. It won't necessarily always be obvious that you should apply it. You could be as dumb as I was. Thirty years of work unhappened. I went three years before it even occurred to me. We've now done, by the way, randomized trials of this. We've developed measures of it. The single most powerful predictor of negative outcomes from tinnitus or tinnitus pronounced both ways, which leads even to suicidality. This is not fun until people learn how to handle it in a healthy way, which is basically to let go of attending to it, just to open up to the noise and then move on. You know, the measures now are far more predictive than how much hearing damage you've had, etc. We can teach people the skills or online programs to do it. So I kind of saying two things. Flexibility is a process that you can learn. There are specifics those to do it very much like your metaphor of, you know, the stretching exercises. When you hit new things, initially won't even occur to you to apply them. But you're putting things in the bank. You've got those skills there. And I don't think I could have done a walk around the neighborhood, come back and have to solve this problem that I've been struggling with for three years. If I hadn't put a whole lot of other things in the bank around my struggle with panic disorder or trying to build out at work in my life and those of my clients. So let's let's learn skills that we can use, acknowledging and understanding that each new step is going to be a challenge, but easier. I don't know if you want to dig into the ears ringing, Johnny, you were grinning quite a bit at that story. Obviously, some background overlap as well. Well, yeah, I was just one. I was like, that's what's in store for me. And of course, you know, a lot of my idols who I've, you know, now later in life and I and they're dealing with tonight is and a lot of those things and wondering how they're working through it because it is a difficult thing. And and as you mentioned, there are things that you're you're just not going to be able to throw away or get rid of and and much of act is about the thoughts that you're not going to be able to get away from. It's about how do you deal with these nuts because we all deal with them. And and I believe it's your analogy to the calculator, right, that it's something you can put numbers in. You could put experiences in. You could put thoughts in. But once they're in, they're not going anywhere. There's no delete button. There's no minus button. There's only add and multiply. And that's kind of how the human nervous system is arranged. And in psychology, any learning class that you take, I'll tell you there's no such thing as unlearning. There's forgetting, but you can relearn it more fast or more quickly. Even things you forgot, which means it's there in your nervous system in some way. Otherwise, you wouldn't be able to learn quickly. There's extinction, but that's inhibition. That can reappear instantaneously, you know, when the context changes, old things show up, even though they weren't useful, but they're still in your repertoire. You still know how to do them. So this it's not logical, but it's psychological. Logically, it seems like we should be able to be able to eliminate things. I don't think that's a good way. That's not how our nervous system is arranged. That's not how life works. So we're asked to do something that is very challenging, which is to carry these things and yet not be dominated to or dictated to by these things. And it turns out that's a skill you can learn and that is what psychological flexibility is. It's basically learning how to show up, become present, and not focus on what's important. And the thing that makes it worthwhile is that focus on what's important is that you can get about the business of living while I was struggling around with my tinnitus focus. It wasn't healthy, it wasn't helpful, and nothing good happened out of it. Now that it turns out, actually I only hear the ringing about once every two or three weeks or something when somebody talks about it because I don't care. So why would I attend to it? But life is gonna give you stuff like that that won't be subtracted. Of course, your history and stuff, but also as you age and things will happen. So you better be working on those flexibility skills because in the same way that your body, we're gonna need that more, that stretching and so forth as you age and change, you're gonna need that kind of psychological flexibility as you have increasing challenges to face in your life. And I love that story because as coaches and obviously throughout your career helping other people, it's very easy for them to view us as invincible, not having the struggle, having it all worked out. You've researched it for decades, so obviously you have no concern in these areas. It's a struggle for all of us. That's why we threw ourselves into the half marathon to become better coaches because we knew that we're gonna do something uncomfortable. We can't ask all those participants in our programs, online and in person to do something that's uncomfortable if we're sitting up here in our ivory tower of comfort. So hearing that, we're all gonna struggle. Importantly, we need to start working on this flexibility and this acceptance of it. The other part of acceptance and commitment therapy is well the commitment side of things. And commitment is doing the things that are important to us and will improve the quality of our life. Very important understanding of what we mean by commitment. And obviously these things are gonna be different for everyone, you know, as Johnny's favorite story is, not a father, so commitment to being a fantastic father, not high on