_______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ Family Relations (Other Than Intimate Relations and Parenting)
This domain is about family, not about your husband or wife or children, but about other areas of family life. Think about what it means to be a son, daughter, aunt, uncle, cousin, grandparent, or in-law. What would you like to be about in your family relationships? You may think about this broadly or only in terms of your nuclear family. What values would you like to see manifest in your life in this area?
_______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ Friendship/Social Relations
Friendships are another area of personal relations that most people value. What kind of friend would you like to be? Think about your closest friends and see if you can connect with what you would like to have manifest in your life regarding your friends.
_______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ Career/Employment
Work and careers are important for most people because that area is where a great deal of your life is spent. Whether your work is humble or grand, the question of values in work pertains. What kind of an employee do you most want to be? What do you want to stand for in your work? What kind of a difference do you want to make through your job?
_______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ Education/Training/Personal Growth and Development
This area can cover all kinds of learning and personal development. School-based education is one. But this area includes all the things you do to learn, as well. Working through this book could be an example. What type of learner do you want to be? How would you like to engage with that area of your life?
_______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ Recreation/Leisure
Recreation, leisure, and relaxation are important to most of us. It is in those areas that we recharge our batteries; the activities in this area are often where we connect with family and friends. Think about what is meaningful to you about your hobbies, sports, avocations, play, vacations, and other forms of recreation. In these areas, what would you like to have manifest in your life?
_______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ Spirituality
By spirituality, we don’t necessarily mean organized religion, although that could certainly be included in this section. Spirituality includes everything that helps you feel connected to something larger than yourself, to a sense of wonder and transcendence in life. It includes your faith, spiritual and religious practices, and your connection with others in this domain. What do you most want to be about in this area of your life?
_______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ Citizenship
How would you like to contribute to society and be a member of the community? What do you really want to be about in social/political/charitable and community areas?
_______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ Health/Physical Well-Being
We are physical beings, and taking care of our bodies and our health through diet, exercise, and sound health practices is another important domain. What do you want to have revealed in your life in these areas?
_______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ Sometimes, we find that clients get confused about what values are, even at this point in the program. People often make the mistake of stating that they value something when, in fact, that chosen value has been dictated by the desire of others.
To test your values, look over the exercises above and ask yourself the following question in regard to each of the values you wrote down: “If no one knew that I was working on this, would I still do it?” If you find that you’ve written down statements that don’t “ring true,” or are more a matter of “being a good boy or girl” than stating what is truly in your heart, go back and edit what you wrote. This list is not for anyone else. It is for you.
RANKING AND TESTING YOUR VALUES
In some ways, it’s not very important that certain values are more meaningful to you than others. All of the things you wrote about in the exercises above are areas of your life that you would like to pursue in order to live more completely. However, it can be useful to put a rank marker on your values in order to see in which areas of your life you might begin to take action. Chapter 13 is about committed action. But before we get there, let’s figure out what you might want to commit to.
Look back over the work you just finished. Now, distill each area down to one key value (if you have several, you can pick the most important one), and write a phrase to remind you of that key value in the space below. Now rate each area in two ways. First, ask yourself how important this particular area is to you right now on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 meaning not at all important and 10 meaning extremely important. We aren’t asking if this area is important in your actual behavior; we are asking what you would want if you could have your life be as you would want it to be.
Then, rate each area according to your actual current behavior. How well have you been currently living this value on a scale of 1 to 10? With 1 meaning it is not at all manifested in my behavior to 10 meaning it is extremely well-manifested in my behavior.
Finally, subtract the score you got for your actual current behavior from the importance score above that to arrive at the total of your “life deviation” score.
The number on the far right is probably the most important. The higher that number, the more your life needs to change in this area to bring it in line with what you really care about. High numbers under the Life Deviation column are a sign and source of suffering. You may want to highlight or circle those numbers that show the largest gap between the importance of your values and their actual presence in your life.
COMMITTED ACTION
In chapter 13, you will take the information you gathered here, and we will help you to develop a specific means by which you can pursue the values you have uncovered in this chapter. The wonderful thing about values is that you can live them. Everything you have written about in this chapter is achievable. Note that we haven’t discussed “getting over” your emotional pain as a value. It isn’t. We have been discussing the kind of life you want to live. That life is available to you right now. What would your life be like if you truly got out of your mind and into your life?
