EP 92: The Science of Not Giving Up (And How to Coach It)

Your client falls off the plan. You tweak the plan. They fall off again. In this episode, Dr. Kasey Jo Orvidas breaks down why changing the plan isn't fixing the problem, and what's actually going on underneath it: psychological flexibility. Research consistently links it to better outcomes in weight loss, exercise adherence, and emotional regulation, and it's one of the most overlooked skills in coaching.

In this episode, she covers:

• What psychological flexibility actually is (and what it's not)
• The research linking psychological flexibility to better client outcomes
• The six core processes from the Acceptance Commitment Therapy model and how to apply each one in coaching
• The specific language patterns that signal a client is psychologically inflexible, including "just tell me what to do," "if I can't do it perfectly why bother," and "I'll start over Monday"
• How to reinforce flexible behavior when it's already showing up in your clients
• Why reconnecting clients to their values is what makes discomfort meaningful instead of just hard

If you've ever had a client who looked motivated, said all the right things, and still couldn't follow through, this episode is for you.

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Episodes Referenced:

• EP 90: 5 Coaching Strategies for More Consistent Clients 
• EP 49: Understanding Stress and Emotional Eating
• EP 50: Stop Stress Eating [Coaching Tool]

Sources:

Hayes et al., 2006

Kashdan & Rottenberg, 2010

Transcript

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the coaches who only focus on the plan without addressing the psychological flexibility components end up just reinforcing rigidity because we're saying just follow the plan. Just stick to the plan. We'll just change the plan and now you can follow it. Right? But you're not actually addressing the thing that's going on underneath. That's more important. Hello my friends, and welcome back to not another Mindset show. I'm your host, Dr. Casey Joe. My goal with this podcast is to take the science of mindset and behavior change and distill it down into actionable takeaways for you. Together we're gonna unpack research around motivations, self-sabotage, willpower, and so much more, and we're going to take all of that and translate it into strategies you can immediately apply to your health. Fitness, relationships, business, marketing clients, all of the things. But just to be clear, it's not all serious and sciencey around here. We're gonna have a ton of fun too, and I'm so excited to share all of this with you. All right, let's go ahead and get into the episode. Hello, my friends. Welcome back to not another mindset show. Today's episode is sort of an as promised episode, though I didn't really promise it, but I did think it was a good idea when I said it out loud in a recent episode. And now here we are. And it was a very recent episode, episode 90. I wrote this down, where is it? Yes, episode 90. I talked about discomfort tolerance. And this idea that so often when we think we're not motivated, our clients think they're not motivated. It is. Simply because we just can't tolerate the discomfort that is required to do the thing. So in that episode, I talked about psychological flexibility and how psychological flexibility is kind of like discomfort tolerance. And I also, probably like six months ago, did a mini training inside the Health Mindset Coaching certifications alumni group. The alumni group is essentially like our ongoing membership for those who have graduated from the certification and wanna continue to refresh and hone their skills and continue to be part of a community of amazing coaches also. So, sorry for those of you who are watching this video, my mic is doing weird things. There we go. Okay. So with that psychological flexibility, this is, I'm actually pulling this from the resource that I created for my students. I said that it is recognizing and accepting thoughts and feelings without allowing them to control the direction of behavior, continuing to act in ways that promote long-term goals and values, even in the face of. Discomfort. So psychological flexibility is one of really the strongest predictors of long-term behavior change because if you can continue on in the face of discomfort, chances are you're more likely to be successful. So often in coaching rigidity rather than flexibility psychologically and feeling like you need to stick to things, perfectionism could look this way. That is more often an issue than even something like motivation as much as we want to brand it as motivation. So this really is kind of like a bridge to more discomfort tolerance, which I talked about in that previous episode. And it's the mechanism that makes discomfort tolerance possible. So we're gonna dive into it more today. So let's talk about first like what it is, what it isn't. Psychological flexibility is not about. Suppressing emotions. It's not about avoiding or resisting emotions. It's moving through them and working with the uncomfortable situations to still be successful. It's really the opposite of emotional avoidance or per perfectionistic control. So when clients operate from an inflexible place, they use. Less ideal coping strategies overall. This is where we can see, again, perfectionism come up or all or nothing thinking, or just general desire to control situations. And flexibility instead involves curiosity and taking some time