Can a zebra change its stripes?

Consider a person with an extroverted personality. This person loves social interaction. They are the life of the party, and feel wonderful when surrounded by lots of people. They engage strangers at the grocery store, or in line at the bakery. Now, imagine they tried to “make the decision” to live a reserved, quiet, isolated life. Never again spending time in larger groups, avoiding new interactions with people while walking through their neighborhood. You are correct in thinking that this adjustment would be a monumental sacrifice for a person who, normally, is energized by engaging with people.

Exploring my values…

Values are similar. While we can bend the values we have in order to help us be as successful as possible, we can not simply make up new values for ourselves. What we can do, however, is identify the areas where we would like to be stronger and put effort into building those things up. Here are a couple things to consider when assessing what your values are:

1. Who are the people you admire?
   • Taking a look at the people you admire, and assessing what it is that you admire about them, can help you identify what some of your values might be. This might be people in your life, or even characters in your favorite novels.
2. What moments inspire you to action?
   • It is often the case that our values manifest themselves through our actions. Consider the things that you stand for.
   • What moments in your life cause you to stop what you were doing to intervene? These moments might help you understand your values more deeply.
3. When do you feel most natural?
   • Consider the moments in your life where you feel most connected to yourself. Is that moment one where you are reading a book, exercising, or talking with friends? Maybe you just aced a difficult exam.
   • Feeling “congruent,” like the world inside you is matched up with the world outside of you, is a really good way to identify the moments you may be living out your values. Pay attention next time you are in one of those moments.

What next?

Search Google for a “List of Values” and see what types of words strike you. Consider picking out 3-5 words that really strike you. How would you define those different values? What actions do you believe reinforce that value in your life? What kinds of things could you accomplish if you really tried to live out these values every day? And is there more that you could do to incorporate these values in your daily life?

Check out some of our other posts, as well:

Man’s Search for Meaning

Personality: The heart of diversity

What is Leadership?

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The Observing Self v. The Conceptualized Self

People often describe themselves in terms of their self-self-percieved role in the world. For example: “I am a nice guy,” “I am a people person,” “I am a hard worker,” or “I am a parent of two kids.”  We clump these little snippets of ourselves together in order to form a larger narrative about who we are, and our place(s) in the world. “That’s just the way I am,” is an often popular sentiment. And the conclusion to the sentence “I am a person who _____ ,“ is the beginning of a statement capable of generating scores of reasonable and accurate responses.

This kind of thinking is a slippery slope, however, and it is pretty easy to understand why. Over time we generate dozens of these little self-stories that fuse with our identity and form our persona. Defining who we are. And becoming what we say we are is one of our greatest ambitions. We want to be congruent. We—the observing-self—are trying to be who we—the conceptualized-self—say/think we are. And in the event that, for whatever reason, our personal story about ourselves changes we now have to reconcile that change. To our own self, and the world around us.

Problem of being fused to the conceptualized self:

Think about an example of a girl who graduated at the top of her high school class. She dreamt about becoming a lawyer. She talked with her family and friends about her goals. In college she did well in her classes but during her Junior year she decided that law school was just not a good fit. Can you imagine how difficult this conclusion might be for her? Especially if she has been wrestling privately with this decision for weeks, months, or even years. How difficult would it be to see her friends on summer break and explain the reasons law was not longer her passion?

Well, if she is not fused to her conceptualized-self it should not be terribly difficult. After all, people change their minds all the time. However, in building up this conceptualized version of herself attempts to make changes could be met with great resistance. Not only internally, but externally as well. This might lead a person to attempt to maintain congruence between their attachment to their conceptualized self and their observing-self.

The alternative is being filled with guilt about disinterest in law school. Telling your friends that you had a change of heart seems difficult. Taking yourself seriously may seem more difficult. After all, you abandon a long held belief. What’ might you abandon next? Conversations about your future are something you may not fully understand yourself. And we are expected to explain, or defend these decisions to other people? Friends and family simply want what is best for us. We know that. The difficulty is that they adopted our believe that Law school was what’s best for us. Now, they need to have that believe structure modified.

“Fusion with the conceptualized-self can lead to an attempt to maintain consistency by distorting or reinterpreting events if they seem inconsistent with the self-story.”

What about another example?

