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A Liberated Mind: How to Pivot Toward What Matters Hardcover – August 27, 2019
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Life is not a problem to be solved. ACT shows how we can live full and meaningful lives by embracing our vulnerability and turning toward what hurts.
In this landmark book, the originator and pioneering researcher into Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) lays out the psychological flexibility skills that make it one of the most powerful approaches research has yet to offer. These skills have been shown to help even where other approaches have failed. Science shows that they are useful in virtually every area--mental health (anxiety, depression, substance abuse, eating disorders, PTSD); physical health (chronic pain, dealing with diabetes, facing cancer); social processes (relationship issues, prejudice, stigma, domestic violence); and performance (sports, business, diet, exercise).
How does psychological flexibility help? We struggle because the problem-solving mind tells us to run from what causes us fear and hurt. But we hurt where we care. If we run from a sense of vulnerability, we must also run from what we care about. By learning how to liberate ourselves, we can live with meaning and purpose, along with our pain when there is pain.
Although that is a simple idea, it resists our instincts and programming. The flexibility skills counter those ingrained tendencies. They include noticing our thoughts with curiosity, opening to our emotions, attending to what is in the present, learning the art of perspective taking, discovering our deepest values, and building habits based around what we deeply want.
Beginning with the epiphany Steven Hayes had during a panic attack, this book is a powerful narrative of scientific discovery filled with moving stories as well as advice for how we can put flexibility skills to work immediately. Hayes shows how allowing ourselves to feel fully and think freely moves us toward commitment to what truly matters to us. Finally, we can live lives that reflect the qualities we choose.
- Print length448 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherAvery
- Publication dateAugust 27, 2019
- Dimensions6.27 x 1.36 x 9.32 inches
- ISBN-10073521400X
- ISBN-13978-0735214002
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"Steven Hayes possesses an extraordinary trifecta of skills: A brilliant theoretical and research psychologist, he’s also a compassionate clinician and a wonderfully engaging writer. A Liberated Mind is packed with jewels of insight and information that could change the way we deal with suffering as individuals and as a society. A compelling, revelatory read."–Martha Beck Ph.D, author of Finding Your Own North Star
"Written for a very broad audience, Dr. Hayes is able to clearly translate the science and clinical complexity of this treatment into concrete guiding principles for people's lives. These principles not only apply to psychological suffering, but also to physical illnesses, relationships, corporations, societies, and cultures. The book is honest, compassionate, and profoundly insightful. It will transform your life by liberating your mind."–Stefan G. Hofmann, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology at Boston University
"The key to evolving consciousness is cultivating a flexible mind—open, present, empowered and aligned with deep values—and Steven Hayes does a brilliant job showing us how. This book is organized around developing six psychological skills that clinical research shows, beyond all other factors, promote flexibility and translate into a happier and healthier life. As you read this illuminating book, you’ll see how these skills are learnable, that you can start right now, and how when woven together, they offer a path to inner freedom."–Tara Brach, Ph.D, author of Radical Acceptance and True Refuge
"In our crisis-ridden society psychological flexibility is more needed than ever. Transcending shallow and ineffective behavioral approaches, Dr. Steven Hayes here presents a methodology, a skill-set, for emotional liberation that enables us to pivot from self-limitation to self-awareness and self-affirmative action."–Gabor Maté MD, author, When The Body Says No: Exploring The Stress-Disease Connection
"We can spend our lives avoiding the thoughts and feelings that cause us pain. But Steve Hayes has become a leader in his field by understanding that things that cause us pain are things about which we care. By learning to use psychological flexibility we can turn toward the difficult places to live with richness and meaning. Compassionate, helpful, and authoritative, A Liberated Mind shows us a powerful way to a fulfilling life."–Susan David, PhD, author of Emotional Agility
"A Liberated Mind provides an outstanding introduction to a psychological approach that has changed many lives by turning us toward focusing on our values. The ideas and advice presented here help us truly understand what matters so that we can live with greater freedom, courage, and joy."–Kelly McGonigal, author of The Willpower Instinct and The Upside of Stress
"Having dealt with his own problems, such as panic attacks, Hayes deftly explains how to pivot by creating habits, accepting vulnerability and changing perspective."–Success Magazine
"His latest book functions as an ACT primer, from the therapy's development (it sprouted from the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy tradition) to a variety of tools and practices that the reader can integrate immediately."–Spirituality & Health
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Life should be getting easier, but it's not. It's a paradox of the modern world. At the very moment that science and technology are providing us previously unimagined longevity, health, and social interaction, too many of us struggle to live meaningful, peaceful lives full of love and contribution.
