What do you really yearn for? According to Steven Hayes and Joseph Ciarrochi, humans have 6 core yearnings that guide our behavior towards or away from psychological flexibility. 

In this episode, you will explore:

• Our natural yearnings, how they shape our behaviors and psychological reflexes, and the insight required to align our actions with our core values. 
• The role of agency and the desire for purpose in our lives
• Our inherent desire to feel a broad spectrum of emotions, even those perceived as negative
• The importance of staying present and grounded as a foundation for taking purposive, value-driven steps in our lives.

Listen to hear how these yearnings can get misdirected and how to harness them to “feel better,” live better, and connect.

Related Resources

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Thanks to the team, Craig and Ashley Hiatt, and Benjamin Gould of Bell & Branch for your beautiful music.

We can put our energy where it matters most and savor the good along the way.

Dr. Diana Hill: Have you ever stopped and asked yourself.

What is it that I yearn for?

What is it that you long for?

What is it that you really need?

That's what we're going to explore today with . Steven Hayes and Joseph

Suruchi on the wise effort podcast.

Welcome back.

I am Dr.

Diana Hill.

I'm a clinical psychologist, and this show is all about why is effort,

how to help you take your energy.

Your Qi, your prana.

Your Sisu, whatever it is you want to call it.

And put it in the places that matter most to you.

Use it in a way that's aligned with your value so that you can

benefit not only yourself, but also be a benefit to the greater good.

And so that you can saver.

The good of your life along the way.

So we're talking about wise effort on the show.

And when I launched the podcast, I talked about.

Three different types of episodes that we're going to be having.

You've experienced two so far.

I'm curious.

What do you think?

What do you like what's working for you?

I want your feedback.

You can email me at Dr.

Diana hill.com.

I'd love to hear from you, but the, the first two types of

episodes that we've worked on have been skill-building episodes.

And real place.

If you miss the real play with Jenny shots.

look, I listened to that one because it's fantastic.

And it was so good that I want to have Jenny back on.

We are going to have a follow-up with Jenny in a month to see how she's

doing with some of the ideas that we put into motion for her around

living out her values in her career.

And we'll be tackling another barrier.

If something comes up using some of these wise efforts, psychological flexibility.

Self-compassion skills.

So we've had.

Skill building episode.

We've had a real play where I demonstrate, you know, real life what's happening

in the therapy room with somebody.

And today is a wisdom building episode and it's with two of the wisest psychologists

that I know doctors Joseph Ciarrochi.

And Steven Hayes, Steven Hayes is the founder of ACT which is one of the,

approaches to psychology that is sort of blown up in the last decade or so

it's been around for 40 years, but.

ACT as different than other forms of psychology in that it

brings in these ideas of values.

And acceptance and combination with approaching our thoughts differently.

And it's all about helping you build more psychological flexibility.

Joseph Ciarrochi is a good friend and also wrote the forward to The

Self Compassion Daily Journal.

And he's a lead researcher cutting edge researcher in the arena of

process-based therapy, which is what's coming around the bend folks.

So, one thing I want you to know about this podcast is

it's not all warm fuzzies here.

It's also some.

Strong science backed stuff.

And I always liked being on the edge of what's coming out, staying current.

Doing this type of podcasting helps me stay current.

I hope it helps you stay current to.

We are always changing, evolving, growing as individuals as a culture and

in our science, our understanding of science and psychological science is

undergoing this massive shift right now.

Which process-based therapy is about.

If you are a clinician, you want to learn more about process-based

therapy, Joe, Steve Hayes, and I did a workshop through PESI continue

education and I'll put the link.

in the show notes to that, you can watch it on demand now.

So that is available for you a six hour continuing education

workshop on process-based therapy.

If you're not a clinician.

I.

Still think that today's episode will be interesting to you.

And here's why.

So.

Wise Effort is about helping you take your energy, putting in the places that matter

to you and the first step of wise effort.

Is curiosity.

Getting curious, what is happening here?

What am I doing?

What's working for me.

What's not working for me.

And a bigger question.

What is it?

That you really yearn for?

What is it that you long for?

And how are those yearnings or those longings potentially getting misdirected?

Let me give you an example.

Not that I've ever had this experience.

But maybe you've had the experience of coming home after a stressful day.

And plopping on the couch.

And scrolling on your phone, clicking on the New York Times, clicking

on the Instagram, looking for something that will make you feel

less stressed, make you feel better.

Doesn't seem to hit the spot.

So then you get up and you start opening the cupboards and

maybe you go for the alcohol.

Maybe you go for the sugar.

Maybe you go for something else.

Maybe you have another way that you are seeking out something that

is not really fulfilling for you.

Well guess what?

There's probably a core yearning in there.

For something else than what's on your phone or what's in the cupboard.

And what Steve Hayes and Joseph Ciarrochi are going to talk to us about today are

these six core yearnings, which are based in evolution science, and psychological

flexibility that all humans are born with.

We're all born with these six core yearnings.

And what can happen is they get activated, but they get misdirected.

So I'm going to list the six yearnings for you so that you stay oriented as we

move through this conversation, because we're talking with two researchers here.

And they can get a little heady.

I'm going to list them for you.

And then I'm going to give you some ideas around what I would invite you

to do as you listen to this episode.

So the six things that we yearned for as humans.

And you could think about this as you're going through the cupboard or

as you're scrolling on your phone.

Is it one of these six that I'm, that I really want?

And I'm trying to find it and a misdirected way are one.

We earn to belong.

We earn to be seen.

We are in to feel included.

We want to be part of the group.

To we want to make sense of the world.

We long to understand, to make sense of our experience.

Three, we yearn to develop competence.

We want to grow.

We want to build mastery.

We want to get better at things.

For we yearn to have self direction and purpose.

We want to feel like our lives matter and we're making a difference.