Imagine that I believe myself to be a kind person. Believing that I am kind, I may have a very difficult time interpreting my own behavior as unkind. In fact, if I am fused to the concept that I am kind person, I may distort or reinterpret events in order to maintain consistency with my self-story. This is a common attribution error made by people who bully others—‘I couldn’t possibly be a bully, I was just joking around.’ Our goal should be one of stepping away from our conceptualized-self so that we can weaken those attachments, and more realistically assess if we are living according to our values. Again, “fusion with the conceptualized-self can lead to an attempt to maintain consistency by distorting or reinterpreting events if they seem inconsistent with the self-story” (Hayes, Strosahl, & Wilson, 2012).

What can we do to integrate ourselves?

So, how do we battle against the tendency to build attachments to the conceptualized versions of ourselves? The first step is to take an open, loving, and accepting perspective of yourself. Being conscious of your own reality can also help you empathize with others. The second benefit to taking an open perspective of yourself could be that you allow yourself to process changes as they happen, in the moment. In the example of the young pre-law student above, if she took and open/accepting perspective, she may have noticed that her values shifting from law, to something else.

Trouble comes when those kinds of things sneak up on us. And out of nowhere, create chaos in a place where we thought was organized and structured. The second way to make congruent the relationship between the observing-self and conceptualized-self is to align your actions with your personal values. In that case, your observing-self can always look at your conceptualized-self and consider whether your actions are moving you closer or further from your valued endpoint.

An activity to conclude:

We could even use this strategy to better understand if we are making the “right” choices. or not. We know what is “right” based on whether our choices produce an outcome that we find acceptable. Lastly, self-as-context is deeply related to mindfulness. And it might be helpful to try an activity to illustrate the point:

if you are concerned that your conceptualized-self is dominating your observing-self, close your eyes and simply notice your thoughts. Notice where they are around/inside/above/below you. Notice if they are pictures, or sounds, or a movie playing along in your mind. Bring your attention to the fact that your thoughts are ‘over there,’ and you are the one who is observing them. Now, bring your attention to how you are sitting. Notice what you can see, smell, taste, and hear. At each of those points, bring your attention to the fact that you are noticing (e.g., notice how you are sitting, and as you do, be aware that you are noticing).

Bringing ourselves into the present moment in a mindful and conscious way will help us to remain oriented to our observing-self. Which will help us remain de-fused from our conceptualized-self. After all, it is ok to remain flexible throughout our lives while we develop our Values, and attempt to live meaningful lives.

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Fusion is when our thoughts entangle with our perception more than our immediate experience in the world. Throughout the day, all kinds of thoughts ‘Pop!’ into our heads. Sometimes these thoughts are pleasant. Sometimes they are not. These thoughts can be associated with things that are happening around us in any given moment. Sometimes these thoughts are associated only with what is going on inside of us. But they are always associated with words (we would not to know what to make of them if they were not!). Our recent post on Psychological Flexibility talked about the difficulty that is presented when we attempt to control the thoughts that ‘Pop!’ into our heads. That we are, more likely than not, going to end up giving those thoughts even more ability to be disruptive.

The goal of being flexible is not to eliminate troublesome thoughts or attempt to control the ones that ‘Pop!’ up in order to reduce one’s suffering. The goal is to use those troublesome thoughts to establish your values, grow as a person, and pursue meaning. Sometimes we can become “fused” with our thoughts and we find it difficult to separate our experience in the world, from that experience we have with our thoughts about the world. Said another way, because we associate everything in the world with language sometimes the words we use to think about the world end up influencing our behavior even more than the actual world around us.  

Can we step back and look at our thoughts?

There are all kinds of instances where we fuse with unhelpful thoughts. How quickly does making a mistake in our lives translate into that classic thought “I’m so stupid.” How about being called to the office, or having a teacher ask to speak to you after class? I remember all kinds of thoughts welling up when I was young and got a request like that. Well, these types of ideas are the kinds that we internalize over time and can tend to be a very sticky things that we end up fused to. The technique of defusion is one that encourages us to step back, and look at our thoughts, instead of looking at the world from the perspective of our thoughts. After all, we can not simply control or eliminate our thoughts.

This is why it is critical to pull the words away from their meaning. Particularly if those words are not helpful. In the example of a person making a small mistake and immediately having the thought “I am stupid” ‘Pop!’ into their head (we have all been there), we can first simply start by acknowledging the fact that I am having the thought that “I am stupid”as a result of something that happened outside of my head. This moves us one layer away from being fused to an otherwise unhelpful thought and gives us a little space between ourselves and the thought.  