There is no question that we've made incredible progress over the last fifty years. That computer in your pocket called your phone is 120 million times more powerful than the guidance computer for Apollo 11-the first rocket to land people on the moon. Progress in health technology has been similar. Leukemia killed 86 percent of the children who contracted it fifty years ago-now it kills less than half that. In the last twenty-five years, child mortality, maternal mortality, and deaths from malaria all declined 40 to 50 percent. If physical health and safety were the issue and you could pick only the moment to be born in the world but not to whom, you could not do better than to choose today.
Behavioral science is another matter. Yes, we are living longer. But it is hard to make the case that we are living happier, more successful lives.
We have more accurate information than ever about illnesses that are largely due to lifestyle. Yet despite billions of dollars spent on research, our healthcare systems are staggering under the dramatically rising rates of obesity, diabetes, and chronic pain. Mental illness is rapidly becoming much more of a problem, not less. In 1990, depression was the fourth leading cause of disability and disease worldwide after respiratory infections, diarrheal illnesses, and prenatal conditions. In 2000, it was the third leading cause. By 2010, it ranked second. In 2017 the World Health Organization (WHO) rated it number one. Approximately forty million Americans over age eighteen have been diagnosed as having an anxiety disorder, and almost 10 percent of Americans report "frequent mental distress." We don't feel as though we have adequate time. We don't take care of ourselves the way we'd like. Our health suffers. Many of us are putting one foot in front of the other while lacking a real sense of purpose and vitality. Every day, someone who seems to have a good life decides to eat a bottle of pills rather than continue one more day.
How can this be?
I believe it is because we have not risen to the challenges of being human in the modern world. Some of the very things we have been doing over the last hundred years to foster human prosperity have created our conundrum. Take the case of innovations in technology. Each step forward-radio to TV to the Internet to the smartphone-has created greater mental and social challenges, and our culture and minds haven't adjusted rapidly enough in effective and empowering ways.
As a result of our technology, we are all exposed to a constant diet of horror, drama, and judgment. In addition, many of us are left feeling overwhelmed and threatened by the rapid pace of change. A concrete example: only a few decades ago children ran and played freely in ways that could bring child endangerment complaints today. This increased protectiveness is not due to the world actually becoming more dangerous; research suggests it has not. Our impression that the world is less safe results more from exposure to uncommon events through the media. No matter how calm we feel, we can turn on our computers and see a tragedy unfold, complete with images of those who died just minutes ago. The twenty-four-hour news cycle shreds our veil of safety with constant videos of capricious violence.
When the external world changes at this speed, our internal world needs to change too. That sounds logical, but it is hard to know what steps to take.
The good news is that behavioral science has developed a plausible answer to how we can do better. Over the last thirty-five years, my colleagues and I have studied a small set of skills that say more about how human lives will unfold than any other single set of mental and behavioral processes previously known to science. That is not an exaggeration. In over one thousand studies, we've found that these skills help determine why some people thrive after life challenges and some don't, or why some people experience many positive emotions (joy, gratitude, compassion, curiosity) and others very few. They predict who is going to develop a mental health problem such as anxiety, depression, trauma, or substance abuse, and how severe or long-lasting the problem will be. These skills predict who will be effective at work, who will have healthy relationships, who will succeed in dieting or exercise, who will rise to the challenges of physical disease, how people will do in athletic competition, and how they will perform in many other areas of human endeavor.