And five, we are in to feel deeply.

We are sentient beings folks, and we want to feel.

That's what we listened to Tracy Chapman or all the folks that are going to the

sphere to watch you to, we want to feel deep in our bones, even if it's sometimes.

feeling that hurts.

And then finally we are into the oriented.

We want to be present.

We want to know where we are in this world, in the here and now.

So these are six yearnings that we all have.

When they get misdirected, we become psychologically inflexible.

So misdirected yearnings may look like.

I yearned to have competence.

I want to grow and build mastery, but I'm driving myself into the ground,

in my attempts to build that mastery.

I never feel like I am productive enough, right.

This productivity, anxiety, and guilt that some of us house.

Or maybe we you're in so much to belong that we're too scared to go.

Right.

So looking at these misdirected yearnings in a different way.

Is a curiosity practice and it is a wise effort practice because once you

can identify what you really yearn for.

Then you can actually direct it in a way that is satisfying

and meets that yearning.

You know what I am yearning for.

I am yearning to meet you in person.

One thing that makes me very happy is being around people that

have shared values and purpose.

If you missed the yoga soup book signing, don't worry.

I'm going to be at Tecolote Book Shop on Saturday, March 9th, from

three to 4:00 PM in Montecito.

I hope to see you there.

And if you haven't yet go pick up the self-compassion daily journal at your

local bookstore or order an Amazon.

Please give me a review.

If you find it helpful, it helps me get the word out, share it with a friend

and follow me on Instagram at Dr.

Diana Hill, and can't wait to hear how it is working for you.

All right.

Hope to see you in one of those places soon.

So today's episode, I told you that I was going to invite you

to do a practice as you listen.

What, I invite you to do, as you listen to each of these yearnings

is to ask yourself, when does this yearning show up for you?

And how does it get misdirected?

And then when are you aligned?

When are you flexible with this urinate?

I think the best place for you to figure out what you're hearing

for is by listening to your body.

So you could even do a little practice right now, just checking in.

What is it that I earned for?

Drop the question into your belly.

And get curious.

That's the first step of wise effort.

All right.

Enjoy this conversation with Steven Hayes and Joseph Ciarrochi.

And I'll see you next week for a skill-building episode.

Steve, you did a blog post on it a while back.

You say learning to notice these yearning opens up an immediate and

healthy alternative as we pivot in the direction of their healthy satisfaction.

This takes awareness and it takes practice, but it's without

a doubt within your reach.

And then you also say, ultimately, I believe that all forms of

psychological flexibility are manifestations of mismanaged yearnings.

So given that, let's talk about these core yearnings and then how they can go.

Mismanaged or, or managed.

Wow.

How does that sound?

Dr. Steven Hayes: Yeah.

Awesome.

Dr. Diana Hill: Okay.

Well launch us, Steve.

What are these yearning?

How did you uncover them and what do they have to do with our wellbeing?

Dr. Steven Hayes: well, there's a long tradition in psychology

of what are our human needs?

Some of the things that drew me into psychology in the first place, the more

humanistic wings what are the common shared human motivation for the various

things that we do and all the different channels and the ways that we do things.

And when you get a focus on that, you can see that a lot of what looks like

psychopathology is not that people are broken or that there's, you know,

something wrong with them really.

It's that they're trying to meet their needs in a way that don't

really meet them and that create additional difficulties and problems.

Dr. Diana Hill: Yeah, well you mentioned humanistic and, and positive psychology

approaches and Joseph's steeped in those, and I'd love to talk about those as well.

Another area that it overlaps with these yearning is actually Buddhist psychology.

And, there's a whole angle in, Tibetan Buddhism around our neurosis, , the

stuck points, the neurosis that we have, that if you stay with the

neurosis, you can uncover the wisdom.

And Pema Children's written about that in terms of it's actually going

to the neurosis to find the answers which maps onto these yearning.

Actually, when you are feeling, that you're caught in addiction, it's

actually going to the addiction where sometimes you can uncover what it is

that you're really needing or wanting.

Dr. Joseph Ciarrochi: It's, it's, a very fundamental shift what yearning does,

, is it, it characterizes people as growing towards something, as wanting something.

Humans have this kind of, not in a bad way, a desire for more to feel,

to connect to, to, to understand that that goes beyond just adjusting,

you know, adapting to stress coping.

And so I, I think that fundamental growth aspect I, I think is in there.

Dr. Steven Hayes: Somebody like Maslow and so forth.

It's linked to some of the earliest, I think, positive vision of psychology.

We're not just trying to fix people, we're trying to empower people, and that

we are naturally wanting to be better, wanting to, rise to a higher level

it's built into our bones almost.

And if you can connect with that.

There's a powerful motivation that people have that go way beyond any kind of image

that has to do with sort of fix people, repair people, you know, make them better.

No, it's really more like making them better

Dr. Diana Hill: yeah, it's not just get rid of the depression.

'cause it's like, what, what is your life without depression?

Well, do you have a life?

. What is it?

So let's go through, there's six yearning, six core yearning that map

onto the psychological flexibility processes, what I'd love to do

is throw them out, out at you.

For you to describe the yearning, but here's the twist.

I'd like for you to do it in a personal way what that looks like

for you when it's misdirected and what that looks like for you when

you are psychologically flexible

so the first one is, is one of the most, fundamental ones that shows

up from infancy from when we were born, which is the yearning belong.

So talk, talk a little bit about that.

The yearning to belong.

Dr. Steven Hayes: Well, I think it's reflected in our earliest moments

that, when you're just barely born and your eyes meet the eyes of, an adult,

you, if they're kind eyes, they're, you're dump dumping endorphins.

That you're natural opiates to basically say, this is what I want.

