Moving closer to the bull’s-eye: The benefits of living consistently with your values

The focus of the influential Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is to accept the experience of difficult emotions and accompanying negative thoughts while simultaneously committing to take action which is consistent with your values. These value-consistent actions and activities occur in major areas of one’s life including work/education, relationships, personal growth/health and leisure. Engaging in such actions and activities on an ongoing basis makes it easier to accept the difficult emotions and accompanying thoughts and allows one to transcend adversity and suffering as well as enhance one’s emotional well-being by fostering a sense of meaning, purpose and fulfillment.

Living according to your values on a regular basis is made easier by following a visual framework provided by Dr. Russ Harris, ACT proponent and author of the world’s best-selling ACT book The Happiness Trap. In the following sections, I will discuss how you can use this framework.

Distance from the bull’s-eye: The degree to which you live consistently with your values

Dr. Harris uses tool which is a target in the shape of a circle, much like a dart board, to visually depict the extent to which a person is living consistently with their values. This tool, known as the ‘Bull’s Eye’, was originally developed by Swedish psychologist Tobias Lundgren.

The closer to the center of the target –that is, the bull’s-eye–the more a person is living according to their values. Conversely, the farther from the bull’s-eye, the less they are living according to their values.

Four quadrants comprising the circle: Values in different areas

The Bull’s Eye—or what I will refer to as the ‘values circle’–is divided into four quadrants. These represent different areas of life in which you have the opportunity to act consistently with your values. The four quadrants include: (1) Work/Education in the top left quadrant; (2) Leisure in the top right quadrant; (3) Personal growth/Health in the bottom left quadrant; and (4) Relationships in the bottom right quadrant.

Identifying values to live by in each quadrant

Using the values circle entails first identifying particular values which you consider important to live by in each quadrant. A good first step in doing so is to list the values which are important to you.

There are different ways to come up with the values for your list. Some values may be obvious to you. For example, you may consider honesty, perseverance, caring and loyalty important values. To expand your list of values beyond those which you can think of readily, it may be helpful to consult a list of values such as the one provided by Dr. Harris on his website which can be found at www.psychwire.com/harris.

Once you’ve identified values which are important to you, a good next step is to categorize the values in the quadrant or quadrants to which they are relevant. While doing so, you will likely find that some values are specific to a particular area of your life. For example, ‘Be a good parent’ would be specific to the Relationships quadrant. On the other hand, you are also likely to discover that certain other values apply to multiple areas of your life. For example, the value ‘consistency’ might apply to all four quadrants.

Determining your distance from the bull’s-eye in each quadrant

Once you have identified various values for each area of your life, the next step is to determine the extent to which you are currently acting consistently with those values. You can indicate this for a particular value or the collective set of values in each quadrant by making a mark at a certain distance from the bull’s-eye.

The closer the mark is to the bull’s-eye, the more consistently you are acting with that value or set of values. The farther the mark is from the bull’s-eye, the less consistently you are acting with that value or set of values.

For example, if you have been working hard studying for your university degree recently, you might place a dot close to the bull’s-eye in the Work/Education quadrant with the word, ‘hard-working’ next to it in order to indicate that you have been living consistently with that value.

On the other hand, were you to have recently rejected offers from friends to participate in a new activity and failed to listen to arguments from a friend who has political views which are different from yours, you might place dots farther from the bull’s-eye in the Leisure and Relationships quadrants with the word, ‘open-mindedness’ next to them. The position of these dots away from the center of the target would indicate that you have not recently been acting consistently with that value.

Setting goals to move closer to the bull’s-eye in each quadrant

The final step in using the values circle entails setting goals to move closer to the bull’s-eye in each quadrant. In so doing, you work toward living more consistently with your values. This step also entails maintaining close proximity to the bull’s-eye in those instances in which you are currently living consistently with your values by continuing to engage regularly in values-consistent activities.

One effective way to do this is to use action plans for each case in which you want to act more consistently with your values. Use of this simple but effective tool entails scheduling particular value-consistent activities on specific days and times followed by performing these activities when the specified days and times arise.

As you perform values-consistent actions more often, you can indicate this on the target by marking your dot closer to the bull’s-eye. The benefits to your emotional well-being which you realize from behaving consistently with your values more often should eventually provide enough positive reinforcement that doing so becomes a habit. You would then likely no longer need to use the action plan in order to perform these actions.

The values circle is an excellent visual depiction of the importance of behaving consistently with your values. Having it nearby will remind you of the benefits of staying on top of this endeavour.

May you move closer to the bull’s-eye by living consistently with your values,

Dr. Pat