Brian Johnson walks through Stephen Hayes's spider-web metaphor from A Liberated Mind to explain acceptance and commitment therapy. Instead of fighting sticky thoughts, you name a value that matters to you, act on it anyway, and let the thought go. Hayes's core insight: accept your thoughts rather than trying to control them.
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic one. I started typing this one in the middle of my AM trail workout. It's just after sunrise and I was committed to getting my first 15 minutes of zone two training in for the day as part of my new Peter Attia inspired commitment to getting three to four hours of Zone 2 per week as part of my fun little mission to get my VO2 max into the elite top 2% of my age group. I'm currently in the top 5 to 10% or something en route to getting into the elite for guys two decades younger. Now when I go for a sunrise trail walk, I tend to be the first one in the family out on the trail that day, which means I tend to be the one who walks through the spider webs the ever diligent spiders weave overnight. And if you've ever walked through a spider web, you know how it feels to get it all over your face and arms and head and all that. So I just walked through my first spider web of the morning and as I did so, I thought of something I read yesterday and that's what we're going to focus on today. I was reading Stephen Hayes's brilliant book A Liberated Mind, which is a sort of memoir, self development book in which he walks us through the core tenets of acceptance and commitment therapy, or act, that he originated and has developed with his colleagues over the last three decades. Stephen tells us that over 1000 studies have been conducted on ACT and that it has been proven to be the most effective therapeutic approach for an extraordinary range of issues. Now, the central idea of act, as we've discussed, is that we need to accept our current reality along with the important fact that life is supposed to be challenging and that it will inevitably involve plenty of pain. And then we need to commit to living a life in integrity with our values or what we'd call our virtues. That's acceptance and commitment therapy. Now, one of the key differentiators of his approach, and one of the reasons it's so successful, is that as we discussed in a recent plus one, he doesn't think we need to change our thoughts per se. He thinks we simply need to notice our thoughts and and not let them stop us from living a life of meaning. And the metaphor he uses to make his point brings us back to the Johnson Trail. Stephen tells us that trying to rearrange and change our thoughts is a lot like trying to organize a spider's web so it looks neater to state the obvious. All that's going to happen when you try to optimize a spiderweb is is that you're going to get your fingers all sticky and you'll get entangled with the web, right? Well, Steven says that's the same thing that happens with our thoughts. The more we try to control and change them, the more entangled we get in them. The antidote? Just notice them. Then get on with your life. We'll talk about one of the ways I've been practicing that in the next plus one for now. The next time you find yourself trapped in your own thinking, remember the spider web and just notice your thoughts and how sticky they can be. Then think of one virtue that's important to you and think about how you can embody that virtue just a little more in that moment. Then let the thought go and go do something that would be the demonstration of that virtue. Repeat every time the opportunity arises. All day, every day, especially today.