his list right now. We're all gonna be in different positions in our life and sometimes these commitments are gonna change. You had a great metaphor on a previous episode around this idea of not holding fervently onto something as the commitment and being rigid about it but understanding that it is important at least to make the commitment and be flexible. Sometimes those commitments will change. For those listeners who right now maybe don't have things that they wanna commit to or they're unsure of what they should be committing to, what advice do you have for us? There's four ways in that I know which is heroes or advisors or guides, sweet spots, painful spots and being able to author your own story. Those are the four ways I know that are kind of quick ways to get to this issue of values. Could I take the one of heroes and guides? Please. Like if you're struggling with something, let's say it's anxiety and let's say it's interfering in some really important ways and you haven't really fully even explored what those would be. I mean, I could say if anxiety weren't an issue, what would you be doing? That might be a way to give you a kind of, but let's go with the hero and guide thing. Pick somebody in your life who's lifted you up and empowered you in some way. Somebody you actually know, anybody, could be a sibling or a friend or a coach or a therapist or a teacher or anything who you think might have some wisdom and guidance here and kind of picture that person. And I bet you there's something about the way they are with themselves and with you that give you a sense of what you would like to see in your own behavior. Think about it. Your heroes reflect something and it probably isn't just how much money they got or something, it's something about their way of being in the world. And especially when you filter it down, pick somebody who'd be helpful to you as a guide. And so I like kind of digging into what are those qualities that that person reflects to you that you would wanna reflect in your journey such that somebody else might say, you know, that Johnny is like that and that's cool. Now, can we bring those qualities even to these moments where I'm anxious and where I have something to do? Because inside the anxiety may be some of these very things that you just told me you wanna reflect in some way. I have a history of anxiety disorders. Act in part started out on my own personal journey of panic disorder. I was two or three years into kind of unwinding my panic struggles which took me down to the point where I could hardly give a lecture to 10 undergraduates. I mean, I'm pretty hard to be an instructor and a teacher in college if you can't make sound come out of your mouth. But I was a couple years in before I began to see things that were in my panic that were actually really cool flashlights into what I wanted to do. I did a TED talk on this, you can do a search on it and find it. What I found was the pain of watching my parents fight with each other and the domestic violence that was in my home. My dad was an alcoholic member that was depressed, the OCD, wonderful loving people don't judge them because they have problems but raising kids and being there for us, not so much because there was so much into their struggles and in the TED talk I walked through that transformational moment where I actually catch that it isn't just anxiety, it's sadness. And then I catch what I wanted to do in life which is to help people who are suffering like that. You know, that's cool. I mean that is like, that gets me up. And you know, I was joking earlier Johnny, I'm hypomanic all the time. You're asking how long can we do this thing? I say, I'm an old man, I can do it because there's an energy in there of being able to do something about suffering and being able to empower people to live the kind of lives they want to live quite apart from anything else. It turns out that was right inside the panic. Part of, I tell the story actually, my first panic attack was in a department meeting with full professors fighting as they say, the way that only wild animals and full professors are capable of. And you know, I just wanted to tell them to stop. And I didn't know why it hit me so hard by the time they turned to me because they raised my hand I couldn't make sound come out of my mouth because I was then in the middle of a full blown panic attack. But looking back, I can see it. That moment reminded me of my dad screaming and my mother screaming and hearing the loud noises and you know, are they hitting each other? And it's a very young child that then led to me being a psychologist. I'm not a psychologist because I want a fat Vita and have a lot of grants and write books. I mean, some of those things happen. You get a fat Vita, write books, but they're about something. And so I would ask somebody who's really struggling, for example, if you're struggling with social anxiety, my guess is you care about people. You wanna be with people. Terrible quality. Terrible quality. Terrible quality. You wanna love, participate, belong, contribute. I've never met a person who's socially anxious who wasn't like that. Otherwise it would just be, you know, because if in your social anxiety struggle you may withdraw, let's say, well, there are hermits. I mean, you could go withdraw completely and sit on the mountaintop somewhere, but you're probably not gonna be suffering enormously. That's not social anxiety, that's something else. Social anxiety is this mixture of longing and yearning that is right inside your anxiety. Your logical mind says, I don't get to have that until the anxiety goes away. Well, no, because if you're able to be with yourself, even feeling