This set of skills combines to give us psychological flexibility. Psychological flexibility is the ability to feel and think with openness, to attend voluntarily to your experience of the present moment, and to move your life in directions that are important to you, building habits that allow you to live life in accordance with your values and aspirations. It's about learning not to turn away from what is painful, instead turning toward your suffering in order to live a life full of meaning and purpose.
Wait, turning toward your suffering?
That's right. Psychological flexibility allows us to turn toward our discomfort and disquiet in a way that is open, curious, and kind. It's about looking in a nonjudgmental and compassionate way at the places in ourselves and in our lives where we hurt, because the things that have the power to cause us the most pain are often the things we care about most deeply. Our deepest yearnings and most powerful motivations lie hidden inside our most unhealthy defense systems. Our impulse is usually either to try to deny our pain, by suppression or self-medication, or to get caught up in dwelling on it through rumination and worry, allowing it to take charge of our lives. Psychological flexibility empowers us to accept our pain and live life as we desire, with our pain when there is pain.
I believe psychological flexibility is a means of achieving human liberation; it is the counterweight that people need to rise to the increasing challenges of the modern world. And hundreds of studies show that the skills that allow us to develop psychological flexibility can be learned, to a degree even through books such as this one. I know these are big claims, but if I do my job, by the end of this book you will understand why the skills that build flexibility are so powerful and how you can begin developing them in yourself.
It's perhaps not surprising that the core message of turning toward our pain echoes other approaches, such as the mindfulness literature developed out of spiritual traditions, or the emphasis on exposure in cognitive behavioral therapy. But the new science of psychological flexibility is not aping old themes-by repeatedly asking why these methods work, it has arrived at a deeper understanding of the importance of flexibility skills and how to establish them. This understanding was produced by a scientific community that followed a new path of research, resulting in a new and more integrated set of methods for living happier and healthier lives.
Product details
- Publisher : Avery (August 27, 2019)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 448 pages
- ISBN-10 : 073521400X
- ISBN-13 : 978-0735214002
- Item Weight : 1.41 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.27 x 1.36 x 9.32 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #294,236 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #996 in Emotional Self Help
- #8,402 in Mental Health (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
My goal is a psychology of human functioning that transforms how we live our lives. That passion comes from personal pain. As a young professional I spiraled down into panic disorder and at the very lowest point in 1981 (www.bit.ly/StevesFirstTED) I found a way forward by turning toward pain and suffering, which then allow me to turn toward meaning and purpose. I tell this story in my book, A Liberated Mind. I immediately saw movement not just in myself, but also in my clients. Over two or three years I roughed out ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy ... by the way ACT is called "act" not Aay, Cee, Tee), and did a few outcome studies. Then I put randomized controlled trials on hold, while I and my team developed a basic science approach to human language (Relational Frame Theory or RFT), clarified the philosophy of science issues needed to do science in this slippery area (functional contextualism), developed a new behavioral approach to scientific development, Contextual Behavioral Science, and work on the techniques, measures, and theoretical concepts that would support all of this, especially the applied model called "psychological flexibility." Most of this was done at the University of Nevada, Reno, where I moved as a psychology professor in 1986.
Finally, in 1999 the first academic book on ACT appeared. At the time there were only 2 published randomized control trials of ACT. This book followed by the first RFT book in 2001, and then work really began to take off. We began doing outcome studies in earnest at the turn of the century. There are now several thousand studies on this work, including nearly 900 randomized controlled trials (see bit.ly/ACTRCTs) and nearly 300 meta-analyses or systematic reviews (see bit.ly/ACTmetas). ACT and RFT is being developed by a worldwide association of over 9,300 professionals with over 30 chapters outside of North America in 20 different languages -- the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science (ACBS: www.contextualpsychology.org). At ACBS you will find list serves for professionals and a list of ACT therapists (bit.ly/FindanACTtherapist).
