One of the biggest lessons on human flourishing comes from a formula for suffering: suffering = pain x resistance. To witness this calculus in action, consider a recent moment of discontent that resulted from an undesirable event. Upon careful investigation, we’d likely realize that much of our psychological suffering was due to the deluge of gloomy thoughts, feelings, and judgments we unleashed upon ourselves in reaction to the event. It’s as if our fading fortunes weren’t bad enough, we had to punish ourselves further with shame and self-criticism. Pain is inevitable in a human life. But the considerable say we have in the second variable of the formula—resistance—gives us a pathway for altering the outcome. One antidote to resistance is acceptance: simply being with the difficult emotion without attempting to control or alter its quality, duration, or intensity. It’s a counterintuitive response to pain. Yet acceptance-based interventions, such as acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), have shown promise in alleviating human suffering, with research demonstrating reductions in stress, pain, anxiety, depression, and other psychopathological symptoms. Acceptance …