Chapter 13
Committing to Doing It
You know what you want to be about. You probably knew before you even opene
d this book, although you may have kept it hidden from yourself to try to avoid your own vulnerability. When we care about something, we open ourselves to the possibility of feeling pain. If you really risk loving someone, you open yourself up to rejection, betrayal, and loss. If you really care about eliminating hunger, you open yourself up to a special pain when you see children having to go without.
“If I do not care, I will not be hurt” is how human minds keep values at arm’s length. Unfortunately, this move hurts even more than caring; it’s not the biting, alive, occasional hurt of caring and sometimes losing, but the dull, deadening, constant hurt of not living your life in a way that is true to yourself.
In the last chapters we put values on the table in some detail. The question you are now faced with is the same one we asked you earlier in the book: Given a distinction between you as a conscious being and the private experiences you’ve been struggling with, are you willing to experience those private experiences now, fully and without defense, as they are, not as they say they are, and actually do what takes you in the direction of your chosen values at this time and in this situation? This question requires a yes or no answer. Answering yes involves both a commitment to a course and actually changing your behavior. Some time from now, perhaps just moments from now, life will ask it again. Then again. And then again. And each time you will get to choose how you answer.
We’ll ask it in a less precise form: Are you willing to accept whatever discomfort your mind provides you AND commit to the values you explored in chapters 11 and 12 and to the behavior change they imply?
Saying yes doesn’t mean that your life will suddenly get easier, but it is guaranteed to become more alive. The alternative is something you already have experience with (and we’ve addressed it quite a bit throughout the book). You know what the costs are of sacrificing the life you want to live in behalf of your futile attempts to regulate your emotional pain. You know what it feels like to be confined and have the meaning and vitality drained out of your days by your struggle with your thoughts, feelings, behavioral predispositions, urges, memories, and bodily sensations that cause you discomfort. You know what it feels like to be trapped in your mind at the cost of your own vitality.
This chapter is all about doing it. It’s about making bold, committed steps in the direction of your values. It’s about doing this, not in spite of your pain (note that “spite” is a fighting word), but with your pain, if there is pain.
TAKING BOLD STEPS
It’s time to take some bold steps in the direction you want your life to move in. In the last chapter you explored and developed some ideas about what you value. Each of those values is a compass point by which you can chart the course of your life. The next thing to do is start walking in that direction. This is basically a four-part process that repeats itself endlessly: Contacting your values, developing goals that will move you in a valued direction, taking specific actions that will allow you to achieve those goals, and contacting and working with internal barriers to action.
Creating the Road Map: Setting Goals
Go back to the final worksheet you did in chapter 12. In it, you listed some values and assigned importance, manifestation, and life-deviation scores. It’s now time to decide which of those values you want to work toward enacting in your life right now. Ultimately, you’ll work on all of them, but for now let’s start with one. This will give you a model to follow for the other valued directions you want to take.
The values you choose to work on first can have a high life-deviation score, or if you sense that there are barriers there you are not yet ready to confront, you can choose something lower on your list. They are all important; they simply hold different levels of relative importance and you may pick any one to start with. If you want to live a fully engaged life you will pursue each of them in its course. For now, choose one area you would like to begin with. Write down your stated value on the line below:
_______________________________________________________________ If your value is the compass point by which you want to guide your life’s journey, your goals are the road map that can lead you there. Goals, as noted in earlier chapters, are different from values in that they are practical, obtainable events that move your life in the direction of your values. Goals are the guideposts by which you can mark your life’s journey, and they are important for a number of reasons. Goals give you a practical means to make your values manifest. They also offer you a metric against which you can measure your progress on your valued path. You may know what you want to be about, but without goals, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to live these values in the real world.
There is a danger that attaches to goals that we need to emphasize before we begin: goals can be obtained. This presents a danger because our verbal faculties are very much outcome-oriented, and the whole point of values is that they are process-oriented.
