Are you living the life you WANT to live? Are you living the life that matters to YOU? Often,
the automatic response is “Yes, of course I am!”
Unfortunately this is a “knee-jerk” response that we come up with because, honestly, it can be really uncomfortable to sit with the fact that our actions are not in line with our values.
Even the most “enlightened” will unintentionally veer off the path of valued living.
The question is, how do we know where we went wrong?
Today we’re going to go through an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy based activity first developed by Dr. Tobias Lundgren – The Bull’s Eye! We first came across the version presented here through a fantastic workshop with Dr. Russ Harris – check his site out for more valuable resources (disclaimer – we have no financial interests in Russ Harris’ site).
Let’s get started
Clarifying Values
We’ve Talked about values before, but in brief a value is like a compass – have a clear set of values will make clear how you want to be in the world. So a value gives direction, but a goal is something that can be achieved, and crossed off a list. If you are unclear about the difference, ask yourself why a particular goal is important and that is the value! Ie. My goal is to go to the gym, if I ask myself why, it may be because I want to be a good role model for my kids or to be healthy- those are my values.
So, if you haven’t done it before. It’s time to sit down and think about your values in these 4 different areas of life:
****** MAKE SURE THESE ARE YOUR VALUES AND NO ONE ELSES!!!!************
1 – Work How do you want to be in your relationships at work, with clients, customers, coworkers. What is your direction, the ideal they are striving for, with respect to your training, education, and work?
2 – Relationships How do you want to be in your personal relationships (partner, children, parents, friends)? What kind of relationships do you want to create, ideally?
3 – Personal Growth Who do you want to be has a human being? Is spirituality important to you? What importance do you assign to physical fitness, emotional well being, connecting with nature, animals, art, creativity?
4 – Leisure What are your hobbies? How to you re-energize yourself? Think of the activities that you do for yourself that leave you feeling vital! How do you have fun?
Now – the test… Taking a look at the value domains on the Bull’s Eye below. In each of the 4 domains how close to the Bull’s Eye are you? Chances are you didn’t hit the mark in every domain. If you did, well, awesome!! We’d love to meet you – because we haven’t met anyone who is hitting the Bull’s Eye in everything!
Ok, so now you’ve figured out where you want to be and where you are at. Does the difference make you feel uncomfortable? Does it spur you to action?? It might not for everyone, and that’s ok to. Everyone has to decide for themselves how important it is to line-up their actions with their values…. that’s for you to decide.
If it does spur you to action, there are a couple of things you can do:
First – For now, pick one domain that is most important for you and that you are most motivated to change.
Then it is time to consider – What are the roadblocks to success, how might you, inadvertently, get in your own way, and what can you do to get unstuck when this happens? It’s important to have a plan for dealing with the inevitable difficulties we encounter when working to make our lives better.
Finally, come up with your value based action plan. To do this, see our posts on goal setting or my favourite variation which includes dreamlining.
So, is it time for your to re-adjust your sights so you can hit the Bull’s Eye? Only you know the answer to that.
Happy to hear from you: @DrAdrianaWilson or @kryanwilson
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