I've written 47 books but mostly for academics. My first popular book was Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life (with Spencer Smith; New Harbinger Publications, 2005) but I have a cool recent one I worked on for 11 years called A Liberated Mind: How to Pivot Toward What Matters (2019; Penguin/Avery). It is a think book / self-help book / personal story / science story. It shows why psychological flexibility matters. If you want to be on my newsletter list go www.stevenchayes.com and click on "yes, please send it to me." I will start by sending you a 7 part mini-course on ACT. If you want a short and beautiful illustrated Ebook on "ACT in a Nutshell" drawn by my daughter Esther (her depiction of the Dictator Within will stay with you, I guarantee!), go to stevenchayes.com/a-liberated-mind and I'll send it to you. If you are a therapist, my newest book is called Learning Process-Based Therapy, written with Stefan G. Hofmann and David Lorscheid. It shows how to use processes of change to understand your clients and to fit treatment to them in an individually tailored way.
I continue to teach at UNR, but not for much longer (I will be retired from the academy in June 2023). I am now President of a 45 year old charitable organization, the Institute for Better Health, which is using modern technology to foster individually tailored psychological help. I spend my days writing, researching, helping my students, answering emails, hugging my wife, and appreciating my children (ages 16, 30, 33, and 52). I spend a lot of time trying to support the ACT, RFT, and process-based work of others.
You can learn more about my work at my website: www.stevenchayes.com
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I developed the habit back in college of reading widely in psychology, despite not being or aspiring to be a psychologist myself. I was a philosophy major back in school, and over the years I've also studied and tried to practice precepts from Buddhism, Ancient Stoicism, Ancient Chinese Philosophy, and Jewish Ethics, along with holding on to some key principles from my Christian upbringing. So I guess you could call me a life-long seeker who has been trying to understand myself and other people better in order to figure out how best to live a good and fulfilling life while also helping others to do so as well.
Out of all the many therapies and spiritual/philosophical traditions I've explored, this book is the one that comes closest to The Holy Grail for me. That was a big surprise since I never expected that any single volume could be so life changing. I'd thought that I would just need to take the best of what each school of thought or tradition I studied offered and somehow pull together all of those bits to build a way of living that would be truly fulfilling. I'd even read years ago the author's previous work on ACT therapy targeted at non-professionals and had read ACT books by other authors too. At the time, the theory sounded interesting and I tried a few exercises out, but none of the previous works really grabbed me and I moved on. Perhaps because the theory behind ACT is a little complicated, I didn't fully grasp it at first nor buy into it.
This time, however, Hayes seems to have poured his soul into explaining his life's work and the work of the many colleagues who have contributed to the effort to develop and advance Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), the therapy described in the book. And it seems that the Muses were with him this time. Not only does he seem to compellingly describe the key challenges we all face living in our complex modern world, but he gives a convincing account of why it is that things are so hard and confusing for us and what exactly to do to live lives full of meaning and purpose anyway. The word "pivot" too is key here since many of his proposed solutions to these problems are fairly quick changes of mind one can start testing out right away and just see what happens.
In my own case, I've been amazed by how quickly and profoundly I've been able to change my behavior in some areas I've struggled with for decades, despite all my readings, study, and practice. I also am quite hopeful about my prospects for working through other challenges that have stifled me and kept me from reaching my full potential. If you too take up the challenge, be aware that pivoting ACT style does involve leaning into, rather than avoiding, what's been painful in life. So it's not the easiest thing in the world to do, and my experience mirrors that of the author's in having painful memories from the past bubble up rather unexpectedly at times once one starts opening up a bit. But the payoff of curiously examining those painful events and learning the lessons one had missed before is close at hand. Each experience I've had like that has brought me further insight into my past struggles, and I truly am learning what's most important to me and how I can more confidently live guided by my own principles and values. I've still got plenty of changes I'd like to make, but I'm heartened by the fact that I have a path that's proving so fruitful in getting me where I want to be. To me, that is pretty darn close to having found my Holy Grail. To live much more at peace with your life choices because you're more confidently able to make better choices truly in accord with your values and principles. Or at least to do that as often as we in all our human fallibility can manage. How great is that!
