Diana Hill, PhD: How to Discover Your Deepest Motivation

Sounds True: Insights at the Edge

Tami Simon

Religion, Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 21 October 2025

⏱️ 71 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Learn how to move beyond trivial, distracting goals and tap into your hidden (and most fulfilling) motivations and latent "genius gifts," with clinical psychologist Diana Hill's research-backed "Wise Effort Method."

Have you ever felt on a gut level that you've been distracting yourself with "surface-level" goals—rather than being passionately pulled toward what truly fulfills you? In this episode of Insights At The Edge, Tami Simon joins Diana Hill, PhD, a leading psychologist and the author of Wise Effort. With them, you'll learn and practice some of Diana's most effective, research-backed exercises for discovering your heart's deepest hidden motivations—and your overlooked "genius gifts" for empowering those desires.

Don't miss this exceptionally practice-rich episode to explore:

The difference between surface goals and deep motivation.
"Deep Motivation" – Why willpower and discipline never win long-term, and how to let your true North Star values pull you passionately into your days.
3 questions for getting unstuck from unhealthy relationships, work situations, and addictive behaviors.
How to identify your "genius qualities" (yes, you have plenty of them!)
An incredibly effective one-minute exercise: "To reveal your deepest values, just follow your pain."
"Choice Points" – Tuning in to the daily crucial moments where our values and actions accrue a life of either joy or regret.
How to gain "psychological flexibility," the one science-backed strength crucial to positive emotional wellness, and more.

Intrigued? Tune in now!

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Listeners of Insights At The Edge get 10% off their first month at www.betterhelp.com/soundstrue.

Note: This interview originally aired on Sounds True One, where these special episodes of Insights at the Edge are available to watch live on video and with exclusive access to Q&As with our guests. Learn more at join.soundstrue.com.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Sounds True Podcast Network.
0:07.1	What contributes to change in therapy when people make the progress and change they want to make?
0:12.4	It isn't necessarily about social support. It isn't necessarily about therapeutic alliance.
0:18.0	All those are very important. What really rose to the top was their psychological flexibility.
0:23.9	If you can shift somebody to become more psychologically flexible,
0:27.1	then they are more likely to make the changes they want to make in their lives.
0:34.3	In this episode of Insights at the Edge, my guest is Diana Hill.
0:39.3	Diana is a clinical psychologist, an international trainer, and a sought-after speaker on acceptance and commitment therapy, known as Act, ACT.
0:50.6	She combines neuroscience, insights from Buddhist wisdom and the practice of mindfulness to help
0:58.7	people develop psychological flexibility and direct their energy towards what matters most.
1:07.2	And we're going to be talking more about both of those things, psychological flexibility and how
1:12.9	we direct our energy towards what we most care about. She's published several powerful guidebooks,
1:20.5	including the Act Daily Journal and the Self-compassion Daily Journal, and she's now released a new book and audio book with Sounds True.
1:31.0	It's called Wise Effort,
1:33.4	how to focus your genius on what matters most.
1:37.6	Friends, stay with us.
1:48.3	This episode is sponsored by Better Help.
1:54.9	In honor of World Mental Health Day this October, we're joining with our friends at Better Help to celebrate and thank all of the therapists in our lives.
2:04.3	When I was in my 40s, I started regularly seeing a therapist who was a true mentor for me in many aspects of my life, when it came to my relationship
2:11.0	with myself, of course, but also in my marriage and in my work. At one point, she said to me,
2:17.2	you know, you're a real DIY type.
2:20.7	You always like plowing through by yourself. She continued, the people I know who reach really
	...

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