And so we spend the rest of our life trying to find ways to be included, if

you just think about how many things do you do that way back deep in your

mind, do you're thinking people like me if I do this, or they'll want me

if I do this, or they'll include me in do this, or they think I'm special or,

or, or worthwhile or valuable you know?

And in turn you ask for it to be, personal.

You know, if you, I'll I'll tell you what that has.

You know, I'm old enough and I've done enough things that it's easy for

me to play to a place where, I can be included because I have a special

background or I've done a lot of research, or I'm, the research I've

done is thought, well, or, or whatever.

And at the worst, that will mean.

Don't listen, just talk, rattle on about all the wonderful

research you've done and so forth.

I'm right on the edge of it right at this moment.

And next thing you know, you're no longer really listening, communicating,

connecting, and that moment of belonging and play together is missed.

And that's a kind of a lonely place to be.

Dr. Diana Hill: Yeah.

It's so interesting how it's that the misdirected piece is that

we're, we're kind of scrambling to belong, but the ways in which we're

scrambling are making us more lonely.

And I, I have my own version of that and, feeling that interconnection,

the play and the dance between.

Between us as humans requires some degree of letting go of that self.

And this is, this is in the dimension of, of self, belonging.

So how about for you, Joe?

How, where does this

Dr. Joseph Ciarrochi: Yeah,

Dr. Diana Hill: one show.

Dr. Joseph Ciarrochi: this is a really powerful one.

We're constantly trying to see where we fit in, where we belong, where

our relative status is in the group.

Am I worthwhile?

Am I lovable?

Am I effective?

Am I helpless?

Or on the narcissistic side, it might be that the invisible audience is

always looking at me and I, I'm not bothered about what anybody thinks

and everybody admires me when I walk in the room and, and so You can see

that you get this verbally constructed belonging that kind of can become quite.

Disconnected, from the real world what's actually happening and we

can just be tormented in this world.

I, I have an experience very recently with my son and he's a very good

basketball player and, he got selected for rep team, but he got one of the

lower levels, even though he's clearly better than like half the kids.

And, they did some, there was some political stuff that happened where

he got pushed behind because the coach's son got put up and the

coach's son is much worse than him.

And so I've actually found this kind of sense of belonging.

His relative position has just been a torment to me that he is down at the

bottom unfairly, that his position is one of what they call a developmental player

doesn't even get to play in the games.

And I've been surprised at how much this has tortured me, how fused I

am with his, you know, experience.

And it's actually affected me.

Quite a bit.

And I've been in that place, even though it's been, you

know, we've had beautiful days.

He's on the court playing basketball.

He's not that bothered by it, you know?

But I'm in this verbal world of belonging and not belonging,

and people not respecting and respecting and torturing myself.

It's very hard to snap out of it and get back into the actual world where

there's people you look at who are struggling, who love their boys just

as much as I love my boy, you know?

And to get back into that nonverbal world with them and just be and

belong, like in a nonverbal sense.

Dr. Diana Hill: So the, the nugget there is to identify when

you're caught in that yearning to belong and maybe it's misdirected.

And then how could I find belonging in this moment?

You just mentioned Joe.

Here's this other dad with a son on a basketball team.

there, there's a belonging there.

Like we're both dads, we both got sons that we care about.

We're trying to, or we belong to this team together, or we belong to, you

know, parenthood or whatever it There's a yearning that, that we're almost kind

of stepping into, as we're starting to tell the stories of why we don't belong,

which is the yearning of coherence.

We wanna make sense of it.

Why, why is this other kid getting picked, not my kid?

And that becomes, there's a, there's a yearning for coherence.

There's a yearning to understand and make sense of our experience,

and that also can get misdirected.

I,

Dr. Joseph Ciarrochi: Hmm.

Dr. Diana Hill: I, I've noticed that, Joe, you're working on this paper.

You've included all these incredible folks to work on this paper.

And I'm reading through the comments and,

Dr. Joseph Ciarrochi: Now your case was very good Diana.

Dr. Diana Hill: I am just noticing my own mind as, as I go through

the paper and all the stories that I, I, I'm constructing, right?

Just from seeing people's comments on a paper about who they are,

or why this person say this and that person say, person say that.

So , let's talk a little bit about that.

The, the yearning for, for coherence and how it can get misdirected.

It can not be helpful, but also can, can be helpful as well.

Dr. Steven Hayes: The problem is, is that language is so flexible.

You can tell a story about anything in any way, and you probably know

people who do that no matter what happens, they're the right one.

They're the one who, or the one who's been treated unfairly, et cetera,

and you can't bump 'em off it.

With our clients, sometimes people who are achieving coherence by adopting a

paranoid point of view or a narcissistic point of view, et cetera, the stories

that told can't be bumped off it.

Something like, somebody's out to hurt me or somebody doesn't respect

me, or whatever the thing might be.

And yeah, that makes everything fit together.

But it doesn't make everything work.

And so we want the kind of coherence that allows us to deal with a complex

world in which there's no one capital T truth, and that we can sort of take

what's useful and leave the rest.

And there's two sides of every story, and you can easily do it.

I could just ask you, what would an alternative perspective be?

What would an enemy say?

What if you were arguing against yourself or the, then immediately we'll answer.

'cause that's in our head too.

So the kind of coherence we're gonna need, where every, where things fit

together is the humble kind of, and.

This way of thinking is most helpful to me.

And so I'll take it as a kind of a functional coherence rather

than everything in its place.

and capital T, truth or capital R, right?

Dr. Diana Hill: Yeah.

So some of the, characteristics of wisdom have to do with things like humility

is on the, the wisdom checklist and perspective taking and, being able to

pay attention to body-based wisdom and ancestral wisdom and heart-based wisdom.

Like all these things that aren't just stuck on one side of being.

Right.

So for you, Steve, in a more, in the more psychological flexible way of coherence,

do you have an example of you doing that?

