Acceptance and commitment therapy aims to create a rich, full and meaningful life while effectively handling the painful thoughts and feelings that go with it.<ul><li>Effectively handling painful thoughts and feelings is done through mindfulness, which can be divided in to defusion, expansion, connection, and the observing self.</li><li>Creating a rich, full and meaningful life is done by setting goals, guided by your values, and taking committed and effective action to achieve them.</li></ul>

Acceptance & Commitment

<ul><li>Fusion with unhelpful thoughts. Solution: defuse the thoughts and recognise them as just words.</li><li>Expectations that are unrealistic. Solution: break goals down to smaller pieces, extend their timeframes, and don't be afraid to make mistakes.</li><li>Avoidance of uncomfortable feelings. Solution: recognise that working towards goals generates pleasant feelings too, of curiosity, excitement and satisfaction.</li><li>Remoteness from your values. Solution: write down your values, read them through, and change as required. </li></ul>

Obstacles to Change

Your values are what is most important, deep in your heart; what sort of person you want to be; what is significant and meaningful to you; and what you want to stand for in this life. There are ten domains of values:<ul><li>Family</li><li>Intimate Relationships</li><li>Friendships</li><li>Employment</li><li>Education and Personal Development</li><li>Recreation, Fun and Leisure</li><li>Spirituality</li><li>Community Life</li><li>Environment and Nature</li><li>Health and Body</li></ul>

Finding Your Values

<ul><li>Focus on one domain at a time.</li><li>Write down your goals. This makes you more likely to take action.</li><li>Goals should be SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time -bound.</li><li>Set a combination of immediate, short term (days to weeks), medium term (weeks to months) and long term (years) goals.</li><li>Never set a dead person's goal, something a dead person could do better than you.</li></ul>

Setting Goals

Embrace your demons, and follow your heart.

<ol><li>Defusion: learning to perceive thoughts, images and memories as pictures and words, rather than threats, rules and objective facts.</li><li>Expansion: making room for unpleasant feelings, sensations and urges; allowing them to come and go without struggling with them or running from them.</li><li>Connection: bringing full awareness to your here-and-now experience, with openness, interest, and receptiveness; focusing on, and engaging fully in the present. </li><li>The Observing Self: accessing a transcendent sense of self; unchanging and ever present, where no thought is dangerous, threatening, or controlling.</li></ol>

Mindfulness Skills

A guide to ACT: the revolutionary mindfulness-based program for reducing stress, overcoming fear, and finding fulfilment – now updated. International bestseller, 'The Happiness Trap', has been published in over thirty countries and twenty-two languages. NOW UPDATED. Popular ideas about happiness are misleading, inaccurate, and are directly contributing to our current epidemic of stress, anxiety and depression. And unfortunately, popular psychological approaches are making it even worse! In this easy-to-read, practical and empowering self-help book, Dr Russ Harries, reveals how millions of people are unwittingly caught in the 'The Happiness Trap', where the more they strive for happiness the more they suffer in the long term. He then provides an effective means to escape through the insights and techniques of ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy), a groundbreaking new approach based on mindfulness skills. By clarifying your values and developing mindfulness (a technique for living fully in the present moment), ACT helps you escape the happiness trap and find true satisfaction in life. Mindfulness skills are easy to learn and will rapidly and effectively help you to reduce stress, enhance performance, manage emotions, improve health, increase vitality, and generally change your life for the better. The book provides scientifically proven techniques to: reduce stress and worry; rise above fear, doubt and insecurity; handle painful thoughts and feelings far more effectively; break self-defeating habits; improve performance and find fulfilment in your work; build more satisfying relationships; and, create a rich, full and meaningful life.

RUSS HARRIS

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