In this episode you're going to learn how to create a rich and meaningful life
by learning how to focus on your values. The kind of life that you want to live. Now, the day I
was revising the draft of this section, I had an interesting conversation with one of my clients.
Um Brianna, which is not her real name, is a 15-year-old who's been having a hard
time getting to school due to school anxiety and sleep problems. Today we started talking
about her self-esteem, and I asked her "How do you feel about yourself?" And she said "Oh,
I guess a five out of ten." I said "That's not too bad. Tell me what you like about yourself."
And she said "Well, I like my hair, my nose, my body. I have okay skin." And so she continues to
mention a few other physical characteristics she likes and a couple that she doesn't.
And I say "Well, that's interesting. When I asked you about your self-esteem,
you talked about your attractiveness. Is that the main thing that matters to how you feel about
yourself?" I ask her. "Oh, not at all," she says. My personality is way more important than that.
That's just the stuff I like about myself." "Oh, okay." I said. "So do you like your personality?"
She says "Uh not really. I'm - I mean, I'm kind of mean. I'm not a very nice person." "What do
you mean? You seem nice enough to me," I said. "What kind of personality would you
like to have? What kind of traits?" She said, you know, "I really want to be nice. I want to help a
lot of people. I want to be funny." So I asked her, you know, "Do you feel like those things
are outside of your control?" She says "No. I just get so scared of being rejected. I mean,
what if I offer to help someone and they say no? That would hurt. What if I'm nice to someone and
they aren't nice back? I might feel sad. I just get so scared, so I hate going to school. I never
hang out with friends because I'm too scared that I might feel anxious." So, you know, I told her,
I said, you know, "That makes sense. On one hand, right, reaching out to people can feel scary. What
what you're telling me is that you're waiting for that fear to go away before you live the
life that you value. You're basically saying, you know, 'I'm afraid that I'll feel something painful
if I be the person I want to be, so instead I'm just going to shrink back and hide,'
which then makes you feel like crap about yourself in the long run. Is that about right?"
And she just laughed. She said "Well, when you say it like that, you know, I've never thought
about it that way." Now this client, she thought that she was a bad person, that she doesn't have
a good personality. But the reality is that she values being kind and caring, but she was just not
living that way because she was too busy avoiding anxiety. So I'm gonna paraphrase something I
learned from Lowell Benion. He said "Self-esteem does not come from saying nice things to yourself
or thinking nice thoughts to yourself. It doesn't come from external attributes or possessions.
Self-esteem comes from integrity. It comes from keeping the promises you make to yourself."
In this episode we're going to talk about how to create a life where you feel a sense
of peace and integrity. You're going to get a chance to clarify your values and
see how striving towards them is the key to a fulfilling life, which is what I call happiness.
Hey guys. I'm out with the cows. They have nothing to do with what I'm talking about,
but they're more interesting than my office. So real quick: Do you experience intrusive
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check it out. It's about an hour long, but it's just packed full of good information
and what to do about these intrusive thoughts. It's only $39 this week with the code tenoff
and the link is in the description. Okay, back to the video. Values are the essence of Acceptance
and Commitment Therapy. Our drive toward values is what makes it worth it to learn the skills of
willingness and self-regulation and to do all the hard work to to change your thinking. So so first
let's define values. So to be clear, when I say values, I don't mean religious or moral values
necessarily. Values are character traits. Values are who we're striving to be and what we believe
in. So they include characteristics like honesty, spontaneity, hard work, compassion, or grit.
You may value making art or music, or you may value fighting for justice and equality. So when I
talk about values, I literally mean which of these traits do you value? When we value something,
we put our money on it. We put our time into it or our resources into it. So you might value many
traits to a degree, but at some intersections in life you have to choose which ones are worth
more to you. Do you value being successful more in your job? Or do you value spending
time with your kids? At some point you may have to make a choice about how many hours you work,
right? So we choose who we are when we choose how we invest our time, our effort, and our actions.