Not just the, not just the inflexible stuff.

, Dr. Steven Hayes: if you've been around this bush very many times

in relationships, you learn that sometimes, you know, fighting for

that kind of coherence is actually.

Not going to work.

And what you really need to do is to let go of who's right and what the right

story is, and find another level in which you can connect as to human beings who

are, trying to, , develop, for example, loving a loving, caring relationship.

Something more like the intuitive or felt based understanding that, you

know, I love my, wife, for example, and I don't have to be right and I don't

have to continue this conversation.

I can, I or I can continue in a way where I'm not fighting and to be right.

I think that's a, a kind of coherence that life will teach you if you let it.

But if you just hang on to literal coherence, you can't get there.

Dr. Joseph Ciarrochi: These are yearning, these are like things

that one can become addicted to.

If we clinging to it too much, like somebody who has been through a series

of bad relationships and now is going through a divorce from a coherence

perspective, it's would be reasonably conclude that they can't have a good

relationship because everything in the past has been consistent with them not

having a good relationship and that kind of story, which they can spin

about what they're missing or what's wrong with guys or whatever it is.

You know, can serve a protective function.

Like, okay, as long as I believe this, I know not to put myself

out there and take this risk.

so coherence is addictive.

It's protective.

And I think a lot of times it interferes with our other yearning,

the ones we're gonna talk about now.

And so we sometimes have to let go of coherence altogether that

yearning and allow for chaos, incoherence, nonsense to enter into,

into things and be okay with that.

Dr. Diana Hill: Oh gosh.

I like this new.

Everyone's all about okay, with uncertainty, but we need

to get okay with nonsense.

That's even, that's even harder.

Right.

Especially for those that wanna have a neat story to explain it all.

Even we can explain uncertainty, but getting okay with nonsense.

Yeah.

Dr. Joseph Ciarrochi: the, the algorithms that are trying to figure out how to

find the best model in science, often just deliberately do random things.

You know, they'll, they'll, they'll break the rules.

They'll just try random things and that produces better models than if

you just kind of stay with what you know and keep trying to stay coherent.

Just trying some crazy things.

Dr. Diana Hill: I love getting, comfortable with nonsense.

And the, this category of coherence is, is the category that for folks that are

kind of like trying to organize, trying to create some coherence around this

in their own mind as we're talking, the category of, of sort of thoughts when

we're fused our thoughts, when we're attached to our thoughts, when we're

in our heads and getting all Mindy

Dr. Joseph Ciarrochi: our stories

especially stories that make sense of life.

Dr. Diana Hill: Yeah.

So, Steve was, walking us into another yearning.

'cause this yearning overrode his coherence, which is the yearning

for, , that sort of purpose.

For him, I could hear a value arising of wanting to be present with his,

his wife and, engaged with his wife.

So let's talk a little bit about that one.

The, the yearning that happens around motivation and, and purpose.

Dr. Joseph Ciarrochi: Yeah, that's a one where, I mean, you are very young

when you started wanting to assert your capacity to choose what the purpose is.

You know, I think we yearn Sometimes the word that used is autonomy,

but I think it's really more like having a say in what we do and why.

And the this chosen purpose, it can be very social.

It does, it's not autonomy alone and cut off from others, but

it, it's more a matter of agency that this is what I'm up to.

As language gets going where, you know, you start, acting as if part

of your chosen purpose should be just external things, whether it's likes on

your Instagram page or if it's instant success in your podcast, or money

that, flows from heaven, like mana rather regardless of what you do or

instant promotions or success and fame.

And you just go on and on.

What's being missed is meaning.

That's intrinsic.

And that is always available and, and exhaustible, which is what are

the qualities that you wanna reflect in the, behavior that you display?

What are the processes of being in doing that reflect qualities that you admire?

And so when people can find that guide, almost in any situation, there's an

inexhaustible source of motivation that will lift you up because it's yours.

You own it, and it's intrinsic.

You see it directly.

Nobody can take it away from you.

That human capacity, you know, will empower us to move mountains.

And, if we can tap into it, it's a wonderful source of transformation.

but if you don't, if you, you can spend the rest of your life with, not enough.

Dr. Diana Hill: Yeah,

Dr. Steven Hayes: where you don't have what you have to have, but no matter how

much you have, it will never be enough.

Dr. Diana Hill: I had the Opportunity to go into Thich

Nhat Hanh's home last summer.

And it's just a little one room about the size, little bit bigger

than the space that I'm in, wood building, redwood building.

And in it, they left it exactly is how he left it.

And he had three pairs of these like slides, you know, slide shoes and

he had two robes and they had this little cott, you know, like, here's

like one of the most influential people on our, on our planet, right?

It's all he is got.

And when he had a big window overlooking the French countryside and, Brother

Phap Huu, when I was in there with him said, this, he used to call us his tv

whenever he wanted to look at something beautiful, he'd look out the window.

And really like that's such an example of yeah, somebody that

doesn't really is so fulfilled by.

Their purpose by that intrinsic motivation.

For Thay, it was peace, for love, for understanding, for, you know, all the

actions that he took on this world that he didn't really need much in

the external world, to fulfill that.

And, you know, I, I will, I will say Joe Ciarrochi is another one of these guys.

He is, he's like the anti-ego.

He, he's, so, I, I don't know, something happened.

He broke, like his ego broke and some job related thing that happened,

and now he's like so inclusive and is really mission driven, purpose

driven, intrinsically driven.

So, Joe, how do you do it?

What's your, what's your driving force

Dr. Joseph Ciarrochi: Well, just talking about this unquenchable thirst,

it is, it is often characterized as, as a kind of negative thing.

And what you have to understand is that's when that search for meaning and purpose

gets misguided, I think where you're kind of living and dancing for this

invisible audience trying to be impressive with more money in a nicer house and

a nicer car than these other people.

