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I’m writing a book. The working title is: Reinventing Mindset: A rapid, evidence-based guide to manage stress, improve performance and play your infinite game.

And I need your help.

For this book to have the impact I want, I’m releasing each chapter as I write it for feedback.

So please, as I share these, let me know:

What do you love? What do you hate? Is there something missing? Is there something to be removed? Do you have any questions? Does this need more examples?

Here are the previous chapters:

1. Start Here
2. Mindset Lessons From My Toughest Olympic Moment
3. My 2016 Crucible And Why Psychological Flexibility Matters
4. Contemplating Death: The Unexpected Path To Personal Commitment

Thank you in advance! Let’s jump into Chapter 5.

Now we’ve contemplated death and made that commitment to ourselves, let’s personalise the toolkit of psychological flexibility for you.

Here’s the core model of the science again – the ACT Triflex.

We’ll start with the bottom left corner: Open Up.

Open Up

As I’ve written previously, Open Up is not about opening up to other people (although that may be an action that you choose to take).

Rather, Open Up is learning how to open up to and embrace the full range of our internal experiences – thoughts, feelings and sensations – both positive and negative.

When these internal experiences are unhelpful, we can call them Hooks. Hooks pull us away or hold us back from being and acting as the person we want to be.

Open Up is about being willing to plan for our hooks, to know that they’re coming and to accept them when they do. It’s about recognising hooks as a part of life rather than trying to control, get rid of or prevent them from showing up in the first place.

To develop this pillar of the model, there are two evidence-based practices we’ll personalise for you in this chapter:

1. De-fusion
2. Acceptance

We’ll start with De-fusion.

De-fusion

Let’s run a quick demo.

Keeping your eyes open, bring your hands up to your face to cover your eyes.

Your vision is extremely limited isn’t it?

Now, keeping your eyes open, move your hands away from your face.

Can you see more?

Of course.

This is what de-fusion is about.

When we are “fused” with our thoughts, feelings and sensations, it’s like having our hands right up against our eyes. We get caught up in our hooks. It can be hard to see the options around us.

If we can “de-fuse” from these experiences, we can create the space we need to choose how we act.

One of the important points to note in this exercise is that we DON’T try to change our hands in this instance. Our hands – representing our hooks – remain exactly the same, although our perspective shifts.

This is a critical insight into a new way to work with the hooks that show up for us in life.

One of the simplest ways to de-fuse from our hooks is to write them down.

We are going to do this by jumping straight into an exercise to add to your note in your phone or notepad.

New header for your Reinvention Note

Create a new header in your note titled: Open Up.

Challenging Situation

Choose a situation that you are currently find challenging at work, in your relationships, with your health or anything else. It’s up to you.

In less than five words, write a very brief description of it in your note. (eg wrangling bedtime with kids, performance conversation with John, going for a run, presentation to board, investor pitch, leaving my job, starting a business, applying for a new role etc)

Hooks

Now answer the following questions in your note to get into the detail of the hooks showing up for you in this situation.

Give yourself 30 secs for each response so we don’t get lost in the process.

1. When you think about that situation, what are the difficult or unhelpful thoughts that show up for you? What are you saying to yourself?
2. What are the difficult or unhelpful emotions that show up for you? What do you feel? (eg anxiety, frustration, resentment, anger, fury, sadness)
3. What are the difficult or unhelpful sensations that show up for you? Ie what are your physiological experiences (eg sweaty palms, fatigue, headache, butterflies in the stomach, shortness of breath)?
4. When you think about the difficult or unhelpful thoughts, feelings and sensations as an experience, where do you feel them in or around your body?
5. Do they have a shape? (eg ball, hoodie, blanket, pyramid, drum)
6. Do they have a size? (eg marble, golf ball, football, mountain)
7. Do they have a colour? (eg black, red, orange, green)
8. Do they have a texture? (eg slimy, smooth, foggy, hard, soft, sharp, prickly)
9. Do they have a weight? (eg heavy, light, dense)
10. When you think about that as a whole experience, can you give it a name? (eg Mara, Wrecking Ball, Scrooge, Venom, Trent, Hades)

Worked Example

Here is a worked example of this exercise from one of my clients.

Challenging Situation

Can you please write down your situation? What’s happening? For how long?

I’m terrified of running and haven’t run for 17 years.

Hooks

When you think about that situation, what are the difficult or unhelpful thoughts that show up for you? What are you saying to yourself?

This is scary. I’ll embarrass myself. I can’t run. I’ll look like a fool to my partner. Can’t believe I’m afraid of this. It’s too hard. I’ll do something else. I’ll go to the gym instead.

What are the difficult or unhelpful emotions that show up for you? What do you feel?

Fear of embarrassment, fear of failure, a bit ashamed, anxious, scared.

What are the difficult or unhelpful sensations that show up for you? Ie what are your physiological experiences (eg sweaty palms, butterflies in the stomach, shortness of breath)?

Tightness of breath. Heaviness in my chest.

When you think about the difficult or unhelpful thoughts, feelings and sensations as an experience, where do you feel them in or around your body?

On my chest.

Do they have a shape?

It’s an oblong.

Do they have a size?

