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By Root 316 0

Gradually, lives began to change. Instead of watching TV, people were taking up street dancing or managing allotments. Instead of arguing and falling out, families were cooking together and playing board games. Volunteering took off, people became more neighbourly, and gradually the folk living in the community started to live healthier and more fulfilling lives. Two years later, when the nation’s obesity rates were still rising, this was the only area in the region where levels of adult and childhood obesity had fallen. We took various measurements from the people before and after DSD and the results were astonishing.

There was a marked and significant reduction in people’s anxiety and depression levels. So much so that two-thirds of the people who began the programme with a clinical level of depression were no longer depressed at the end.

Not only has the mental health of the community changed for the better, but their physical health has improved after DSD too. The frequency with which people took exercise doubled, from two days up to four days per week. The participants were eating an extra portion of fruit and veg every day. Their weight went down. Of the many smokers who went on the DSD quit programme, 88 per cent were smoke-free after six weeks. And people’s life satisfaction ratings, which were below average before DSD, shot up into the above-average range. People were happy or very happy with their lives after DSD. Of course, we measured people’s behavioural flexibility too and this also showed dramatic improvements after doing something different.

The stories of personal transformation are even more heart-warming than the statistics. We’ve lost count of the number of people who told us that this DSD community programme ‘changed their life’, ‘gave them their life back’, or even ‘saved my life’. Hear it in their own words on our website: www.DSD.me.

65. flex and world issues

So it’s now conceivable that many of the big problems on the planet result from people being incoherent. And being unable or unwilling to flex. For example, many people say they believe in saving the planet but fail to recycle, or save energy, or reduce their carbon footprint. Some people say they care about people, or hold religious views consistent with being compassionate, yet behave inhumanely or even start wars.

Coherence theory gives us insights into why many public social and health policies fail. Governments target their marketing efforts by trying to persuade us to change our minds. To understand why we should behave differently. We get bombarded with more and more information, health messages, directives or statistics to convince us of the need to change. We hear about the latest research and are told what we should do for our own good. These range from consuming a set number of units of alcohol, and five portions of fruit and veg a day, to the use of low-energy bulbs. This may serve to increase what we know – although often we knew it beforehand anyway. It mainly just adds to our incoherence by making the gulf between what we know and what we do even bigger. Because education alone will never bring about behaviour change.

Incoherence also has implications for the emotional and social economy. Many important factors that profoundly affect people are hidden from the individuals themselves, or from open dialogue, for emotional and deeper psychological reasons. A society in which people are more able to be open with themselves, and to know themselves and their capabilities and responsibilities, would be one in which a more honest discussion of social and political needs could take place. We would argue that this would be a direct consequence of greater coherence and that flex contains the seeds of the solutions.

There are three primary reasons why the social and emotional benefits of flex may be important for society. First, collectively, as well as individually, people do not have insight into why they do what they do, partly because of an over-reliance on the explicit and the conscious. flex reveals to the individual