to pause before you react and. Rather than defaulting to old patterns and what you've always done or what's comfortable, it's actually taking some time to respond to the situation in a more. Helpful manner. So this is the ability to experience thoughts and feelings and urges and cravings and all of these things that we as human beings experience all the time, your clients experience all the time without letting them fully hijack your behavior. That is what psychological flexibility is, and just by me saying all that, I'm pretty sure you can understand why it's so important and why I'm dedicating an entire episode to it. Okay, let's talk some research first. I have a few different articles that I pulled here that essentially tell us that having a more flexible approach psychologically leads to better outcomes in things like weight loss, physical activity and emotional regulation. Things that we are working with our clients on. All of the time. So what these pieces of research kind of go through, and I will make sure that the citations are available for you in the show notes. If you wanna dive into these more, you certainly can. Higher psychological flexibility leads to greater weight loss success, higher exercise adherence, better emotional regulation, reduced emotional eating, and better long-term maintenance. Hello. That's exactly what we want. So then it becomes how can we support our clients with more psychological flexibility, both something coming from us and something that we are helping them curate more of. Because this research consistently shows that it's, it's not necessarily the plan, right? Like changing the workout plan, changing the nutrition plan. It's the psychological flexibility behind the plan, which is it speaks so much to everything that I talk about in this podcast and I talk about all of the time everywhere, is that treating the symptom, of lack of adherence, lack of a motivation, all of this stuff, by changing the plan, you're not actually getting to the root cause issue underneath it all, and that could very well be a psychological flexibility issue. We also see a couple more studies cited here that avoidance undermines long-term goals. So avoidance is basically the opposite of psychological flexibility rather than moving through uncomfortable situations, uncomfortable emotions. Rather than moving through those things, we avoid them or resist them, and in fact, we have some research that tells us if we do that, then it's going to affect our ability to achieve long-term goals. So I have a quote here from a researcher. He is a really big name in the acceptance commitment therapy space. He says, experiential avoidance is at the core of many forms of behavioral rigidity and suffering. So what this means is that the more clients avoid the discomfort. The bigger the discomfort is going to become and the less likely you are to achieve long-term goal success. And this is why the coaches who only focus on the plan without addressing the psychological flexibility components end up just reinforcing rigidity because we're saying that just follow the plan. Just stick to the plan. We'll just change the plan and now you can follow it. Right? But you're not actually addressing the thing that's going on underneath. That's more important. Okay. So there are. Six processes of psychological flexibility, and this is coming from the acceptance Commitment therapy model and is something that I introduced to the Health Mindset Coaching Certification students. And these are things that you can then consider to use with your clients to help develop more psychological flexibility. All right. Number one is contact with the present moment. So this is sort of a, a, a mindfulness type of step. So clients who dwell on the past or worry about the future, they are more likely to lose grounding in the present, obviously, because we're worried about the past and the future, but that lack of grounding in the present. Can then get in the way of actually making behavior changes or taking action in goal-oriented directions. So an example might be that you have a client who's constantly saying that I used to be fit, or it used to be so easy for me to stay lean. They're stuck in that past their identity, not their present behaviors. So we need to help them get more on board with the present in their present identity rather than just. Constantly thinking about what they may be used to be able to do. So that's a good first step. Other thing we can look at is cognitive diffusion. So in acceptance commitment therapy, there's a lot of talk around fusion and being like fused, like attached to your thoughts and your beliefs. So we want to defuse from those things, separating. From our thoughts rather than acting from our thoughts. It's kind of the idea here. So an example would be of a client who says, I just totally blew it last week, and a flexible response that you could give them would be, I am. Having the thought that I blew it and I can still make the next best choice. So we don't wanna just tell our clients, Hey, just think this way instead. Like, that's not what I'm trying to say here. But instead, help them get to the point where maybe they're seeing it that way, that instead of, I just blew it last week, it's, I'm having this thought that I blew it. But that doesn't have anything to do with my next actions, my next steps. So how can we help our clients detach themselves from these thoughts rather than acting from the thoughts? That's this idea