Suppose you are out skiing, and when you got off the lift, you mention to the person who rode up the lift with you that you plan to ski down to the lodge where you’re going to meet up with some friends for lunch. “No problem” this person replies, and suddenly he waves to a helicopter above, that upon his signal, swoops you up and speedily deposits you at the ski lodge. You protest vigorously, but the pilot is incredulous. He says, “What’s your beef, my friend? It was you who said the objective was to get from the summit down to the lodge!”
The helicopter pilot would have a point if getting to the lodge were the only issue. If it is, flying down the slope achieves exactly what skiing down achieves. Both have you start at the top and end up at the lodge. The helicopter even has notable advantages: you don’t get cold, or tired, or wet, for example. There is only one problem with this. The goal of getting to the lodge was meant to structure the process of skiing. That process was the true “goal.”
That’s what we meant when we said in chapter 11 that “outcome is the process through which process becomes the outcome.” You have to value “down” over “up” or you can’t do downhill skiing. Aiming at a specific goal (the lodge) allows you to “orienteer” one way to go down the hill. But the true goal is just to ski, not reaching the goal (the lodge).
In precisely the same way, the true goal of goals is to orient you toward your values so you can live a valued life, moment by moment. A successful ACT patient put it this way toward the end of therapy: “I just want to do this because that’s what I want my life to be about. It’s not really about any outcome. I want to be alive until I’m dead.” Goals can help you do exactly that. But be careful! Your mind will often claim that the true goal is the goal itself (after all, evaluating outcomes is what this organ evolved to do), and it will suggest that you should cut corners (like violate your integrity, or ignore other valued aspects of your life) to get there. That defeats the whole purpose, and if you succumb to cutting corners, accomplishing your goals will only mock you.
Goal Setting
To start developing your goals you’ll need to consider both short-term and long-term objectives. Short-term goals are the points on the map that are attainable in the near future; long-term goals are further down the road. Having both short-term and long-term goals makes for a paced journey that leads from one guidepost to the next. This is a very efficient way to travel. Theoretically, you could just wander around until you found your destination. But, as you know, that’s not very effective. Goal-oriented travel is much more practical.
Look back at the value you wrote down above. Now think of one thing you could do that would allow you to make that value manifest in a practical way. In the last several chapters, there have been various discussions on values and goals. There also have been a number of examples that may offer you some guidance. Remember to think about this in terms of a practical outcome. Don’t come up with something that is obviously outlandish.
If you’re a fifty-year-old salesclerk who values public service, and you decide your goal is to become the president of the United States, that isn’t likely to h
appen. Choose a goal that is a workable step in the direction of your values. If you are that fifty-year-old salesclerk who values public service, there are hundreds of ways you might approach making a public service contribution that is both practical and obtainable. For example, you could do volunteer work in your community, perhaps serve food at a soup kitchen. Or, you might want to campaign for someone running for local office.
This isn’t said to discourage you from taking bold steps. Be bold. But be real. Don’t be too easy on yourself, but be realistic and decide on something you can achieve.
Once you have your goal firmly in mind, write it down in the space below:
_______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ Now check your goal for the following items:
Is it practical?
Is it obtainable?
Does it work with your current situation?
Does this goal lead you in the direction of your stated value?
If you answered yes to these questions, then you have successfully created a goal for yourself. If you couldn’t answer yes to whatever you wrote down in the space above, go back over chapters 11 and 12 and try to get clearer on what a goal is. The next step is to figure out whether this is a long-term goal or a short-term goal and whether or not you will need to complete additional goals to get there.
Next, on the following time line, plot a point where this goal would fall for you. The far left of the time line is your life, starting today. The end of the time line is your death, some reasonable amount of time in the future. Where on this line does your goal fall?
The relative distance between where you are today and when you think you could reasonably achieve this goal will tell you whether it is a long-term or short-term goal. If you’ve established that your goal looks like a long-term one, you’ll need to develop some additional short-term goals to get there. If it’s a short-term goal, you might ask where this goal is leading you and where you’d like to go after it’s completed. Either way, you can return to the process described above until you are satisfied that you’ve produced a good set of long-term and short-term goals for the value you chose to work on. The following exercise will help you keep track of all this information.
Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life Page 26