“Pain and values are two sides of the same coin”
Bilingual writing, how touchscreens work, and a weird writing goal (Issue #324)
Hello from, somehow, the first full week of May, which happens to be Mental Health Awareness Month here in the U.S. It’s an event loosely organized by Mental Health America, the nonprofit that’s made it their job to help people become more aware of what’s happening inside their own brains.
One of my favorite writers on this topic is , Psychology Professor at the University of Nevada, and a prolific writer on Medium. A few years ago, Hayes and his team analyzed 55,000 psychology studies in search of psychotherapeutic interventions that actually work. They were also curious why some interventions work and others don’t.
It took them almost four years and a team of 50 to analyze all the data — and they eventually landed on one mental skill that tangibly changed people’s lives more than any other. It was more important than self-esteem, support from family and friends, or even having a great therapist.
The skill? “Psychological flexibility.”
“Whether you suffer from anxiety, depression, addiction, or any other kind of mental distress,” explains Hayes, psychological flexibility — openness to yours and others’ thoughts and feelings — ”helps you… move your life in a meaningful direction.” Psychological flexibility is about being able to turn a personal experience around in your head, to understand it from all angles, and to observe it without getting attached. It’s the type of mental habit that’s effective because it’s so adaptable; it’s essentially another term for mindfulness or self-awareness. In Hayes’ words, psychological flexibility allows you to “stop fighting yourself” and start listening to yourself.
In a more recent Medium post, How to Be Smarter When You’re Feeling Depressed, Hayes explains this a bit differently: “Underneath your hurt is what matters to you,” he writes. Pain and values are two sides of the same coin; the skill is developing the mental dexterity to flip it over.
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🌐 A smattering of open tabs…
- Essayist on the joys and challenges of writing in a second language (her first is Serbian): “I like to think that the occasional rule violation or atypical construction does not harm [a language], but rather enriches it.”
- “USAID was never about programs or policies,” writes , a former USAID worker, “It was about people.”
- How touchscreens work, with pictures: layers of transparent electrodes embedded in the screen detect disturbances (from your finger) and their exact x-and-y coordinates. (Dan Hollick)
- My ultimate goal as a writer.
🤫 Your daily dose of practical wisdom
It’s fine. Go ahead. Remove yourself from irrelevant group chats and/or Slack channels.
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