It’s the full width of my body and goes from my neck to my sternum. It’s about 10cms thick.

Do they have a colour?

Aqua.

Do they have a texture?

Smooth. With sharp edges.

Do they have a weight?

Heavy. Really heavy.

When you think about that as a whole experience, can you give it a name?

I’ll call it Oblong for now.

Take a look at the notes you’ve just made.

Congratulations, you’ve just practiced de-fusion.

By writing down your answers, you’ve created some space between you and your hooks. Now is the opportunity for you to recognise these thoughts as thoughts, feelings as feelings and sensations as sensations.

By doing this you’ve created some space to recognise that you still have a choice of how you want to act in this situation.

Now let’s combine this with Acceptance.

Acceptance

There is a story in Buddhism where Buddha, an enlightened being and Mara, the demon of everything awful, have a cosmic battle. Eventually Mara slinks off into the cosmos and Buddha walks away unscathed.

A little while later, Buddha is at home and hears a knock at the door. When he opens the door, standing there outside is the demon Mara.

Buddha says: “Welcome back Mara. It’s good to see you again.” He invites Mara inside, pours tea and treats them as a revered house guest. After some time, Mara walks away.

This doesn’t happen just once.

For the rest of Buddha’s life, even as an enlightened being, Mara keeps on knocking on the door. Each time, Buddha opens the door, invites Mara in and continues to treat Mara as a revered house guest. And each time Mara eventually walks away.

This is the metaphor for Acceptance.

The idea that our tough stuff is with us for life. And that it will continue to knock, regardless of what we do. Therefore, the only answer is to recognise that Acceptance is a never ending practice of opening the door to our tough stuff and welcoming it in.

When I learned about this story, I decided to call my own hooks Mara.

How does Mara show up for me?

Well, one of my oldest stories is imposter syndrome and it has shown up in all sorts of places in my life.

For example I always felt like I was the last person selected on water polo teams even up to the Olympics.

Or whenever I stand up in front of a room, even after hundreds of presentations to thousands of people at some of the world’s most celebrated organisations, I still feel like an imposter. The unhelpful thoughts show up: Why will they listen to me? Who am I to be talking about this? Am I good enough? And the adrenaline surges through my body. Not just on the day either – sometimes it’s a pattern in the weeks leading up to a particularly important presentation. The 2am wake up with an elevated heart rate and body temperature is a common pattern for me.

Or sometimes Mara shows up differently.

As a parent, when the toys are still not put away, yet again and it feels like the final straw, Mara shows up as anger. I’ve only experienced this level of anger when I was punched in the head in a water polo game. How is it possible to love my children so completely and yet still have this experience?

Sometimes, on those occasions, I find myself in the kitchen with two hands on my chest, saying to myself: “Welcome back Mara. It’s good to see you again.” Even when it feels anything but good.

Because Mara keeps knocking.

And I keep trying to welcome Mara back in because it’s too important not to.

I don’t want to operate as a parent from that level of anger. Because if I do, and at times I have, everyone loses.

Price of entry

Of all the pillars of the triflex, Open Up is the hardest in my experience.

Because we’ve been taught the opposite. To get rid of all tough thoughts, feelings and sensations. That we should push them away as hard as possible. That they should never show up in the first place.

But when I look back, nothing I’ve ever done has been able to get rid of them completely.

So I’ve begun the never ending practice of accepting them. No longer do I see my hooks as an enemy to defeat, but a part of life and a part of me to accept – as uncomfortable as that can feel at times.

It doesn’t stop them showing up though.

I now think of these experiences as the price of entry to doing what I care about.

Because we don’t typically experience our hooks at their loudest when we’re washing the dishes, do we?

The fact that the hooks show up is not because we are weak or broken or inadequate or something is missing.

It is because we care.

In fact the more we care, the more important something is to us, the more likely it is that these experiences will show up.

That’s why the exam feels harder than the exercises in the textbook.

It’s why game day feels different to the training session.

It’s why difficult conversations feel most difficult with the people we love.

It’s why I thought I had a stomach infection the day I arrived in the Olympic Village and why it vanished the day I left. It was my physiological response to the stress and pressure I was experiencing in those 16 days that I had built up to be the most important experience in my life.

Now rather than trying to breakthrough these hooks, I bring them with me.

There is no longer the need to fight, to overcome, to break through because it’s a part of who I am and that’s ok.

It’s why suffering must be included in our infinite game. It’s never going away so we need to learn to work with it.

My coaching work also has helped me to understand that behind all of the incredible trophy cabinets that I’ve seen from gold medal athletes, elite military, wildly successful entrepreneurs and executives all with decades of experience and lists of awards and recognition, no one escapes. Everyone has this experience in one way or another. It’s our willingness and our competence in sitting with these internal experiences that dictates how well we can choose our response.

And that’s the beauty of psychological flexibility. With practice, we can learn to absorb the hits of our hooks and bounce back.

You now have two evidence based techniques in your pocket.

1. De-fusion – Writing down your hooks.
2. Acceptance – Giving your hooks a label and welcoming them in.

Now we’ve personalised your tool kit for Open Up, it’s time to move on to Be Present.