What Sourdough Can Teach Us About Life
How Baking Bread Can Teach Psychological Flexibility
Life lessons appear in many unexpected places and if you’ve ever tried baking sourdough bread, you know it’s more than just mixing flour and water. You can definitely learn some life lessons from sourdough – it’s a process of patience, adaptation, and mindful presence. And we all need quite a bit of those in life!
Interestingly, these same qualities are part of psychological flexibility, an essential skill in mental well-being and the primary foundation of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). If you’d like, you can read more about how I use ACT in my therapy practice here – Living in Alignment.
So what is psychological flexibility? Simply put, it is the ability to adapt to change, stay present, and move toward what matters. It can help us navigate stress, uncertainty, and emotional challenges. Just like with sourdough – life requires us to embrace the unexpected, let go of rigid expectations, and trust the process.
The ACT model is full of metaphors and if you know me, you know I love metaphors! Baking sourdough turned out to become a great one, so here are three powerful life lessons from sourdough…
Patience & Letting Go of Control
Practicing Acceptance
One of the first things you learn when making sourdough is that you can’t rush the process. The starter takes time to develop, the dough needs hours to ferment, and even then, the final result is unpredictable.
In life, we often struggle with control and impatience – wanting instant results, resisting uncertainty, or getting frustrated when things don’t go as planned. Psychological flexibility teaches us to accept what we can’t control and focus on how we respond instead.
Acceptance is one of the six core processes of psychological flexibility. It is about opening up and making space for our thoughts and feelings instead of trying to control the them, or in the case of baking sourdough – the outcome. Patience and Acceptance can really go hand in hand.
The Value of Patience
As they say “patience is a virtue”. Our patience can be continuously tested by so many things – driving, waiting in line, raising children (three teenagers here!). Often patience is essential to any sort of success or at a minimum, maintaining composure under stress. But how good are we at being patient and how do we improve on it?
Practice.
Practicing patience can involve things like mindfulness, breath work, and positive self-talk. To be able to slow down, take perspective, and speak kindly to yourself as you work through whatever is testing your patience takes time and you guessed it, practice.
Something I experienced when learning to make sourdough… when a loaf came out flat, my patience was definitely tested. Instead of tossing it (like I was tempted to do), I chose to adjust and took another viewpoint (thanks to a friend’s suggestion) – I made croutons instead! Patience with myself and acceptance when things didn’t go quite right were almost essential. And the croutons were actually super good!
Additionally, all of it this can relate to what’s referred to as “flexible perspective taking” within the ACT model. It can be seen as an extension of mindfulness – or notably also called your “observing self” – the ability to focus on a stable, grounded, and enduring sense of self that is able to have a flexible perspective. We all know the saying “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade” – connecting this to making croutons out of a flat loaf really had my mind entertained!
Adaptability & Embracing Imperfection
Learning Cognitive Defusion
No two loaves of sourdough turn out the same. Factors like temperature, humidity, and fermentation time all impact the final product. Learning to bake sourdough meant learning to adjust and adapt, rather than obsessing over achieving perfection. This is all rooted in my thinking.
Similarly, in life, we often get stuck in rigid thinking such as:
- “Things should be different”
- “I have to get this right”
- “If it’s not perfect, I failed”
- [insert your own rigid thought]
This is where cognitive defusion (a key part of psychological flexibility) helps you get unstuck. Instead of being controlled by thoughts of perfectionism or self-criticism, we can take a step back and see them as just thoughts – not absolute truths.
Baking sourdough has definitely challenged me to overcome perfectionism, helping me adapt to something not turning out just right and pivot towards a new outcome. And truly, things that didn’t look quite right often tasted just as good!
Often we become “hooked” by our thinking, resulting in an emotional response, and ultimately behaving in a certain way that might not be quite aligned with our values. ACT and defusion really help us to hold our thoughts lightly, instead of clutching them tightly – then stepping forward in alignment with our values.
So, next time you find yourself caught up in perfectionism and struggling to adapt, remember to become curious about your thinking and simply practice noticing “I notice I’m thinking I need to get the exactly right, do I really?”. Shift perspectives and practice mindfulness, grounding you in the moment instead.
Presence & Mindful Action
Embracing Present-Moment Awareness
Sourdough baking is a hands-on experience. You knead the dough, feel its texture change, and learn to listen to what it needs. It’s an embodied, sensory process, requiring full attention and presence. But only if you let it be. You could just rush through the motions of it, or you can soak it in. Mindfulness and present moment awareness is a choice and in ACT, it is one of the core processes within psychological flexibility. I often tell clients “the very first step is awareness – it’s where it all begins”.
When we apply this to life, we realize how often we’re distracted – overthinking the past or worrying about the future instead of being fully present. Mindfulness teaches us that clarity and peace come from tuning into the now, whether it’s feeling the dough between your fingers or simply taking a deep breath.
Mindfulness practice is something I teach to clients and strongly encourage a regular daily practice, often recommending my favorite app, Insight Timer. Developing this skill helps to highlight your ability to be present, notice your thinking, and engage in values-based living – which is what Living in Alignment is all about.
Key Takeaway Questions for You to Consider:
- What’s something in your life right now that feels uncertain or frustrating?
- Instead of reacting, how can you practice patience, acceptance, and change perspective?
- How can you practice defusion when you find you are stuck in perfectionism or rigid thinking?
- Where in your life can you slow down and be more present today?
- Where could a mindfulness practice fit into your daily routines?
Baking sourdough has now become a hobby I truly enjoy! Thanks for reading and if you’re interested, you can join the monthly newsletter on my website Living in Alignment. Just go down to the bottom of the homepage and enter your info!
“Knowledge is flour, wisdom is bread.”