You know, there's a kind of misdirection of that energy.

But if it's directed properly than it is a hunger that does not stop, it's a

yearning that can never be satisfied.

And that's, you see people like Steve who are just driven, you know,

into, he's now like 98 years old, but you don't, I'm exaggerated.

exaggerated his age, but he's still just as driven, just as excited

about the topics as he was when he was a 20-year-old grad student.

And so there, there is, I think, unquenchable thirst is probably

not entirely negative when we think about yearning because it, it,

like, you wanna keep tapping into that because this is a source of

energy that's always renewing you.

And if you, you start to lose your energy by kind of starting to misdirect

it to things which are unimportant, like me ruminating about the relative

status of my kid on the basketball team, or worried about the neighbor

who said this and this and this, or did this, you know, like that.

Then the energy just goes.

But if you could connect to the, I think the vital source, something genuine that

you love that is meaningful and important to you, then it will be unquenchable I'm

thinking of music, you know, like musical.

I just keep wanting get better.

I don't wanna be stuck at my certain, my level four of piano.

I want to get better because I wanna play those more complicated, pieces

and maybe play Rachmaninoff someday.

I don't know, it, maybe it's impossible, but it's

unquenchable.

In a good way.

Really important how people direct that energy.

Dr. Diana Hill: There's a diagram that, I've made up that looks at energy or

effort on the y axis and values on the X axis, and you get these four quadrants.

And when you're have high effort, high energy away from values,

that's what you're talking about.

burnout realm.

That's the or

low effort away from values is also equally problematic.

That's the scrolling on your phone.

It's like, or the grabbing the, fast food 'cause it's low effort.

It's away from my values versus these other quadrants

of towards values, high effort.

And that's the place that I like to resonate in.

It's like, whoa, this is actually hard.

This is at the gym.

I'm learning, it called?

The snatch and press, do you know what these,

Dr. Joseph Ciarrochi: Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Dr. Diana Hill: pull it up fast and, and you, you use a

little bit more than you could.

Yeah.

It's hard 'cause you gotta go heavy on the snatch and press that.

But that's toward effort, I mean towards values with high effort.

But the other, the other component is also some towards values, low effort stuff,

Dr. Joseph Ciarrochi: Yeah.

Dr. Diana Hill: savoring stuff.

That's the, that's the hanging with your wife.

Yeah.

Dr. Joseph Ciarrochi: I wouldn't know about that section.

I just don't ever,

in that space.

But I mean, you are getting, you are touching on another yearning, which might

be a natural way to talk about it, is

yearning competence to become more effective.

It sounds like your snatch and press is also about competence,

about lifting more weight, about being able to do it is pretty cool.

and we just have a yearning like a lot of people think when they're

overwhelmed and burnt out, I'd like to live on a desert island and just make

surfboards or something like that.

And they think that that would be the most satisfying thing in the world.

And a lot of people move out to the country or move to that

island and like within 10 minutes, like, oh, what am I doing here?

You know, because we do, I think humans have an inherent need to be challenged

to strive to get better and to improve and, and, so what you're describing, I

think Diana captures that need quite well.

Dr. Diana Hill: Yeah, let's talk about competence, Steve,

Dr. Steven Hayes: Yeah, that yearning for competence is inborn and you saw

it if you, have children, but where you lived it, everybody has lived it.

a, a statistic I like to quote 'cause I have four children and the oldest is 54.

The youngest is 18.

Well, I've had children at home for 55 years and Stevie goes to

school to college here next year.

But, have watched this process.

If you take something like just learning to stand up and walk, for those,

for those who are able to do that.

I know some folks have injuries and they've not done that one,

but they've done other ones.

, toddlers fall down 110 times a day and they walk the equivalent of

10 football fields, you know, so nobody had to come up and say, Hey,

you know, first you don't succeed.

Try, try again.

We've learned by doing in trial and error.

That's hard.

And so the yearning for competence requires some of the other skills

to really fully be deployed, if you will allow your natural yearning for

creativity, for, for competence, for learning, you'll go through that process.

That sort of humiliating and embarrassing process.

A yearning or competence will carry you through the trial and error

process you sometimes need to go through where errors are part of it,

and you'll get better and better, and.

The adventure of getting better and better will be enough to draw you forward.

because it's, it's built in.

You don't have to pay people a whole lot of money or give

'em m and ms for doing it.

It's natural.

Dr. Diana Hill: So there's two things I wanna say about that.

One is, there's something that you said actually when we were doing that

workshop together, Steve, not about crawling kids, but about scooting kids.

Some kids don't learn how, not walking kids, but scooting kids.

Some kids don't learn how to crawl, they just scoot.

And I had one of those scooters where, you know, he, he was like sitting

on the floor and used his hands to scoot around on his bottom all way.

Super.

We got super quick at it and not only is it that we fall down a hundred

times to learn to walk, but we have many different ways that we get there.

And that's also the other part about competence.

Because some of the thing that trips me up is that if I'm not getting there

the same way as you or as fast as you, or if my there is different than you

are there, then maybe there's something wrong with me versus, Hey, you're just

a kid that scoots looks like you can get across the kitchen pretty quick.

You know, rather than being so worried about it.

And this is part of, there's a little nugget here in, in Pathologizing

in how we pathologize folks.

Dr. Steven Hayes: There's something, we gotta pass it over to Joe because

he is right inside some amazing statistics of showing how true this is.

But we have been socialized in more than a hundred years that the

way that we become competent is supposed to fit a normal pattern.

That it is similar across people, but it's not true.

There's many, many, many different ways to get things done, and your way may

not be the same as another person's way.

And that is okay as long as it's moving you towards what you really want.

And we shouldn't be intervening and sort of telling people that

it's, you know, there's only, for example, one way to walk.

No, I mean, everybody knows you're supposed to call before

you, before you stand up and.