of cognitive diffusion. Acceptance, of course, if we're gonna talk acceptance, commitment, therapy type of tools. Reminder, we are not therapists, but we can take some teachings from acceptance, commitment therapy and use it in our coaching. So allowing uncomfortable experiences to happen and accept that they're happening. Instead of fighting them. That is the idea of acceptance. It's not accepting that life just has to suck. It's accepting that this doesn't feel good in this moment. That doesn't mean that I have to act from it. So an example might be sitting with cravings for 90 seconds instead of reacting. I talked about this. At length in that previous podcast episode about urge surfing. So that can be a good way to just like accept, I'm feeling uncomfortable, I'm having these cravings, I really wanna snack. Or I had the three Oreos, but there, there's so many more sitting there and I really want more. Give it 90 seconds. Breathe. Stay grounded in the present. set a timer. See if the urge passes.'cause a lot of times it does. Okay. The next one is self as context, and this is the idea that clients tend to over identify with labels. So I'm an all or nothing thinker, or I've just never been able to follow through with things. I'm such a quitter. I've talked about this too in the emotional eating episodes that I did a while back about how when people label themselves as emotional eaters, they're more likely to emotionally eat. So we know that these labels are important. So how as a coach can you help your clients see these thoughts and self stories and self identifications as events in the moment, like in this moment, I'm feeling this way, but it's not who I am.'cause as soon as we start assigning. Who we are adjusting our identity around these things, and it's usually something not very positive. All we're gonna wanna do is stay consistent with those identities, so it's not a good pattern to get into. So as a coach, what you can do is really start to recognize those patterns in your clients and see where you can reroute them. All right. I have two more here of our six from Russ Hayes. These are acceptance commitment therapy guy. So values is the next one. Values guide behavior when motivation fails. Like I, I think that that's like the easiest way to say it. So if you have a client who is. Connecting meal prepping with, if I meal prep, that will give me more energy to be the best parent I can be. That is a value that they have. They value being a good parent. They're more likely to do it when there's a value attached to it. So I would, I was gonna say plain and simple, it's. Plain and simple, yes. But also helping your clients identify those values and attach them to behaviors like that's a coaching skill and one that is an important one. All right, and the last one is committed action. This is taking values aligned steps, especially when uncomfortable. So let's say a client walks for 10 minutes. Even when they're stressed. So maybe they really should be going on like a 30 minute walk per day, but when they're stressed, they still go on a 10 minute walk because it aligns with their values of wellbeing. That's something we want to celebrate. We want to continue to attach to that committed action in those moments. So that is the last of the six that I have for you, and at this point I do. Want to help you understand what psychological inflexibility looks like, sort of like coaching flags for you to look out for. And the idea is that once you can obviously determine if this client is. I was gonna say suffering from psychological inflexibility. That sounds so intense. But if you know, if you're recognizing that this might be something that's going on for them, then you can actually take steps forward through a lot of the things that I just talked about and we'll continue to talk about here in this episode. So for instance, you have a client who has ever told you, I just want someone to tell me what to do. I talk about this all the time. And to me that sounds like you just want rigid, rigid, not flexible rule following. Or if I can't do it perfectly, then why bother? That's fusing to the thought of if I can't do it perfectly, there's no point. So when I'm feeling like I'm not doing it perfectly, I'm not going to do it. It's fusion. And then avoidance of the behavior when you're not feeling like you're doing it perfectly. If you have a client who says, I have to earn my food or earn my rest, that's a conceptualized self type of language where you're noticing that they, they feel like they have to do this thing in order to get this thing. So what identity is maybe wrapped up in that you could see what might be going on there or the classic, I messed up, so I'll just start over again on✨Monday✨ That is experiential avoidance at its finest that like, I feel uncomfortable that I messed up now, and so therefore my next steps are related to that, rather than my next steps being aligned with my goals and my values. So pay attention to that. Dig a little bit deeper or. We all have those clients who are maybe like really high performers or more of the perfectionists who if things get off track or they're weak, doesn't look the way that they wanted it to, that they get like super frustrated. They crumble under that discomfort of things not going the way that they planned. That is classic sign of inflexibility. And from the outside looking in, a lot of these clients could. Look like they're motivated. Maybe even say things about being motivated