Diffusion from the words we tie to the world

Being called down to the office often results in feelings of stress and anxiety. It can force us into a situation where we are rehearsing for ourselves a situation where we believe that the only reason that we would be called to the office is if we were in trouble. Therefore, the reason that we are being called to the office IS that we ARE in trouble. Again, something happens and it spotlights an area where we are fused to our thoughts. Defusion is the process of stepping away from those thoughts and giving yourself room to breathe. So, instead of fusing to the thought “I am being called to the office so I must be in trouble,” remind yourself that “I am having the thought that I am going to be in trouble because I was called to the office,” and see that although there is anxiety in both statements, in the second you have a little bit of space between your thoughts.

This step allows you to evaluate your choices more objectively, and take action. So, if you have been asked to stay after class by a teacher and you feel your heart beating fast and your palms getting sweaty, the first step might be to say to yourself ‘I am noticing that I am feeling very anxious at this request’ and then resist the powerful drive to avoid the feelings of this thing that is creating worry. giving you the chance to slow down your thinking. Recognize that you just did very well on the last test. And consider that the teacher may want to ask that you help others who may be struggling with the material; or that the teacher had some ideas about a project that they knew you were working on and is excited to talk to you about them!  

Fusing to thoughts that affect our behavior

Let’s think about another example: when I was a kid I was a competitive swimmer. I started swimming when I was 6 years old, and I swam all the way through college at the University of Utah. At different points in the year local, regional, and national level competitions would be scheduled, and it was usually the case that within any 6-month period of time, I was preparing for a “big-race.” I was training long hours, and putting lots of pressure on myself to do well. Before college I was really trying to ensure that I could earn a scholarship to University, and in college I really wanted to keep my scholarship and do the best I can for the team to qualify for bigger races.

On any given week I could gauge my performance relative to a strict schedule that was put together to track my progress (this was a schedule that I put together with the coaches at the beginning of every season as a way to ensure that we could meet our goals). Suppose that I am becoming increasingly nervous about how I will perform on the day of the “big-race,” and I start visualizing myself ‘choking.’ I might imagine my teammates being disappointed in me. I might think about having a tough conversation with my coaches after a disappointing result. In fact, just thinking about what my coach might say in response to falling short of our goals caused me to panic. Raising my concerns about failure even further. In some sense, I seem to have stumbled on this treasure trove of anxiety that starts to identify the big race as a negative one, even though we are still weeks away.  

Acceptance v. Avoidance

In a state where I am fused to my thoughts, the thought of the disappointment, panic, and sadness associated with all of the preparation I had been doing not providing the result that I expected would become the focus of my anxiety. Not the big race itself. Notice, in this example, that I am weeks away from the big race. In fact, I may never have been to a competition like this before. Yet, because of fusion, many of the verbal tools that I use to describe my feelings about the big race have brought the anxiety of the performance that is months away, right to my door step. Today. And without having even been to the big-race, I am already experiencing the feelings of panic and anxiety that are tied to my perceived failure.

At this point, I have the option of Experiential Avoidance, or the idea that moving toward something of value often will bring up feelings that are not positive (e.g., think about the goal of going to college versus the stress of taking the SATs). Avoidance causes people to not attempt things that are difficult for fear of failure. Defusing from thoughts and simply try to notice feeling anxious about the big race gives me a bit of space. Separating me from the anxiety, and giving me a chance to make a plan and keep moving towards my goals and values. Remember, the goal of defusion is to get your arms around the language we use so that it does not control us (become fused to our actions), and we can manage difficulty on our way to living out our values and chasing after meaning in our lives!

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Rules dominate our lives. We should stop at red lights. When we find a line, we stand in it. But there is an even more basic rule about what has motivated us throughout our history: avoid ‘bad’ things, and seek out ‘good’ things. Acceptance is confronting the negatives as inevitable. You can see how this kind of thinking served us well for a long time. We should avoid cold and seek warmth. Avoid danger and seek safety. And avoid people who want to harm us and seek those who want to embrace us. One can see how this kind of thinking worked well for a long time; however, things got complicated when we started using language to describe not only the world around us, but the world inside of us.

