when people get too inundated with this
idea that they
that somehow something's wrong with them
if they have negative emotions
negative thoughts we're trying to pursue
a meaningful life even when we're in
[Music]
pain
yeah i'm gonna let you take it away well
it's interesting because we are so used
to making goals all the time
but goals are very different from values
so goals are things you can check off of
a list right like you can run a marathon
you can get married you can have
children
you can start a new job but values are
the things that we want to stand for the
most there's sort of these ideas that
bring us meaning
that make us feel proud of ourselves
that make us feel like we're really
living the life that we want to lead
and so these are kind of things like
honesty
because you're not like okay i've been
honest enough i checked it off on this
i'm never to be honest again
yeah right that's true yeah yeah so so
values
are sort of these continual things and
they're about process
and as we've been talking about this
entire series act is all about process
in many ways it's not about
who i am in this moment it's about the
fact that you have a selfless context
and it's the process of it
and it's the same thing with diffusion
it's not about this one
thought that i'm having now it's about
the fact that you back away and you
realize that that is just a thought in a
moment in time and it's just a mental
event
and so really defining your values is
all about
getting to what is the most meaningful
for you so sometimes you might reach a
goal and you feel kind of empty oh no
what's my next goal well maybe because
that goal wasn't rooted
in value so it's not that we don't want
to make goals it's that the goals should
be
really rooted in what is important to us
so
a certain value should be defined first
before you make a goal that maybe aligns
with that value and how you want to live
your life
so i love this because it really kind of
brings home this idea
that when you are living a valued life
and when you're living a life that is
really about
who you want to stand for you're not
always going to have happy moments
because let's take honesty again do you
think that being honest makes you happy
all the time
absolutely not no right yeah you can
really have lots of problems with people
i've had plenty of problems with my
honesty exactly right
yet you're like no this feels good to me
i need to be an honest person and i'm
not going to lie to you
if you don't like it i'm sorry but i
cannot lie to you
right and that is really sort of the rub
is that when we think about happiness
especially the way that it's been
promoted in more recent time it's all
about the absence of negative emotion
experiences
and if we look at ads that's what they
promote
even ads like here take this
antidepressant
for your mood problems it's
people skipping in a meadow and all of a
sudden they're laughing with their
family
but that's not the journey of most
people you're still going to have fights
with your family
you're still going to have difficult
times you might not be able to run in a
meadow every single day
and yet that's the advertisement yeah
right so we're sort of prop
we're sort of like promoting these ideas
of happiness means the absence
of negative sensations and
when you go all the way back to
philosophers back in the day
they define this idea of happiness as
you demonic happiness and so you die you
i know you know what
it's you demonic happiness you die you
die
mautic happiness it's different from
hedonic happiness which is the
happiness that is sort of amazing
brilliant and in the absence of any
negative feelings
you dymonic happiness is the happiness
or the joy that you get
from doing the things that you value
most and
when we pursue meaningful things we're
going to be in pain sometimes
and yet at the end of the day it'll be
much more satisfying to you
that's what that's given to give us an
example of that
so an example of you demonic you demonic
happiness
well i think getting a degree
is sort of an experience that's laden
with eudaimonic happiness meaning that
sometimes you're going to feel
exhilarated you're going to get a good
grade you're going to
you know get close to graduation check
off a big milestone so those are goals
but sometimes it'll be a struggle when
you're studying five
nights in a row instead of going out
with your friends that's a little bit of
suffering there
if you're not sure if you're gonna pass
your tests that's a little suffering
there
and sometimes you're gonna be like what
am i doing this for that's gonna be
suffering
but at the end it's going to be worth it
isn't that just every experience though
you would hope so and i think that what
happens though is when people get too
inundated with this idea that they
that somehow something's wrong with them
if they have negative emotions
negative thoughts then they'll stop
pursuing the things that really mean
something to them
and that's what we find people get
trapped in when we see
somebody who's suffering from depression
or anxiety they think oh well
if i do this my depression will get
worse so i just better not do anything
at all
and actually that in itself makes the
depression worse right so
the funny thing about act and i kind of
saved this until the end
because i don't think people necessarily
