Welcome back to the Anxiety Slayer Podcast. I'm Shan van der Leek here today with

Stephen C. Hayes and I am thrilled to have a conversation with him.

We're going to be talking about how you can learn to pivot toward what matters and

liberate your mind.

Stephen C. Hayes is the Nevada Foundation professor at the Department of Psychology at the University of Nevada.

An author of 38 books and more than 540 scientific articles,

he's shown his research how language and thought

leads to human suffering and has developed acceptance

and commitment therapy, which is a powerful therapy method that is useful in a wide variety of areas.

His popular book, Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life, was featured in Time magazine along with several other major media. life was the

the number one best-selling self-help book in the United States.

If you have a chance after listening to this conversation today, you can also find his TEDx talk on YouTube and I highly recommend that you watch that as well.

Hello, Stephen, welcome to the Anxiety Slayer

podcast. I'm glad to be here with you. I'm glad to have you here. It was a

pleasure finding you. I'm grateful to your publicist for reaching out and I'd like to start our conversation today with how you define or define the essence of psychological flexibility?

Well, it's being able to feel your feelings without needless defense,

to think your thoughts with enough of a gap that you can see

them for what they are and you're not immediately entangled with them.

And then with that little bit of separation enough that you can sort of be open to your own experience to come into the present moment inside now and notice what's possible

Notice what's going on and to do that consciously from this part of you that isn't just the

story you tell or the persona you put on but the kind of more observing or transcendent part of you, this more spiritual part of you,

conscious part of you, a purely aware part of you.

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