What does our language have to do with Acceptance?

We use words to label a wide range of feelings (e.g., anxiety, sadness, fear, happiness, joy, love), and we have simultaneously transcribed those feelings on our established axiom of avoiding bad and seeking good. Anxiety, stress, and fear are labeled “bad things,” that must be avoided. While seeking after happiness, joy, and love is a “good” thing. While an understandable conclusion, we forget that anxiety, sadness, and fear are simply emotional responses to aversive events. Not the events themselves.

How does Acceptance relate to Experiential Avoidance?

This idea is at the center of experiential avoidance, and it stops us from being able to make the voluntary and values-based choice to remain in contact with personal experiences in a non-judgmental way. Let’s think about an example: applying for college. This is a huge undertaking that often takes months or even years of planning. Taking the SAT/ACT, writing personal statements, asking teachers to write letters of recommendation, researching schools, the expense and time involved in applications, are just a few of the complicated steps. And you risk doing all that work and still not get into the college you hoped for.

Even though the entire process is incredibly stressful and gives us the feeling that turning back would be the best thing, we persist. We persist, in spite of possible rejection. And the reason we persist is because we know that the potential upside will be worth it. Even if we have to endure a bumpy road along the way. Well, the harm of experiential avoidance comes when we let the stress involved in the application process turn us around. Forcing us to run the other way before we even get the chance to fail.

Moving toward something we want often brings out negative thoughts and feelings (e.g., What if I fail; What if it doesn’t work out; What if we break up) and moving away from those thoughts brings relief. Even if we were moving toward something that would have brought us a lifetime of fulfillment. If we act as though our goal is to avoid stressful emotions, we start to construct our lives around avoiding things that we don’t want, instead of moving toward things that we do want.

Pursuing things that really matter can be discouraging

Well, what do we do to fight against those negative feelings that come up while we work toward things that we think matter? We have to keep in mind that those feelings are simply a normal reaction to values-based action. Acceptance is a values-based choice. It is not failure or tolerance. Acceptance is not giving-up or giving in.

The goal of acceptance is to acknowledge that we are demanded by life itself to feel, think, sense, and remember the things that come up in the process of living a meaningful life. Even though some of those things may not be pleasant. It is to acknowledge the fact that while we pursue the things that are important to us, we can expect to encounter rough waters. We can expect to second guess ourselves. And have people we care about second guessing us. But attempting to scour out the (alleged) sources of our anxiety so that we can control them will always leave us trying to dig our way out of a hole.

Instead, we should opt to curiously explore the nature of our anxiety, our fears, and our stressors. We should accept that stress is a normal part of life. Moving toward our values should not be inhibited by anticipated stress. In fact, there are several things that we can do to increase the likelihood that we choose acceptance v. avoidance:

1) always remember that regardless of what it may look like on social media, EVERYONE is going to experience bumps in the road, and we should be very careful when we think that it would just be easier to trade places with someone else;

2) remember that moving towards the things that we value can present with difficult times, but weathering the storm will be worth it; and

3) know that feelings of stress and fear, and anxiety, and sadness can be very normal things that we all experience!

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What are the things that can get in our way?

How does one manage all of the stress?

Align with our Values?

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            -Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

Introduction

Dr. Viktor E. Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist and a Holocaust survivor, survived 3 years in Nazi death camps, including Auschwitz and Dachau. After his liberation, and over a 9-day period in 1945, he wrote a book detailing his experiences. In his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl describes, in vivid detail, the process by which the Nazi’s shipped millions of people to concentration camps, stripped them of their humanity, and worked them to death in the name of racial superiority.

Numerous passages iterated and reiterated the message that “everything not connected with the immediate task of keeping oneself and one’s closest friends alive lost its value. Everything was sacrificed to this end.” And by stripping people of their values, the Nazi’s stripped people of their individuality; creating a void for the value and dignity of the individual human life at the altar of simply seeing the mass of numbers enslaved in the camps—”herded, from place to place, like animals.”

Pursue meaning above all else

Man’s Search for Meaning is meant to be an example to readers that there is meaning to be found in life. At all times. And in the most abhorrent conditions. Fyodor Dostoevsky, the Russian novelist, said that “man is a creature that can get accustomed to anything,” and Frankl writes this into clarity through the glimpse he gives readers into how he, and others, survived unimaginable conditions. Following this experience, Frankl developed a type of therapy called Logotherapy. Logos is a Greek word which denotes ‘meaning,’ or ‘reason.’