Walk.

Just the one you mentioned of the diaper scooters, which is a small percentage.

It's in single digits where they scoot on their diaper butt faster

and faster, strengthening their legs, and one day they stand up and walk.

And meanwhile, the, the kid, the parents are being told by the pediatricians,

oh my goodness, doesn't crawl.

Oh, your child will.

No, it's because we didn't collect the data to look at the different

pathways that could be successful.

And we bought into this one size fits all mentality that's built into some

of our standards, our statistics, our critical growth points you get

from your pediatrician and so forth.

Our, you know, indications that our children are growing up properly.

And, Joe has some wonderful data on that.

That's really shocking.

But, it's one

Dr. Joseph Ciarrochi: Yeah.

Well this, this speaks to this whole idea of what is normal, what is, what

should we be comparing ourselves to, you know, like, and we try to be like some

sort of idealized worker or idealized parent or, you know, and it's pretty,

it's becoming pretty clear that.

The normal person is unusual.

That's just a mathematical thing.

So if you de, if you can describe somebody as along five dimensions, say

extroversion, agreeableness, openness, neuroticism, conscientiousness,

and you put them in a, that five dimensional space, just about two

people, people are very far apart.

There's almost nobody that has a normal pattern.

Some people are very conscientious, agreeable people, low in neuroticism,

people are high in extroversion and neuroticism, and that's just the big five.

And then there's all these other, you know, like some people can feel depressed

without feeling vulnerable, you know?

And I'm just seeing all this heterogeneity and all the.

All this failure of what is normal to characterize anybody that I know.

and and I think Steve was saying that, that whole idea of, well, who's normal?

What's a normal pathway?

What's a normal person and how can we be like that?

That attempt at coherence is a recent thing.

I don't think that was happening to hundred years ago.

Was it Steve?

Dr. Steven Hayes: It wasn't, we didn't even know.

We never measured.

It was only 150 years ago or so.

We didn't even have the word normal in English.

It didn't exist.

We never said it.

Dr. Joseph Ciarrochi: It's coherence.

It's clear, and psychology is going to show it in the next 10

or 20 years that people, it, it very badly describes individuals.

Individuals are not captured at all by the average.

Like, and so what this means is, like, for example, with our

group, Diana, this big paper we're writing with Steve, you and others.

Well, I, I am inclusive, but there's a reason for that.

It's because I have my blind spots and weaknesses as to you, as to Steve.

But together as a group, we all have such different strengths that the

whole thing comes together really beautifully and we're much more than that.

Some of the parts, we're not all trying to get to be the

same person all of us wanna be.

Steve Hayes, you know, we have.

20.

Steve Hayes, the world only needs one.

Steve Hayes.

That's enough to keep us busy.

Then we need a Diana Hill who has her unique way of seeing and doing things

that nobody else does in the whole world.

And, and somehow we've gotta break that coherence in our society

of like, how do we be normal?

What's normal?

, Dr. Steven Hayes: it's more like, less matter of how can I be different,

more matter of how can I be who I am?

Dr. Joseph Ciarrochi: Exactly.

Exactly.

Dr. Diana Hill: So I'm gonna, I'm gonna orient.

We've talked about a yearning to belong.

We've talked about a yearning for coherence, a yearning for a sense of

purpose, and a yearning for competence.

And there's two more on these psychological, two

more psychological yearning.

One of them is already showing up.

As soon as we start talking about this stuff, the two of you light up

like Christmas trees contain you.

You're so excited.

You're so excited about what you're working on in terms of just

blowing up the field of psychology.

And, and this is the yearning to feel.

This

Dr. Joseph Ciarrochi: Yeah, love one.

Dr. Diana Hill: yeah, to feel alive, to feel.

Sometimes it can go a little bit wrong and we only wanna feel good.

We only feel the good stuff about writing a paper and not the bad stuff, right?

Talk about this year.

Dr. Joseph Ciarrochi: yeah, this is probably the one that's most

inconsistent with our cultural norm of we only want to feel good.

Look on the bright side of things, have a positive attitude.

It, it's like we're not acknowledging that people listen

to the blues, you know what I mean?

Like what's going on here?

If people write sad music, people write angry music.

but we're pretending like the only feelings we're supposed to

have are the positive feelings.

Dr. Steven Hayes: Yeah, you can't name an emotion that

isn't helpful to you sometimes.

And yet your mind will tell you that you only want certain ones of them.

Well, that means sometimes you're not gonna have the tools to be able to

sense what's going on or be able to sort of enter into the world with the

wisdom that comes from the past and the present as feelings or from features

of the present as feelings that maybe even initially kind of go beyond words.

And you have to learn to be able to observe and differentiate and describe

that very process gets ripped off by this, oh, I only wanna feel the good ones.

Well, that means not looking the other way when you're feeling

the bad ones, quote unquote.

If you keep doing that over and over, you eventually get more and more ignorant.

You don't know what it feels like to feel those bad ones really, and

you're, you're being pushed around by them, but next thing you know,

you don't know how to name 'em.

You don't know how to share with 'em, with others.

You can't tell people what you're feeling.

You have that alexathymia, you're flying blind, it's a matter of getting a, doing

a better and better job of feeling, which you never had to be taught to do.

When you're little, you would reach out, touch, feel, lick, smell everything.

And your parents said to say, no, no, no, don't do that.

Don't put that in their mouth, et cetera.

It was only later when language got going that you thought that

you should only have the good ones.

And then that meant really important ones, like feeling Phap sad when you

lose something, feeling afraid when you're, we're in a place that's not safe.

You need those feeling angry when you're being, treated poorly.

And it's time to step up and challenge how you're being treated.

Go through it, actually do the job.

Write down some of the emotions that you hate, you don't want.