when they first hear this like yeah then
what's the point
act's primary goal is not about making
you feel better
so it's not about symptom reduction so
if you come to act and you say
hi i would like to feel less depressed
act's explicit goal is actually not to
help you do that
it's a byproduct because when you start
to live a meaningful life
you start to feel less distressed but
its core goal is not to make you feel
better
and a lot of people will hear that and
say then what's the point because i just
want to feel better
and this is the point the point is when
you're living a meaningful life you
don't always feel good all the time yeah
oh that's so good
and that goes back to that original idea
of
why do we do act well we're trying to
pursue a meaningful life even when we're
in pain
yeah so it's actually not about
decreasing the pain that's less
important
the more important thing is that you
still pursue that meaningful life
even when you're distressed yeah how
does that relate to committed action
so values and committed action kind of
go together one of the ways that i like
to get people to
identify their values is to do a values
card sort so
there's obviously thousands of values in
the world it could be honesty
you know thirst for knowledge um you
know being an upstanding citizen like
all kinds of things but
there's probably you know maybe 30 40 or
50 like kind of common values like
knowledge like integrity like honesty
love wisdom all different kinds of
things like that that again values are
continuous not goals
that people can sort of sort in terms of
a priority order like they're all kind
of important but what are my top five
what are my top ten
so we gotta start from there and once
you identify what your
important values are you then can
utilize that to move into committed
action so knowing now
that my top values are knowledge
community and honesty in that order
then how do i build goals for myself in
terms of how i want to live my everyday
life
that nurtures these values even in small
ways and so some people will tell me
well i'm depressed right now
so even though i have this huge
value of wanting to pursue knowledge i'm
too depressed to go to school
i'm too depressed to learn a new skill
but
can't you do something else that would
help nurture that like even
open one periodical and read that takes
10 minutes
can you do that and that still pursues
knowledge even if it's not the big
project you wanted
and that's what is freeing to people
that they realize that you can make
committed action in these small steps
as opposed to okay now that i've
identified knowledge as my
value that means that i have to go get a
whole other degree
no right you don't yeah i i get that
that i like that that's straightforward
that's easy
that makes sense uh very textbook
yes the hardest part for me on that is
figuring out your top 10 values
yeah how do you begin to determine
what you are going to place
behind commit or in front of committed
action so
the values card store is a variation of
an exercise that has been done for
decades
and so there's a lot of different
versions of it you can actually google
online to find a version of it and you
basically cut up these cards that are
the common values and again it's not
saying that that's the only values that
exist but these are some of the common
ones that people think about
and you take all the cards they're kind
of like little playing cards
and you start to sort of just place them
in the priority order that it is for you
today
and you have to place all of them so if
you have 30 cards you're going to
order all 30. and so that's sort of
where one of them is going to be like
this value is at the bottom of the list
yeah
and it still doesn't mean that that
value is just unimportant to you
completely but it is like the lowest
priority
so then from there you identify you look
at your top and you think about
okay in what ways have i nurtured these
top five values in the last 24 hours
and that's one way that you can engage
in 24 hours in the last 24 hours have i
have i made some contact with you
oh my gosh okay yeah i mean that's just
one way to do it you can do it a lot of
different ways but i like to say
just think back to today you know think
back to yesterday
you say that knowledge is one of your
top values did you do anything to help
with that
not really okay well what can you do in
the next 24 hours
to try to address that i need to do this
what are your top five
gosh i you know i really i need to go
look at all of those
values 30 again yeah i want to go see
exactly but i mean i think knowledge is
up there
i think honesty is up there i think
community is up there
community yeah and there's probably a
bunch of other ones and so
it can change for you obviously from day
to day or month to month and i actually
suggest that people
do their values card stored again like a
month from now because and you're saying
value
card sort sort yeah values card sort so
there's a lot of different versions out
there and you can just go and google one
and you can cut out the cards and you
can try this exercise for yourself
but i think it's super cool because it's
very tangible it's a different way to
engage with an exercise
um and it's something that you get to
sort of see the
product of so a lot of things that we've
talked about in act they feel a little
bit more up here