Russ Harris, who is a brilliant ACT educator, says "Society tells us that the way to be happy is to
reach those goals: to get rich, to be married, to get a big house. But when we reach those goals,
there's a little burst of happiness, but it doesn't last long. So if you're constantly looking
for the next high, the next buzz, you spend much of your time unhappy." Russ continues, he says
"There is a radically different way to live your life: values-based." Now, in his video, which you
should check out, right, he compares a goals-based life to a values-based life by sharing the example
of two kids in the back seat of a car, and they're driving to Disneyland. So kid A is goals-based, so
he he can't wait to get to Disney. And they have to drive three hours, and he's constantly saying,
you know, "Are we there yet? How long is this going to take? Why is this drive so long?"
And kid B is values-based. He values fun, adventure and curiosity. He notices the strange
buildings, and, you know, he plays the alphabet game, and he does other things to keep himself,
you know, curious and adventurous and entertained on the drive.
So they finally get to Disneyland, and they have a great time, and then they have to drive home.
And kid A is like "Ugh, are we there yet? Why is this drive so long?" And kid B looks around,
and he looks at everything, and he notices how everything looks different at night,
and he wonders about the people on the road, right? He's living his values of curiosity
even during the drive. Now in Russ Harris's example, let's say that on the drive to Disney,
the car breaks down. They never reach their goal. So kid A is so upset, and he cries and
he whines while they wait. He says "This is a disaster! This is so unfair!" And kid B is like
"What's wrong with the car?" Right. "Why did the car break down?" He's curious. Then the
tow-truck driver arrives, and kid A just throws himself in the back of the tow truck and pouts.
And Kid B, he's disappointed too, right? But after a while, he starts to look around, and
he's like "Well, this is interesting. I've never ridden in a tow truck before. This is this is kind
of adventurous." And then he's curious about all the different kinds of knobs and switches, and he
asks the driver about them, and he looks around and notices how the road looks different from,
you know, way up high in a big truck. Now, both of these kids had the same circumstance,
but they had completely different experiences. Kid B was focused on his values of curiosity,
adventure and fun, and kid A was focused on his goal of getting to Disneyland.
Orienting your life towards your values can help you face challenges in a more fulfilling way too.
They're a direction that we can always work towards in the present moment.
Values focus on what we become rather than what we achieve, and values keep us moving
in a direction that matters to us. They give us power to keep acting even when things are tough.
Again, values are different than goals. So, for example, I was single for a lot longer
than I would have liked. I had the goal of getting married, but every time I focused on
that goal I got discouraged and frustrated. So I started to redirect myself toward my values.
Values are something that we can live in the present moment, at every present moment. We
don't have to wait for something to change to get them. So I can value relationships,
I can value connection, I can value family time, and then I can set a goal to get married.
Values are like a direction, like "Let's hike north." Goals are like a destination: "Let's hike
to that summit." Now, both are good, right? But because values are about who we are in the present
moment, they're something that we can always act upon. Goals depend on many outside factors.
Values are all about the process and the direction we're moving towards, not some end destination. We
can evaluate ourselves based on how closely we're living to the things that matter to us. When we
focus on the process instead of the outcome, we make the outcome more likely. When I settled down
and I focused on building healthy relationships, on being a good sister and a friend and an aunt,
it cleared the pathway for me to reach my goal of getting married. But even if I hadn't found
my husband, I would have been living a good life because I was living my values. When we
when we talked about self-deception, we saw how acting contrary to our values leads to guilt,
self-deception, anger and, you know, frustration with others, self-loathing, shame, and all sorts
of other unhelpful and unpleasant things. When we have integrity, when our actions line up with our
values, we tend to feel peace instead of turmoil. We tend to feel connection instead of discord and
greater joy in our lives. So if values are so important, how come we don't live them?
One of the most common ways that we lose track of our value direction is the pain monster. Again,
this is another ACT idea, right? The pain monster says living that way is gonna hurt.