Now, tell me places where those have been in your life and will

be in the future helpful to you.

And know every single one will have a story to be told.

Okay, well then let's figure out how to feel.

And instead of just feeling good.

Do a good job of feeling?

Dr. Diana Hill: Steve, what feelings are you doing a better job at Feeling?

What?

What's up for you in terms of the feelings that maybe the ones that you haven't

liked in your life that you're working on?

Dr. Steven Hayes: Oh golly.

You know, I think, you know, I grew up in a home that had a lot of dark secrets and

I, I'm only now learning some of them,

you know, only, it was only four or five years ago that I learned my

mother's mother committed suicide and my mother blamed herself for it.

I didn't know it until 23 and me, you know, my swabbing my mouth and

finding out what my, genetics showed that my mother's, mother's sister's

son lived about 50 miles away from me and knew all the family stories.

And so I jumped back a generation.

He's only my age, but he was actually.

a generation before me and, and told me that story, and boy did my life start

making sense in a different way now.

Well, because of that, you know, I think there was a, a deep sense of

the danger of, of knowing, and there was a sense of vulnerability in there,

like secrets in the home that people don't talk about that children can

sense when they're four or five.

that's was my home and, and I'm not blaming my mom and dad.

They, they had really difficult things without any help other than the priest.

You know, you didn't have a therapist, you didn't have anyone to help you at

that era other than alcohol and maybe your priest would tell you what to do.

So, fe there's a, a sense of vulnerability that I really need to

do better job of, of feeling a, a, of being in that place where I don't know.

Like, as a kid didn't know and kind of opening up and learning and walking

through it, it feels dangerous to me.

It feels like, these surprises could be really, really, threatening or something,

but I, you know, I'm 75 years old time to work on it and I haven't worked on it.

But that as an example, and, and for people who are listening, just

take an emotion that's hard for you.

Look at a situation where it could be good for you and, see if you can't find

places where you get to work on that one.

Like, it's okay to feel angry without necessarily acting angrily.

I'm not saying that.

Or it's okay to feel afraid or it's okay to feel sad.

It's okay to feel, guilt.

It's, you know, whatever it is that's pushing you around.

And not as a matter of wallowing, but as a matter of freedom.

Kind of a decoration of independence that it's okay to be

you with your feelers out, like.

You came into the world that way and then eventually learned to

do the wrong thing with them.

Let's see.

Go back, push the reset button, see if we can learn to do a

better and better job of feeling.

Dr. Diana Hill: Mm-Hmm.

Thank you for sharing that.

Steve.

I don't know if this is accurate or not.

If your mom, did your mom die about a decade ago, about 10 years ago.

Is that.

Dr. Steven Hayes: It wasn't too long ago.

Yeah, she died at age 91 about, let's, yeah.

Eight, nine years ago,

Dr. Diana Hill: Yeah, because I was at a workshop with you, I think soon,

either after soon after she was, she died maybe she was, aging or Ill.

'cause you had,

you know, when you're presenting these workshops, you put up the

pictures that are relevant for you

Dr. Steven Hayes: Oh.

Dr. Diana Hill: right now.

That evoke a feeling.

And I remember seeing pictures of your mom and, and you were pretty raw about it at

that time and really tender towards her.

It was really sweet to see that.

And I was, at that time I had, just had a stillborn.

And I had come to that workshop right after that stillborn, and you were

doing this work with, us on ACT, and it was one of the most healing

experiences for me around how to feel, what I didn't wanna feel.

It was profound.

And soon after it, I sent you a, a picture of his little fe, his little footprint.

And it was before we even, like, we hadn't really, like, we didn't really know.

And, and I'm just like, before Steve Hayes is getting like footprints of

dead babies, but I was like, but this was my baby and you helped me with

this in a, in a and there was something about you showing up and feeling that

vulnerability around your mom that allowed me to feel it with my baby.

And then I was with this group of therapists, women that, that we

had just had planned this thing.

I thought I was gonna be pregnant at it, but I wasn't.

And it was, it was a pretty, incredible experience.

So that's you feeling

stuff helps other feel?

Dr. Steven Hayes: And I, and I remember seeing that little

footprint and, and I remember tearing up at the, at the side of it.

And thank you for sharing that.

And I bet you people who are listening right now, they have

their own baby's footprints.

They have their own mother's death.

They, there's something in there that we all have and we need social support.

We don't get, you don't come with the owner's manual.

You have to learn how as an adult with all these wonderful tools, but also the

ability to say, that's a bad feeling.

I don't want it.

And do things that are not wise in the long run and do something

that's hard, but, but helpful.

Dr. Diana Hill: And you don't know who else helping.

You know, by feeling a feeling, being with a feeling, you're

helping someone else because you're, you're modeling, how to do it.

Dr. Joseph Ciarrochi: Not only that, but like when I, I mean, I think

most of us have these traumas from, from youth and more recently, and

we all are carrying around traumas.

I don't think you ever fully escape it or eliminate it or

get rid of it in your life.

So you have these feelings that are powerful and if we totally ignore 'em,

then you get into what the psychodynamic people talk about transference,

the feelings still come out, but in inappropriately directed towards the

wrong people and destroying your life and destroying your relationships,

you know, you know, with me it's, it's feeling incredibly vulnerable.

Like I could lose ev anything, everything at any given time.

So I work like crazy to just, because I don't wanna be homeless again, you

know, like, and that's transference.

And, and so if I'm able to return to those feelings and, and sit with

it and, and ex fully experience, then maybe I won't let it transfer

out of the past into my present life and destroy everything around me.

So I think that's, that's a really important reason.

I think, I suspect that's an important function of music.

Sad music, hard music that's hard to listen to.

It's allowing people to be present with those feelings and, and that's the

yearning to feel, we want to feel that because it's, it integrates who we are.