Many thanks, Steven Hayes, for your most generous gift to the world. With all of our present day divisions and destructiveness, I feel that you've provided a surprisingly clear path forward, and I hope that as many people as possible get exposed to ACT whether through this work or in some other context. It potentially could be positively life changing for many others and lead to better treatment of other people, other living things, and our fragile planet too.
I'd made it my habit never to write reviews, and I generally don't like anything that seems like proselytizing. But this seems too good and beneficial to hold on to only for myself. So perhaps an additional positive review among quite a few others here might prod just one other person into reading the book, giving ACT a try, and maybe profoundly changing for the better too.
"Life should be getting easier, but it’s not. It’s a paradox of the modern world. At the very moment that science and technology are providing us previously unimagined longevity, health, and social interaction, too many of us struggle to live meaningful, peaceful lives full of love and contribution…
Every day, someone who seems to have a good life decides to eat a bottle of pills rather than continue one more day.
How can this be?
I believe it it because we have not risen to the challenges of being human in the modern world. Some of the very things we have been doing over the last hundred years to foster human prosperity have created our conundrum. Take the case of innovations in technology. Each step forward—radio to TV to the Internet to the smartphone—has created greater mental and social challenges, and our culture and minds haven’t adjusted rapidly enough in effective and empowering ways.
As a result of our technology, we are all exposed to a constant diet of horror, drama, and judgment. In addition, many of us are left feeling overwhelmed and threatened by the rapid pace of change."
- A Liberated Mind (2019, p. 3-4)
Along with the problem, Hayes gives a solution that behavioral science has developed. This was something that Hayes and his colleagues have studied a small det of skills for over 35 years and, as a result of observing things that people do (ex: why some individuals experience various “positive” emotions and others only a few). The set of skills are combined to give us psychological flexibility.
Before one thinks there is only a certain type of individual who can learn how to pivot, please note this is not true. I have used psychological flexibility with clients by having them to write down their values (not goals—there is a difference) and asked them if they are willing to focus on their values instead of what The Dictator (as in their thoughts) is telling them to focus on. I also teach clients about defusion—what to do when The Dictator (intrusive/negative thoughts) start to come into focus instead of their values. It’s something one does to retrain the mind but, as the book title says, it is worth it because it is liberating.
Top reviews from other countries
In the first part of the book, Steven Hayes describes how his personal struggles with anxiety and panic disorder yielded key insights into human psychology that would eventually lead him to develop Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). ACT is an evidence-based approach that has had a profound and lasting impact and changed the face of psychotherapy. For years Steve struggled with anxiety. This fight gradually engulfed his personal and professional life. Then one night, in the middle of his most frightening panic attack, Steve discovered that as much as his mind could urge him to rush to the emergency room, it couldn’t make him do it. An observer part of him noticed the ongoing drama of the panic attack, and chose to regain control of his life rather than continue surrendering it to anxiety. As a clinical psychologist and researcher, Steve made it his life’s purpose to investigate what psychological processes his insight were rooted in and how to turn them into a new science-based path to human liberation.
Over the next forty years, Steve became the originator of a new evidence-based approach to cognitive-behavioral therapy. He also helped develop Relational Frame Theory (RFT), a new way to understand human language and cognition. RFT describes what makes language a double-edged sword. We owe it both our uniquely human ability to control the world outside our skin, and our uniquely human ability to suffer—even in the midst of plenty. In a highly relatable way, weaving personal recollections, illuminating accounts of research and experiential explorations, Steve guides his readers through how our minds’ abilities to relate everything to everything undergirds much mental suffering. Crucially, he demonstrates how traditional methods such as trying to understand the historical roots of our difficulties, regulating emotion or disputing unhelpful thought patterns can get us stuck. Far from the path to liberation, these attempts more often entangle us in rigid storytelling and emotional avoidance. They can make what we try not to think about ever more mentally present while diminishing our ability to lead a vital and fulfilling life. ACT in these energy-draining traps, readers are invited to discover six crucial pivots that can help transform the energy of the struggle into the source of a vital life.