So if you look at Brianna, she wanted to be friendly and nice; she wanted to go to school;
that's what she valued. But the pain monster said "Oh, doing that might make you anxious, so you
should avoid that," so she did. She stopped going to school. She stopped hanging out with friends.
Living a valued life includes discomfort. Doing something good like making new friends, serving
others, creating art, making YouTube videos - it all requires vulnerability, maybe some anxiety,
maybe disappointment. So, for example, you might say "Oh, I don't want to have that conversation
because it makes me anxious or I need to use drugs to avoid the grief I'm feeling."
As long as you're alive, you're going to make choices, and as long as you make choices, you have
to choose what you base your choices on. If you've been making choices based on doing what feels good
in the moment or doing what feels less bad in the moment, then you get to escape pain. But in
the long run I would say you're probably getting greater suffering because your life is less rich
or fulfilling or you're more lonely or you're less connected to who you really want to be.
But when you clarify what is most important to you, what what is it? Is it living a pain-free
life or is it living your values? Most people would say the most important thing to them is to
live their values, to have good relationships, to help others, to create beauty in the world.
So how do we do it? We start with a values clarification. So ask yourself in your heart
of hearts what kind of person do you long to be? What are the characteristics that you believe are
valuable as a friend, as a spouse, as a parent, as an employee? If you have a hard time thinking
of these for yourself, think of the people that you admire. What is it about them that you look
up to? What do you want your life to be about? What is important to you? You can't choose
everything. You have limited time, energy, and money. Where are you going to spend your efforts?
In the course, I've got a values list, and I want you to go through this huge list and select
your top 10 most important values and write them in your workbook. Then I'm going to
encourage you to hang these on your wall and look at them once a week. Now the next step in
living a valued life is to gently bring your life into greater integrity with your values.
Ask yourself what are some areas that your actions and your values are totally lined up?
And then ask yourself, you know, "Oh, I value kindness. How well am I living that?" Or
I say "I value my family, but how much time and energy am I giving them?"
And then ask yourself what are some of the areas that you value something but you're not living it?
So for example, I value hard work and integrity and serving God in my family, and I can evaluate
my life and say I am working really hard at my job but I could be giving my kids more attention.
So just write down one to three small actions that you could take now
to live your life closer to your values. If you want to live a rich and fulfilling life
you need to learn how to prioritize your values to make them even more important than just pain
avoidance or feeling good, because pain avoidance tends to lead to misery, anxiety, and depression
in the long run. Clarify your values and refer to them often and hold yourself accountable to them.
I recommend doing a personal inventory at least once a week. I do mine every Sunday. It's like
pulling out a map when you're hiking cross-country and making sure that your life is oriented in the
direction you want to go. Now after Brianna and I had this conversation, she realized that she
wanted to make something out of her life, that her friends were more important than avoiding anxiety.
Each week in therapy we clarified what was most important to her and we worked on facing her
anxiety so that she could be a better friend and student. Little by little she got better
at it. Even though she still felt anxious, she started going to school more, she started hanging
out with her friends more. And, you know what, her anxiety even started to go down.
There is so much more for you out there than the hedonistic pop psychology of coping skills and
self-care. A purpose-driven life is so much richer and more fulfilling than a life of pain avoidance.
Thank you for watching, and take care. This video is one skill from my 30-skill course, How
to Process Your Emotions, where I teach 30 of the most essential skills for resolving depression,
anxiety, and improving mental health. Emotion processing is an essential skill for working
through intense emotions, but most people have never been taught how to do it. I'm putting every
single main video lesson on YouTube for the world to access for free. You watching these videos,
sharing them, contributing to my Patreon and my sponsors make this possible.
If you would like to access the entire course in one place ad free with its workbook,
exercises, downloads, extra videos, live Q&A's, additional short readings
and links to extended resources, the link to buy the course is in the description below.