like okay this is a new way of thinking
it's going to take me a way to grasp
this
valley's car sort of tangible nice yeah
you can go home you can print it you can
lay them out on the floor do it i get
that
exactly yeah and so sort of that
self-assessment of what have i done in
the last 24 hours to
engage with my values and then what can
i do in the next 24 if some of them got
forgotten some of my top five just
didn't get touched on
and that does increase your
meaningfulness the way that you live a
life that you really want to lead
and another way to honor the committed
action once you have your values
is to utilize them in big decisions
oftentimes people get paralyzed it's
like that decision fatigue
decision paralysis where they're
struggling oh my gosh i have these
decisions i don't know how to make them
and especially when you're distressed
already depressed
anxious it's gonna be even harder for
you to make decisions
but if you think about your top five
values again in your decision making and
think about well which decision honors
yes more of those top five values you'll
never regret it
that's easy it's better than the pros
and cons yes it's much better because
pros and cons again
is like discreet things it's like a
conceptualized self yeah
it's like you know one thing at a time
let's look at a list
as opposed to which one is going to make
my soul feel the best which one is going
to really honor who i am
forget the pros and cons list that's way
better than the people who is doing this
no do this the value list so much easier
i
i know my number one value what is it
and i've shared this many times
i do not expect it to change at all in
my life
but perhaps it will honesty yeah and i i
always say honesty and transparency i
put them together
i i just i value it so much
in somebody yeah i and
we could probably go into all the
implications of why i
lust after that type of quality uh
but i also practice what i preach yep
i'm
honest to a fault dr romney has actually
guided me on how to
not be so blunt with my delivery and
honesty
but i've never thought about honesty as
a way to
serve my actions and decisions really
it's just something that no matter what
i did i know i'll have that rather than
thinking
what could i do that would best serve my
desire for honesty and to be honest
yeah that's great and i think when you
know that and when you're assured in
that everything else flows from that if
you know that that's what you want to
stand for
then even if you're going through
distress for example because you've been
honest
you still feel good about yourself and
your soul because you're like but i was
honest
and you know whatever problem that i'm
having now because of my honesty
i can go to sleep at night i can look at
myself in the mirror and i don't have a
problem with it
right and i think that sometimes people
get lost you know they they get
distressed they
they have depression they have anxiety
and they forget what they want to stand
for
and you think well i'll pick that up
when i feel better but it's a catch-22
if you do these things now when you're
distressed you're gonna feel better
that's the byproduct
as opposed to let me wait until i feel
better well then your life is not filled
with those meaningful things that give
you that oomph
and your depression may drag on a little
longer than it otherwise would have
yeah so it's a funny kind of balance but
i think
with sort of tapping into your values it
can really help bring you out
of a difficult place there's no judgment
like maybe today you don't feel like
using selfish context it's too hard for
you yeah so you do the values card store
instead because it's more tangible
that's right
and you do what it takes in every
situation and you don't have to do more
than that
and take each situation one at a time
because again
it's just one small part of your entire
experience and it doesn't have to bog
you down i feel
so privileged that
i was able to have this conversation
with you because
it it will shape the way i move forward
in life
which in a good way and i also
acknowledge that this
is the beginning of my discovery with
this yeah i watch
i'm a med circle member as well as the
host yes i have a paid membership i pay
for every month
and um i watch the series yeah the ones
that i
that are helpful for me and my life and
i know when i watch this
hey kyle when i watch this series back
i will i will catch new things from it
and
these aha moments will evolve into
bigger moments
yeah that will serve me so i feel very
lucky
and honored that you were able to do
this
for our viewers and with me because it's
it is actually life-changing
thank you i mean i love act two and i
practice act myself
and i feel like i'm always learning also
there's always new things i'm picking up
and new ways to think about it
and i think that's the point the point
is that this is a continuous process
and not just one end goal one thing
right it's
a lot of different things and they're
always ongoing and i think it's
beautiful in that way i think it's so
different from other therapeutic
techniques because of the way it
describes
processes and focuses on that as the
core
yeah yeah well thank you again for being
here i'm kyle kittleson
and make sure you remember whatever
you're going through
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