How Can Act Help You Live Up to Your Values?

4min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

Act isn't just about stopping the struggle with anxiety or anger. It's about committing yourself to living a meaningful life, doing proactive, positive things so you can live the life you want. You could start your day each day by thinking of two or three values that you just want to sprinkle into the day ahead. If the value is being loving, there's thousands of ways that I can translate that into different goals and actions.

Happiness is the subject of thousands of articles, podcasts, and scientific studies. Yet all this focus on happiness doesn't seem to be making people any happier. In fact, the more they try to be happy, especially by fighting to get rid of bad feelings and cling to good ones, the more unhappy people often become.

My guest would say that the first step in escaping this negative cycle is redefining what happiness even means — thinking of it not as a state of feeling good but of doing good.

His name is Russ Harris and he's a therapist and the author of The Happiness Trap.

Today on the show, Russ explains how struggling against difficult feelings and thoughts just makes them stronger — amplifying instead of diminishing stress, anxiety, depression, and self-consciousness — and how simply obeying your emotions doesn't work out any better. He then unpacks the alternative approach to happiness espoused by Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. With ACT, you allow both hard and pleasant feelings to coexist, and unhook from the latter so that they no longer jerk you around. This allows you to focus on taking action on your values to create a meaningful, flourishing life, or in other words, real happiness.