Lest you think that RFT is but a new fad in psychology, it has over 30 years of research behind it demonstrating it can help children with autism and development disabilities acquire crucial language, perspective-taking and empathy skills. It can also help increase IQ through the deliberate training of the basic relations that RFT shows underlie much of complex human cognitive abilities.
The second part of the book takes readers onto a practical exploration of six pivots that can help our lives move from stuckness to flexibility. Rooted in six fundamental human yearnings, these pivots are key to liberating our minds from their mental shackles. By learning to distance from our mental chatter and better notice where particular thoughts patterns would take us, we can meet our yearning for coherence—not at the level of dry logic as our minds would push us to, but at the more fundamental level of what truly works for our lives. Through acquiring a broader sense of self, free from the narrow limitations of ego and connecting to our fellow humans, we can meet our yearning for belonging. By compassionately accepting difficult experience, we can meet our yearning for feeling. By mindfully focusing our attention to the present moment and what matters, we can meet our yearning for orientation. By contacting and embodying our most deeply held values, we can meet our yearning to create meaning. Finally, by deliberately engaging in actions in line with our personal values, we can meet our yearning for control and competence. Together, these six skills combine to help us pivot toward psychological flexibility, which turns out to be a meta-skill lying at the core of optimal human functioning.
The third part of the book illustrates how to apply the skills thus far practiced to the broad range of life challenges: adopting and keeping healthy behaviors, facing up to mental disorders, nurturing relationships, helping our children grow, combating abuse and overcoming prejudice. It also shows how to use ACT to improve work and sports performance, overcome procrastination and foster learning. ACT can also help nurture spirituality, cultivate forgiveness and face up to chronic illness, disability and cancer. The book concludes with how ACT could contribute to social transformation.
A Liberated Mind is the most comprehensive exploration of ACT so far, written in the distinct voice of its main originator. It explores ACT’s scientific roots and place in the broader scientific field in a language anyone can understand. Meaningfully, the book offers a deeply personal account of Steve Hayes’s personal and scientific path to liberation from the mind-stoked suffering that makes up our human condition. Steve’s heart resonates in every page. I have known Steve for over 12 years and reading the book felt like an intimate conversation with this towering figure of 21st century psychology.
I say I’ve finished it yet I haven’t really, what I have done is read it cover to cover and done some of the exercises along the way. I’m going to be doing the exercises I haven’t yet done and creating myself a plan of exercises to incorporate into life as I keep exploring & learning more about acceptance & commitment therapy (ACT).
ACT has been part of my life a little while and I’ve used aspects in clinic with compassion focused therapy, though I’ve not used ACT daily myself. It’s companion for me is Compassionate Mind Training (CMT) (Compassion Focused Therapy in the therapy setting) which I have woven into daily life over the last few years and into clinic. Having immersed myself into the book the last three days and done some of the exercises I can see it would be helpful for me to weave ACT into my daily life too.
I am a Physiotherapist & Coach who helps people with neurological conditions and those struggling with persistent pain (chronic pain) and know that what I’ve learned, and am learning, will have many benefits in clinic as well as for me personally. I live with persistent pain and usually live well despite pain, however this year I was struggling with some changes, many things in this book have helped and I’ve dropped the rope (for now!).
This book has given me clarity, information and tools to use for myself and the people I work with. I know what I have learnt, and will continue to learn, will help me, my family, friends and those I work with in clinic every day. I will be sharing learning in little ways as best I can.
If you like me value living the best you can, following a life aligned with your values, understanding what it is to be human, and learning to dance through life with flexibility then you will love this book.
This book is packed full of wisdom, it’s beautifully written, it creates a sense of wonder and curiosity and it connects deeply. I am grateful for reading this book for many reasons.
I am finding words are escaping me to sum it up effectively so here’s my main summary...WOW!
Reviewed in Germany on September 14, 2019