that, you'll be able to connect with others when they are feeling things that are hard because it turns out people don't wanna be with you if you're a cartoon. They don't wanna be with you if you're a robot. They don't wanna be with a clown face or a rick this painted on your face. They wanna be with you because you're a real whole as human being. So what if it, that included, sometimes you're anxious, flip it over because you yearn to connect and belong. Could we channel that anxiety into pushing out the comfort zone, into making that call and to going on that date and being more honest and genuine and not putting on a face? What would happen to our lives if we did that? Anxiety may burn from an enemy to your friend. Not that you like it, nobody jumps up in the morning and say, hey, I want anxiety, but because it softens you, humanizes you and connects you to your deepest yearnings and longing for connection and belonging, contribution and caring. Yeah, that anxiety can become a negative compass. Yeah. Guide us to what's really important to us, right? It's gonna say, if there's anxiety here, then underneath it is something I really care about. Exactly. When you're coming up to a big podcast or something, I guess, is you guys feel some anxiety? Of course, absolutely. If you got a guest or something, you don't know, it's a really important thing. That is connecting you to your purpose. And if you didn't feel it at all, frankly, we know that this is one of the oldest findings of all psychology. Absolutely, yeah. You know, if you don't have enough anxiety even to connect you with that, you're actually less likely to perform well. You don't wanna be completely happy, happy, joy, joy, smile or face if you're not prepared. I would rather be anxious and get prepared. Sure. And using that anxiety to prepare you and propel you into those things that you wanna be doing. And I, to go along with that for myself, when I used to have incredible stage fright when I first started performing as a young man, and I remember having the first show jitters or seconds, it just kept going on. And I remember asking my dad, who was also a performer and I asked him, when will this stop? And he's like, you're asking the wrong question there. And he's like, because if you don't have that going on, walking on stage, then you do have something to be worried about. And which is gonna be a much bigger problem than what you're dealing with now. So enjoy it. And I was like, well, that's not what I want to do. Yeah. But as I've gotten older, of course I understand that completely now. And of course for everything that we do here at the Art of Charm and in my life, now I love those moments. I relish them. I look for opportunities to have those feelings that allows you to feel alive. Yeah. Oh, people don't understand that, but not always I don't wanna turn into something has to be like that. But often when I'm starting to feel that little anxiety rush, anxiety edge, it's like, cool. Yeah. Come on. You know, there's something really empowering about it when you learn to carry it. So do the way you have your wallet in your back pocket. You know, it's there. There's things in it. Anxiety's there. It's not your dictator, not your master, it's not your boss. It's coming along with you. And it's good to notice that your wallet's there. And I know that's good. And I notice my anxiety's there. Cool. I'm gonna carry that into this conversation or this performance or this talk or preparation or this book I'm writing or this podcast I'm doing. Cool. Let's do that. Now, in our day and age, there's a lot of anxiety tied to social media. Likes, comments, engagement. We know you're actually in the process of writing a book about the influence of technology on our wellbeing. What would you say has been the biggest challenge over the last decade with this infusion of technology into our social lives? Well, the things that are hardest for people, I think, are fed by social media. We're exposed to painful things. We're exposed to judgment. And we're exposed to comparison. And those three put together a toxic brew. So, you know, no matter how well you're doing, you can look at somebody who's doing better. Just look at their Instagram thing. You can go inside the homes of the rich and famous and no matter how successful. We've actually done research on this, of how dominant, it's a little bit of a side, but I'll come back, of how dominant the comparison is in your head of more versus the less. There's a way of doing it, which is very geeky. I won't take the time to do it, but it comes out of our basic work on cognition. We can catch whether you're habitually doing more and less in the way that you think and how it gets as a hook for you. That more than less hook predicts all kinds of bad outcomes, because it means you come in all these moments using comparison. And you know that the John Paul Getty film recently, you know, what it would take for you to be happy richest man in the world. Yeah. More. You know, make it stop, you know. So comparison, you know, social media allows you, I saw a picture somewhere of a person in the Outback, an aboriginal person with a didgeridoo and a loincloth whole thing, and he's playing with his iPhone. You know, this is a weird world we're in. And then on there, so you've got comparison, but you've also got pain and judgment. Sure. And so if anything really sick, weird, if something happens, go viral or we'll see it, you know. Well, we start feeling this over in an unsafe world. Do you know violence has gone down hugely in this world? Hugely. But kids aren't even allowed to walk to the park anymore because something bad might happen to them because of how the media has