ACT

While attending a weekend training workshop on Acceptance Commitment Therapy recently in Dublin, I was struck yet again by how effective it can be to honestly examine what it is we value. It sounds obvious in a way but when do most of us give ourselves the time to do closely examine what is important to use in life? The trainer Aisling Curtain gave attendees the safe space to pinpoint a core value that was not being fully met and gave questions that helped us examine what that looked and felt like. While I knew what was not working for me the exercise gave me a reality check as to the long-term implications of my not giving enough time to one of my core values ‘family’. It helped me to map out straight forward  actions that I could take to create the desired outcome. Aisling highlighted that we have a tendency to think that things can only work if we are ‘feeling good’ in our culture and that acting towards what is important to us even it ‘feels bad’ is more important. In essence more often than not when we push outside our comfort zone initially it can feel really uncomfortable. However, once we achieve a value based need, genuine happiness and a sense of fulfilment from meeting this need can result.

What are your core values? What steps are you taking that are pushing you away from them? What steps can you take to push you towards your values?