It was Frankl’s position, echoing Nietzsche, that ‘he who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how,” and that one must have an aim for their lives in order to strengthen them to bear the terrible how of their existence. Thus, searching out meaning in our lives may be the healthiest thing we can do for ourselves. It may even be the purpose of life itself. What’s more, in the event that we are faced with unchangeable suffering, we have the freedom to choose the stance we take and the perspective we have about that suffering.

Coping with difficulty

Throughout our lives, we are going to be faced with difficulty. It is all but guaranteed. Knowing that we are strong enough to deal with any situation, and that we can deal with the most difficult situations in life by focusing on our ability to pursue meaningful activities, is Frankl’s recommendation. Keeping in mind that “pleasure is, and must remain, a side-effect or by-product, and is destroyed and spoiled to the degree to which it is made a goal in itself” will support each of us in focusing on what is meaningful. Not what we believe is pleasurable.

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            So, if the purpose of values is to moderate our behavior and help us experience a meaningful life then we ultimately need to act on those values in order to create the world that we want to live in. That is the idea of Committed Action, the final step in the ACT model. Steven Hayes suggests that “committed action is a choice to behave in a particular way on purpose…so that individual moments of action have the potential to lead to larger patterns of values-based behavior.” We might think about a marriage as one example. In my marriage, if my wife brings me coffee in the morning and it makes me grateful for the relationship we have together, it is not directly related to the coffee. After all, my co-worker brought me coffee last week, and I am not married to them! So, what is it about my wife bringing me coffee that makes me reflect on how grateful I am for the relationship? My wife bringing me coffee is not viewed as simply a cup of coffee, it is a reflection of our long history together, our families bonded together, the life we have built together, and the future that we hope to reside in. You discover that marriage is not really one giant thing, but a million little decision over a long period of time. Which is what the notion of ‘individual moments of action having the potential to lead to larger patterns of values-based behavior’means to me.

            Although we don’t want get caught living from goal-to-goal, goals are still an important part of life, and should be related to our values. Once we consider our values, we should be developing goals—specific achievements sought after in service to a particular value—that are in line with those values so that we can consider what actions can be taken to move us closer to those goals. Slow and incremental improvement can move us forward momentously over time—and we should start by asking how can we become a slightly better version of ourselves tomorrow? When I think about the smallest areas of my life that I could improve, those tasks start to feel manageable. I should think about each of the areas of my life where I exist (e.g., domains: family, friendships, school, sports teams, community, health, spirituality, etc.) and consider what is my valued direction in this area—what do I want—and what is the smallest step that I could take to move forward? This kind of process is at the heart of behavioral therapies commonly used in mental healthcare because they work so well! When we consider our goals, we should try to break them down into steps that are as small as we can manage, while being slightly difficult and out of our comfort zone. We definitely don’t want to fail outright, because that would be very discouraging, but we want to engage at level that we COULD fail but probably won’t. If I want to exercise it might not be realistic for me to go for a run, but it could be realistic for me to go for a walk! Similarly, there may be times where we don’t even know the scope of the goal we are trying to accomplish. Think about setting a goal of not playing video games, or not spending too much time on social media. An initial goal might be something ambiguous, like “I want to spend less time on social media,” or “I want to spend less time playing games;” however, those are not goal that are easy to monitor. You could start by taking the smallest step possible: Figure out how many hours per week you actually spend playing video games/using social media. That will not require us to do anything but watch the clock. And once we figure out that we spend 4 ½ hours per day playing games/on social media, we can wrap our minds around the hours per week (18), and what that might mean for us to change our behavior.

            So let’s recap: 1) pick a domain in your life; 2) identify the valued direction you would like to move; 3) create a goal—an attainable event related to a particular value; 4) identify the barriers that may exist; and finally, 5) break your goal down into the smallest chunk possible that would still be both challenging AND attainable. Doing these things is going to keep you on the path to committed action, and making those small decision every day that will add up to a lifetime of value and meaning!!