presented this. And then the judgment piece. I mean, you can literally not turn on the television without hearing the stream of judgment of us, which is them right and wrong, good and bad. All very harsh, kind of brittle. So we're swimming in the stream of our own creation from the same mode of mind. It's wonderful in science and technology that now gives us these psychological challenges and what we need is modern minds with this modern world. We need our psychology and culture to change fast enough that we can live in that world that we've created. You know, something I wanted to ask you about with that, because we're at this point where it's, okay, well now I'm not gonna give my children these tools or I'm gonna keep them from them or we're gonna do this digital detox. But let's follow a child, a teenage, a young adult in school, right? So you don't get this tool because it's bad and it's making kids depressed and you don't need it. Okay, well, he's going into a environment where everybody does have that tool and now there's jokes and connection that are being made online that you're now not a part of. And so what now you're forced with, what are they saying behind my back? What am I not privy to? What's going on? Why does everyone think this is funny and I don't? And so you can't leave your child on the out group. It's going to be just as bad if not worse. Exposure's going to happen. And we know that these devices are wired to push our pleasure buttons, right? The likes and everything else to get our attention. So just completely blocking exposure to the stimulus at some point that exposure is going to happen. They're gonna join a workforce that's technologically advanced. They're gonna interact with a classmate who has the iPad. So instead of trying to avoid exposure entirely, we need to be giving the tools to handle when we are exposed to these things. That's what seems more important to me. But I laugh, you know, I hear from parents all the time, oh, I just didn't give my kid an iPad, or we don't watch TV, or we don't. And I'm thinking about, okay, well, when I was growing up, I hopped on my bike and I went over to my buddies who had the Sega Genesis. Like, great, my dad didn't give me the Sega, but I still play the Sega. So it's going to be there. You're going to encounter it. So it seems to me more important as a parent to be giving our children the tools for that encounter instead of trying to avoid that entirely. Yeah, I actually agree with that. And I understand the instinct that says wind it back, but then I'm old enough to remember this has happened every time there's a technological step forward. Always, and it goes all the way back to even written language or printed books or you read. I mean, every time something's stepped forward, people are like, oh, no, we're losing control. And I get it, there's an issue here. But what if instead we tried to use these technological tools, but in a wiser way and put into our culture and into our family conversations and so forth, these flexibility skills that we need to step back a little bit from the judgment, to be able to notice things that are painful but also orient towards what we want to put into our lives and to be less entangled with this comparison thing. Like, I do worry about the person who starts measuring their self-worth or the number of likes they get. That's taking you down a path that is very dangerous. But it isn't the only way to use that technology. Of course not. I mean, I'm watching my 13-year-old and he's playing his Minecraft games or his different kind of games. And he's connecting with people all around in the world that's vastly more extended than I had. And I think that's just kind of cool if we can harness it. So it's gonna be a difficult transition, but we know that these flexibility skills are being more openly open and actively engaged. Take some of these challenges for an example. People who are on the short end of social judgments like one of the things you worry about with social media is what if you get bullied or stigmatized or things like that. We've actually looked at the studies now. People who have psychological flexibility skills that are open, mindful, emotionally able to direct attention, they can have the recipients of things like that and not have it damage them to their core. And the other part is to then get connected with groups who can build out a more positive cultural thing so that you're not in with a group where the bully actually is dominating your group. You're creating other groups that are kinder and more compassionate with each other. So I think it's just not wise to run away. You can't run fast enough. You can't throw out enough iPads and you can't. And sooner or later it's like the implants and the things are in your glasses and I don't know where it's gonna go, but you know it's not gonna stay still. So we better figure out another way that's more wise. And it's not the whole answer, but we do know that some of the psychological skills we've been exploring and talking about here and the things that you train and the work that you do are helpful to people even to stepping up to the modern challenges of pain, judgment and comparison on your social media. What's so counterintuitive about acceptance and commitment therapy is the concept of what we call psychological flexibility and this idea that it's not about making the anxiety go away. It's not about destroying the iPad. It's not about destroying things and removing ourselves from the situation, but it's actually allowing us to create some space but understand that it's a part of living. This is a part of the process so we don't have to be tied directly to our thoughts, emotions