to do this stuff, but yet they're still operating from these rigid places that then have downstream effects that start to look like self-sabotage and uncoachability All of these things. So a few things that I want to talk about to actually continue to build psychological flexibility beyond those kind of like six core components that I talked about before, is to first and foremost reinforce flexible behavior when it happens naturally. So when it's already coming up, your clients are already doing it, grab onto it and showcase to them what they're doing and how great it is. So for instance, you have a client who maybe is, I'm trying to think of an example. They randomly, like spontaneously decided to go out to dinner with friends and they reworked their macros for the day in order to fit that in. Don't just good job them and walk away. That needs to be a conversation around like, Hey, that's. Flexibility and action. And that's a really, really important skill that you're developing. Like let's talk about what allowed that to happen. Like what were you thinking in that moment? And get in there, get in there. Normalize nuance and gray areas. So this is kind of coming back to like, let's get more flexible with our thinking and. Instead of, this is the way it is, this is how I always am. This is who I am. Blah. Lots of fixed mindset, language in here too. Right. funny how. It almost always comes back to mindset. So maybe asking them like, what, what else could be true here? Or how could we make this 10% easier? Getting them to think more flexibly rather than like, it has to be this or that, or all or nothing. Help clients pause before defaulting to old patterns. So this is this, again, coming back to this idea of fusion versus diffusion. So. Helping them pause, like, I'm noticing that I'm having these thoughts, or I've had this urge continuously come up. Or What are you feeling in this moment? And what does that mean for you? So just trying to get them to detach from their thought and see it as kind of like, let's pull it out and look at it and examine it away from us, rather than it being part of us and dictating our actions going forward. Okay. And the last one I have on here is just kind of honestly it's a good wrap up. One is to reconnect clients to their values. So what and how can we make values that make discomfort meaningful rather than aversive? How can we start to help our clients? See discomfort as something meaningful. Whether we learn something from it, we're detaching from our thoughts, we're adjusting our identity. Discomfort is part of the process. A lot of stuff that I talked about in that previous podcast episode, I know I keep coming back to it, but this is kind of like the sister episode to that podcast episode, the Discomfort Tolerance episode, episode 90. Just a couple episodes back. That will give you a lot more tools as well if you have not tuned in, but I think just always kind of coming back to values because it's a lot harder to not do something if we feel like we're have fully attached our values to it. Okay. So let me make sure I'm not missing anything for you guys. Yeah, I think, I think we kind of covered the majority of what I wanted to talk about related to psychological flexibility. So ultimately. Psychological flexibility is the skill that allows clients to feel discomfort without losing the alignment to their goals and to their values. It's basically like empathy and avoidance all rolled into one and or. Um, I said that so entirely wrong, Casey. Get it together. It's empathy and evidence all rolled into one. I've said avoidance so many times on this episode. It's just like stuck in my head now and this is a major aspect of great coaching, is to help your clients. With more psychological flexibility, more flexible type of language for you to be using that as their coach to, to be pointing out when it's happening and to ultimately just support them in long-term behavior change. And as noted through many research studies, this is really helpful for health and fitness behaviors and just general persistence and goal attainment overall. Okay. That is my spiel on psychological flexibility. It's basically the science of not giving up, and it's important and I hope you enjoyed this, and I will see you next week. And that's a wrap for today's episode of Not another Mindset show. If you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you get notified of the next one. Because if you're anything like me, if the episodes aren't popping up for you automatically, you'll keep forgetting to come back to the show even if you really, really enjoyed it. So go ahead and hit that subscribe button and make it super easy for you and of course. If you wanna see more episodes just like this one, I'd love for you to let me know by leaving a review. I know, I know it's super annoying to do, but the few seconds that it takes means the world to me and also ensures that I can keep providing free education and value to you. And just to sweeten the deal, I am going to be picking a random reviewer every single month to receive a free workshop or product from me. If you're looking for more free resources or just wanna connect, hang out, chat a little bit, come find me on Instagram. I'm Coach Casey, Joe over there. That is where I hang out the most in the land of social media. Alright, my friends, that is all I have for you this time. I so appreciate you being here and love to see you prioritizing your growth. I'll see you next time.