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            We can find our identity in our values. And remember that we explore our values using Mindfulness. After all, in order for us to explore our identity we must first be engaged with ourselves—in the present moment. Exploring inside of ourselves will help us excavate bits and pieces of our values, and those values will point us in the direction of who we are, and where we fit in. Once we start paying attention and remaining fully connected to the present moment in a way that helps us to act in line with our values, starting to understand what the different parts of our identity are becomes simple. Once I know that I value Family, Hard Work, Friendship, Honesty, and Physical Health, I can start to explore where those values fit in to my identity.

            We can think about the different parts of our identity like a bunch of different worlds that we live in. For example, who I am in my “Marriage-world,” may be a little different that my “Sibling-world;” who I am in my “Work-world,” may be a little different than who I am in my “Friendship-world;” and who I am in my “Sports-world,” is likely different that my behavior in the Classroom-world.” This is where values and identity meet. Because in all of these different places, although I may act differently from place to place, it is important that my values shine through in each place in the same way. Although I might behave differently with my friends than I do when I am at work (even though I get to work with many people who happen to be friends as well!), but my values are the consistent link between the two: Hard Work and Honesty will be links between the two different components of my identity. 

            First thing first: explore what your values might be. It helps to make a list (we will include some examples below). After identifying some of your prized values, think about all of the different worlds you live (the places that contribute to your identity (I will include an illustration below, as well). Once you list a few of the different worlds you live in, link the values you selected to each of those places, wherever they fit (Truth is a great value that happens to work well in every part of a persons identity!). And remember, in each of those areas that make up our identity, are a whole bunch of people who have similar values, goals, and desires that we do! We are all eager to meet people, find connection, create meaningful experiences, and live life to the fullest!

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So, what about the notion that if we have the things we need, we should be happy. A person with food, water, shelter, and love should be happy. This kind of thinking is related to an idea called the assumption of healthy normality, which suggests that human beings are inherently happy, connected with others, and at peace with themselves. This perspective has come from the medical perspective that health is the absence of disease. In other words, without some kind of sickness or injury, the human body is…healthy. It turns out that happiness—a state without anxiety, frustration, sadness—is not the natural state of human emotions. The natural state of human emotions is one that ebbs and flows through a wide range of emotions, all of which are normal and healthy. Feeling happy after a promotion, a good grade on an exam, or an exciting first kiss, are all things that rightly bring happiness; however, we know that the effects of these experiences are quick to ‘wear off,’ as life ebbs us back into the rest of the spectrum of feelings that we all experience. Imagine for a moment if you felt feelings of euphoria ALL OF THE TIME. In mental health, there is a pathology associated with that feeling called mania. People who experience mania often get themselves into bad situations because of uncontrolled feelings of pleasant emotions that surround everything they do, and inform everything they think they should do. Their behavior is very impulsive—after all, if everything you touched turned to gold, you would probably start grabbing away—and they often are overly enthusiastic about every opportunity, which leads to a dramatic crash into life savings being spent and relationships being destroyed. 

If I know that I am not going to experience happiness in a reliable or predictable way, what is it that I should be pursuing? Well, there are two lines of thinking on this. The first is the line of thinking that my parents told me about: Do what makes you happy. This line of thinking is a goals-based interpretation of happiness. The idea that if I line up one goal after another and accomplish them, that I will move myself toward a state of better living, ergo ‘achieving happiness.’ Well, the problem with this is that we know that people do not always get to achieve their goals and even when they do, achieving one’s goals does produce a moment of euphoria, but that moment is short lived. The second line of thinking is living a life that is values-based. In a life that is lived in a way that is based on your values (e.g., integrity, curiosity, humor, relationships, joy) one still has goals but the goals are coordinated with values, not accomplishment. A goal that is values-based (e.g., being a lifelong learner) is fundamentally different from a goal that is accomplishment-based (e.g., graduating from high school). The former is based on Learning as a value that one holds, where the latter is based on achievement of a task.

I encourage you to consider what your values might be, and aligning goals with values, not accomplishment. If we get to achieve some goals along our values-based journey, then great; and if we stumble on some happiness along the way, even better! But we should always be orienting ourselves toward living a life of values-based action, where everything we do is propelling us toward feelings of meaning, and helping prepare us against the inevitable difficulty of life.