and beliefs. We can create some space between them that allows us to navigate again towards that thing we're committed to. Now, a lot of our listeners are probably thinking, well, that's awful, AJ, this anxiety never goes away. Why are you telling me this, right? Just like Johnny's father earlier. I want a solution that just makes it go away. Just enough is enough. Why am I doing all of this work in the first place? Why am I putting in all this effort and energy if I know that it's just not gonna go away? What's your answer to that? Well, what if instead of having it go away and getting out of it, we could sort of get into your life with it when it's present and not when it's not? I mean, think about it this way. How much anxiety do you need in a normal day to be able to act and live in a passionate, vital, values-based life? Probably not that much. You know, a certain amount of anxiety. But you know, anxiety is an ancient emotion to run, to fight, to hide, of course. Really good thing if you've got lions, tigers, and bears around. We've got symbolic language, pretty recent stuff, only a few hundred thousand years old that can turn our mental life into lion, tigers, and bears. And I mean, just our thoughts are as fearsome as dinosaurs and we're running from memories that we easily could carry if we could find another way to handle them. So, here's the tricky thing. The mind will hear what I'm saying right now. It'll hear it like this. If you let go of the fantasy of the delete button or the minus button, instead show up and now focus on what brings meaning and purpose to your life, you know, anxiety becomes less of an issue in the totality. It's less of an issue in the same way that if you had a glass of salty water and added fresh water, it would be less salty. Not because you took any salt out because you added things in. So, in fact, if you look at the 250 randomized trials, controlled studies on outcomes from act, in almost any area that you can think of, almost anything, we've done some studies on it. In fact, anxiety does go down. But boy, is that a dangerous thing to tell people we're struggling with anxiety because they think that that's a means to get it to go down. No, it isn't. It goes down precisely because it's not a means. When you're open and you're willing to feel what you feel already, you know, and you can have the attentional flexibility now to, by choice, focus on what's important to you, you start filling that glass with fresh water. And one way to say that is it went down. But if you actually, we're trying to make it go down and you're like, I'm not gonna do anything until I get the magic tweezers that take this salt crystal and that salt crystal. And then the whole freaking moment is about the salt, not about the water. It doesn't taste any better. You're not effective at it anyway. So it's paradoxical. A metaphor that we sometimes use in act, we actually have a physical metaphor for this. We take those little straw tubes, these to come Chinese finger traps. You get them at the county fair or something like that or some sort of carnival or something. You put your fingers in, but they're woven in such a way as you pull them out, they narrow and they grab you, right? If they're really strong, I can't be one of the cheap ones you can pull apart. But if they're really strong and well made, you know, sometimes I'm in the most panicky moment like, I can't put my fingers out. Yeah, but you can push your fingers in. And when you do that, there's some space to move those fingers around. So maybe anxiety is kind of like that, that you've got yourself caught in a logical finger trap, thinking you have to get out. And really what you have to do is get in, get into your life with its emotions and let your emotions assume whatever level they take in the kind of life that you're living. And that'll depend on what you're doing, depend on what you put in it. And sometimes it'll, I can't guarantee you including anxiety and sadness and anger and anything else you want to name because that's how emotions work and that's why they're here. But we don't have to make our life about that and get hooked by that. Key issue is to get unhooked, to show up and start living the kind of life you want to live and that message is a positive message and the way I would say it is, have you had enough? And are you ready to live a life that's the kind of life you would choose? Not what your mind would choose but with the whole person to choose in the sense of what's the direction, what's the journey, where's that best driver take in your life? I love that analogy because the more you struggle, the harder it is to get out of the trap in the first place. If you're just aware that, hey, I'm in a trap, maybe if I try something else, I can actually get out of it. The single fastest way to move out of the anxiety trap that people get in and they try to, I can't have this, I can't have this, I can't have this which basically makes anxiety something to be anxious about. Single fastest way out is to admit fully that you're in. Just show up to the trap. If you show it to the trap like eyes wide open, you lose interest in trying to make that happen. You know, it's a lot easier to move in at the moment that you realize the harder that you pull, the more it's squeezing you down. So it's not bad for you to notice this is not working. That's really, really important. It's not working because it doesn't work that way. Good, learn from that. And let's not do that anymore. No more pulling so hard that you're probably pulling your fingers out of your sockets. And the people come and say, but I have to find the way, I have to, I have to. I say, well, okay, I tell you