It's like you don't have this past that you've tried to cut

yourself off from, that's not me.

I wanna be different from that.

It's all you at the same time.

Dr. Diana Hill: Yeah, so you used the words being present and that, with

feelings getting oriented in the here and now with what's here and now.

And that is our last, , yearning, which is the yearning to have orientation.

Let's talk, close it out with the, that yearning.

Dr. Steven Hayes: We year to be oriented because it, it

sort of situates this moment.

but you know, when we get Mindy about it, we disappear into the, you know,

the storied past of the feared future.

We worry, we ruminate, we leave our, our, our, present moment and

we miss that We are always here now.

And so that home base, when we can.

Find a place to sort of just be here and now with thoughts about the past or

future, that's it here and now too, but without allowing them to, you know, lure

us out of and disappearing and, and, kind of, time traveling and mind wandering.

And, you know, and, and you can even see it in the underlying neurobiology,

that when people learn how to meditate and they learn how to attend in a way

that's flexible, fluid and voluntary to broaden and narrow and shift and stay

to what's going on inside and out, a whole great portions of your underlying

neurobiology, which are busy out there, kind of almost wasting time and, and

mental energy doing stuff that's not of importance begins to calm down.

And really cool things happen, like your telomeres aren't being clipped

this quickly and you know, your stress Harmon aren't being released as easily.

And you kind of settled into the nice warm bath of here and now,

, and why would you wanna do that?

Because that's where life happens.

There's never a single moment of life that's happened in the future of the past.

Never happened.

So anything that you wanna do, anything in the earlier yearning that you wanna make

manifest can only happen if you have some skills of staying grounded in the present.

Humble, I mean, the word humble means dirt, humus, right?

Feet grounded.

If we can just be grounded, like get our feet on the ground, take a breath, and

be here, we now have our, a foundation laid where the next step can be taken.

Dr. Diana Hill: Feet on the ground.

When I, when I teach yoga to kids, I do feet on the ground, especially

when you do balanced poses.

And then you imagine one foot is growing roots and the roots are going down to

the ground and they're spreading out.

And then you get really rooted in that one foot.

And if you're rooted in that one foot, then you can lift

the other foot off and you can.

Play a little bit with it, but you need the rooted feet.

So,

close us out, Joseph, with how you ground yourself in the present moment

or, or thoughts about this orientation

Dr. Joseph Ciarrochi: I'm not really great at it.

I remember as a kid being able to kind of wander around the farm and

just totally be lost doing absolutely nothing laying in the grass, looking

up at the sky climbing trees.

I guess the main way would be through physical activity in martial arts and,

and being present to other people at the Dojo who are striving to improve

themselves under all different ages, older people, younger people,

and trying to be fully present and supportive for people around me.

That's probably the closest I come, I guess to, yeah, that

really satisfying that orientation.

It's very social for me.

Dr. Diana Hill: Yeah, I think that's important.

Going back to the not everyone crawls.

Not everyone does yoga, not everyone meditates.

And most people at some point can think back over their life of when did I,

what helped me get kind of grounded?

Get me here, get me in my body.

Maybe it's through another person.

Maybe it's through physical activity, strenuous physical activity, you

know, in a flow state, whatever it is.

But it's, it doesn't, we have to be careful about always

saying, take a breath to folks.

'cause I've gotten, I've gotten that pushback from many clients.

Like, I don't do that.

It's

Dr. Joseph Ciarrochi: Yeah, there's about, what is it?

like 50% of people, 40% take it up.

But you know, a lot of people don't take up structured meditation,

so you need to have alternatives.

But that's then thinking about life and the yearning for orientation.

I mean, kids know how to do it, so it doesn't require

really sophisticated skills.

Dr. Steven Hayes: Well, you know, to, some things that are always in the present.

your body's always in the present.

If you're with somebody, the relationship's always in the present.

Sensation is always in the present.

So that's another place to go is to take the things where you're taking care

of your body and put in some of these psychological trainings as part of it.

Dr. Diana Hill: Yeah.

Nice.

I'm so glad that you went down this, this yearning exploration.

I don't think, I don't, I haven't heard you do this verbally, and it's just

really fun to do it with both of you.

It's such an honor to do it with both of you.

And for those that want to read more about the yearning, go back to Liberated

Mind and read it through this lens.

And, it, it will, A Liberated Mind is sort of like my ACT Bible.

It's traveled all over, the world with me.

I take it whenever I go on retreats, it has flowers pressed in it from Colorado,

it's got underlined up the wazoo and it's, it's a phenomenal piece of work.

And then go check out What Makes You Stronger.

It's just packed full of a lot of the exercises that are, really putting these

yearnings into practice in your life.

And then if you are a, practitioner, clinician and you wanna take

these processes into the lives of your clients, then you go

into, look, go to the Psych flex.

app where all the research that Joseph and Steve are working on

are making it applicable so you can try it out on your clients.

You can get a process-based assessment.

You can learn about process-based therapy.

If you wanna know more, what is it?

Go there.

There's a ton of, short videos to learn process-based therapy

in that app, and then ways you can use it with your clients.

So that's Psych flex.

Check that out.

I'll put all of the, that information in the show notes.

So thank you too.

Dr. Joseph Ciarrochi: Thank you.

Dr. Steven Hayes: You.

Dr. Diana Hill: Okay, have a good rest of your day.

Get back to work, Joseph, on that paper and Yeah, it's almost done.

It's almost there.

It's good luck.

It's looking good.

Okay.

Take care.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Wise Effort Podcast.

Wise effort is about you taking your energy and putting it in the

places that matter most to you.

And when you do so, you'll get to savor the good of your life along the way.

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I.

Like to thank my team, my partner in all things, including the producer

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And thank you to Ben Gold at Bell and Branch for our new music.

This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only, and

it's not meant to be a substitute for mental health treatments.