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            What a journey! Even writing that paragraph above is a reminder of how much amazing material Acceptance & Commitment Therapy (ACT) has to offer, and how much material we have covered over the last 5-weeks. (If you are just joining us in this series, I would encourage you to read all about psychological flexibility in our previous blog posts.) A ton of questions always come to mind when I think about values: 1) what are they; 2) how do I identify them; 3) where do they come from; 4) how do I know if mine are any good; 5) can I pick my values, or are they inside of me already and waiting for me to discover them? Well, hopefully by the end of this post the concept of values will feel a little less ambiguous, and maybe it will get you thinking about what you might say your values are in this moment. 

             Imagine that I put to boxes that were identical in every way in front of you and said “pick one.” You may have a number of questions, but given that I refuse to answer any questions or differentiate the boxes in any way from one another, you chose the second box. Why did you choose the second box? Well, the choice was completely arbitrary, and your answer might be “I don’t know, I just picked one.” It is easy to see how the consequence of this choice would have very little outcome on a person’s life, even if there were ¢5 cents inside the box they chose and $50 in the box they did not choose, there is no way to be attached to the outcome because the decision was made randomly. One key to values is that they are freely chosen and they reinforce our activities, motivating us to make some choices over others. Said another way: we cannot value everything, and we have to make choices about what things we do value because the scope of our values is limited. We cannot value everything equally, and if you have ever had several tough classes at once you may remember that you probably did not weigh each class the same, spending equal time preparing for multimedia as you did for Honors Chemistry. This helps us understand how we answer our first question above (what are values?): values are the fundamental beliefs that guide & motivate us, and that exist behind our behaviors. 

The power of values, questioned by point number 2 (how do I identify them?) is that we can look at our behavior and see if it matches what we believe our values to be. This can be very motivational in the sense that we can find incongruence between valued life directions (e.g., being a good friend) and our current behaviors (i.e., knowing that I have not made enough time for my close friendships, lately). Finding these areas where we are incongruent can help us identify our values, and move in a more valued direction. Another way to reflect on our values is simply to look at the areas of our lives where we believe ourselves to really shine! Knowing that you enjoy spirituality, physical fitness, or deep and meaningful interpersonal relationships, can help you identify some of the things you value over other areas of your life that you may value less (maybe at the moment Marriage/Intimate Relationships, for example, is not a “value” that you hold). Where these things come from—point #3—can seem like a mystery; however, we can remember that since a critical feature of values is that they are “freely chosen,” in some sense we get to decide how we prioritize our values, but we would have difficulty creating our own values from nothing. To find what is meaningful to us, we have to explore who we are as an individual. In some cases we can look back at our own behavior and excavate some of our values, we can read great books, and think about the people we admire, and through that process we can discover some of the things we value. And then we can close the amount of incongruence that lives between our actions and those things we value to push ourselves in a goal-directed way. Along that process of discovering our values, and by extension discovering who we are, we may find that we have an internal ‘nature’ that we have to contend with. That we may value some things other people do, but we are fundamentally different than other people. For example, I can tell you with certainty that I see value in the work of software engineers, and engineers of all types for that matter—my father was an engineer; however, I can tell you with certainty that my personality is one who needs to interact with people, often and deeply. Therefore, sitting in front of a computer designing a bridge, or software program, or iPhone App, is probably not a place where I will find that I am thriving as a person. But I sure am grateful that other people do find great meaning in those areas. They have the ability to make the world a better place!

So, we arrive at point #4, how you know if your values are any good! Well behavioral psychologists have a basic theory as to how to approach this problem. We start living! More specifically, we attempt to live out our values, and we watch what happens as a result. If one of my values is interpersonal relationships, then I should try to be the best friend that I can be and ideally, I would see my existing friendships deepen and become more meaningful, and I would see new friendships begin to emerge. I would know this was a positive outcome if I begin to experience an ideal future. But what happens if in reality as I gain new friendships, my existing relationships begin to suffer in a way that was unexpected and unappreciated? Well, then I need to think about how I am living my values, because something happened that was unexpected (losing friendships), and I need to assess why. Now, consider whether we can pick our values. We touched on this briefly above when we talked about discovering our values, and it seems very unlikely that I could just decide to become a long-distance runner; however, the wonderful thing about values is, again, that we get to choose. We get start ACTING like a runner: maybe we start getting up early, walking regularly or jogging, signing up for a 5k with a friend, who knows…Maybe that’s exactly how someone becomes a runner, one step at a time J

And maybe that’s how we connect with our values. Just take things one step at a time. 

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