what, you go out and try to make that work. And if you've suffered enough, come back. You know, because I don't see, I mean, I see people drinking and drugging and voiding and I don't see people succeeding at that. I don't see that, I see the finger trap grabbing them. Yeah, with that analogy, it makes it so easy to understand why people just give up. Because for what they know, with choice A, path A, the one that they've been doing their whole life, it only gets worse, the suffering gets worse. It's not getting any better. And it's like, well, if this is what I have to do with for the rest of my life, well then that's an easy decision, I'm out. However, there are many different ways and that does a great way in helping with that. And then of course, making it fun. Yeah, giving up is, you know, one thing, the basic anxiety runaway thing, fight thing, or flop and give up. Give up can be another variant of the same thing. But there's another way that's healthier, that is that kind of posture of getting with. And that transforms it, that really changes the agenda fundamentally. Can I give you a metaphor for it that I think people can relate to? Please, absolutely. All right, take this, and we'll take anxiety since you raised it. You're really gonna struggle with anxiety. Take that emotion, kind of imagine that's there. Now, if nobody's around, look around, nobody's here, you're all by yourself, right? Okay, put yourself in your body and a posture of you at your worst in dealing with that. Just do it, take a mental snapshot. Actually do it in the way that if you were a sculptor, you would sculpt your body, if your body in that posture was like a bronze statue in a sculpture garden, a person walk along with go, you know, I know what was going on there. I know that psychological space, okay? Do it. Now put your body in the posture that if you were sculpting, somebody else would see it, you at your best in dealing with the same issue. We've actually done this with hundreds of people around the world, all parts of the world, Middle East, South America, et cetera, and I can tell you what people do. And I bet you people just did it if they actually did what I asked them to do. You at your worst, your head comes down, your arms come in, you fold into a fetal position, your arms and legs fold up, or maybe your fist gets clenched and you get ready for a fight or you might have just started running. But it's gonna be something like that, the single most likely one, is that kind of crunch down in, even ice closed. Well, what is the metaphor there? I can't even see where I am, my head isn't even up, I'm defending, my arms and hands are in, I can't even grab anything, I'm folded up, I can't walk, okay. That's the flop, your fight posture. Conversely, you at your best, I betcha your head came up, your arms came out, your eyes opened up, you might have stood up, you might have even walked around, what's the metaphor? Eyes are open so I can see it. I can move my head, I can direct my attention, arms and hands out and free so I can do something, even standing up, I can move towards things. So here's my question, anybody listening if they're in an anxiety struggle. You have wisdom within, you know something, you just showed it with your own body. How would you put your behavior in the posture that's metaphorically standing up, opening your eyes, looking forward, putting your hands out and living that way? If it doesn't work to live this other way where you put life on hold, waiting for anxiety to go away, and maybe it's time for something different. You keep doing that first move, you're gonna get that result and so I'm not, I would ask people to really kind of lie with their own wisdom, you've learned something from your suffering. What if we put this into practice and instead of just learning, oh there's no way out and you're gonna flop. No, that's another variant on the same thing, dude. You've done that before, I betcha you've done things like that before and that didn't work either. Let's do that counter-intuitive thing of standing up, stand up, look forward, put your hands out. And that's what ACT tries to do. It helps people stand up in consciousness and put their hands and arms out into the values-based actions they wanna take with their life that is no longer based on running away from fighting with or flopping and a heap in the presence of. And that's exactly why we love it so much. It's why our clients benefit from it on our programs. You know, in core confidence, it's what the comfort zone challenges are all about, is in a controlled environment, walking into that space where we know in the past we've had some anxiety in a small step, getting exposed to it and getting that valuable knowledge as you talked about, that we can carry with us and build off of. And whether it's throwing yourself at a physical challenge, an emotional challenge, a mental challenge, the more we can sharpen that skill set, build out that flexibility, the easier it is to deal with that voice in our head, that anxiety that's holding us back. Thank you so much for joining us today. It was a wonderful conversation. Where can our audience learn more about you and ACT? Well, if they go to my website, studentsyhaze.com, I'll send them a little seven-item mini course on ACT. And there's also a vast number of resources I've mentioned in my TED Talks, but not just all about me. There's a large community around the world, and you're part of it. And thank you for that. We're trying to bring these flexibility processes into people's hearts and minds and homes and behaviors, so you can find many other resources there. That's the place to start. Right on. Thank you so much. Thank you very much.