welcome to this presentation on psychological flexibility this is another video in the
cognitive behavioral therapy nuggets series i'm your host dr dawn elise snipes
in this series we're going to continue talking about things that you can do in order to
effectively use your energy to work towards your rich and meaningful life so what you need to do is
start out by defining your rich and meaningful life and remember you know going back to the
video on defining your rich and meaningful life you know recognize what that is and then as you
go through each day mindfully acknowledge the present how you feel what you need what you
want what your urges are just because you have an urge does not mean you have to act on it you may
have an urge for example to smoke a cigarette or go get drunk well that may provide you some
relief maybe in the short term but is it going to help you work towards the things that are
important in your rich and meaningful life if not how can you use your energy more effectively
so you acknowledge the present acknowledge your urges your feelings your thoughts wants and needs
and then you identify the most effective way to use your energy to deal with the current situation
to help you move toward your rich and meaningful life now if we're talking about distress for
example you could address it maybe it's something that you do have the ability to address to make it
go away to make it better well great then do that if you wake up one morning and your head is all
stuffed up and you feel sick you know nobody likes feeling like that it's not going to help you have
you know a good mood probably so there are things you can do to address it to address those symptoms
in order to get healthy faster so you can go back to using your energy to have a rich and
meaningful life you know staying sick and just being angry about it is just going to drain your
energy so sometimes there are things that you can can do to address the situation to make it
possible to free up energy or to use your energy towards your goals sometimes it's not
maybe you've got a co-worker who is just a grumpy old gus and nothing that you do
seems to be satisfactory for them they have to complain about everything well most likely a lot
of that has to do more with them than with you so arguing with them trying to control them trying to
convince them why what you are doing is just fine probably isn't going to go very far so in the big
scheme of things if there's nothing you can do to change their mind or to address the situation
maybe it's better just to let it go recognize that they can have their opinion they don't
have to like you and it's using your energy to try to get them to like you
isn't helping you move towards the people things and experiences that are important
in your life this is somebody who's really not in the big scheme of things important in your life
the other option you have is changing your reaction to the situation go back to that
grumpy colleague again instead of being angry and frustrated at them or feeling rejected by them
you can change your reaction to the situation to one of compassion thinking about oh my gosh how
awful must it be to feel angry that much of the time you know you can't
necessarily change them but having compassion or pity on them can sometimes make it easier to
to deal with what's going on because then you're not taking it so personally you're
recognizing that the unpleasantness resides within them so to sum up
effectively using your energy here means defining your rich and meaningful life which
we talked about in another video mindfully acknowledging the present what do you
feel what are your thinking what are your thoughts wants and needs and even your urges just because
you think them or just because you have them doesn't mean you have to act on them then decide
okay given the current situation what's the most effective way to use my energy in order to nurture
the things that are important to me and let go of the things that really aren't important in my life