Get the Life You Want: Finding Meaning and Purpose Through Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

It was all very life affirming, as death can be. I was struck by how we remembered Granny. What she did, yes. But also how she did it. Granny could be quite formal, snooty even, but the Real Granny was also silly, curious and generous. I mean, does this look like a woman who really cares whether your elbows are on the table? She and her friends fought a war for freedom with incredible modesty and courage. I get annoyed with software updates on my smartphone.

Finding Meaning – Working with ACT

Busy, but not always about important stuff. Granny did stuff for her family and community. Yet at the same time there are problems with the mindfulness movement. First, the mindfulness movement focuses too much on the self, leaving it thin on moral foundations. Second, in placing so much emphasis on attending to the present moment, it overlooks how much human beings thrive on striving for meaningful goals. Krznaric also points out that studies suggest mindfulness may increase wellbeing, but not pro-social behaviour.

Get the Life You Want: Finding Meaning and Fulfillment through Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

So what is mindfulness really for , if all it does is help us bear these atomised, self-absorbed lives that would be so alien to Granny? Do you remember the early days of the web, when websites were static and focused on giving people information? This was web 1.

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The next generation of websites were interactive. Their focus was on changing the way we did things like communicating, finding jobs and looking at kittens. This was web 2. The same leap is now happening with mindfulness — a movement away from simple awareness to using our awareness to do things. ACT combines hard-edged science with the ability to move people, literally and figuratively. There are four reasons why ACT is the future of mindfulness:. ACT positions mindfulness as a call to action. It links awareness to behaviour that can actually change the world for the better.

It was very sudden this time. The end of a long-awaited holiday, dark January days, lots of travel, the death of my Step Father. But it feels more than that. Running feels like an assertion of my values over my emotions. I never want to run, but I run. But if I can hang in there running starts to reconnect me with a version of me that I like, or at least find harder to hate. This experience exactly mimics the latest research, which shows that committing to valued actions reduces suffering , but not the other way round.

But to have a thought and not be pushed around by it…. Over time my sense of self becomes defined less by what I think, and more by what I do. I also experience emotions more strongly when I run. Today I found myself choking up mid-run to Time to Say Goodbye. I felt a bit stupid, but it occurred to me that running is the only time I allow myself to properly feel my emotions.

When I started to get depressed in my 30s, I really would run from my feelings. But not by running — more often it was alcohol. And even when sadness shows up — big gulps of it — I keep running towards them, like old friends greeting each other at a train station. In this context sadness almost begins to feel like joy. A kind of reconnection with the best part of me.

I am writing this whilst sitting comfortably on a plane, powering through a brilliant autumn sunset towards Helsinki. I have everything I need, and the work will be great. This has nothing to do with Helsinki you understand. And lots of travel. I feel like I just want to stop and go home. This question tilts my attention towards the purpose of my being here.

And purpose is the great generator of meaning. Standard career advice says that if you want career success, then you need to decide where you want to be in your career in 10 years time and work out what you need to do in order to get there. This advice may be outdated. You can read the full post here. In my work as a psychologist I have worked with hundreds if not thousands of people who face a common career dilemma:. Overwhelmingly, they want the chance to author their own lives, make positive decisions, and to break free from inertia.

Yet it is impossible to do this without taking a risk and minds prefer certainty…. So people often end up staying where they are, but more by default than choice.

They console themselves with hopes that their situation will get better. And the organisation often responds, offering enhanced status and perks. Yet what I needed was a more fundamental change in my life. Most people want a sense of control and authorship over their lives and that was certainly the case for me. Another common issue is that those around us often have a stake in the status quo. These vested interests can be hard to tease out, especially as they often show up as a kind of protective concern.

Many of the rest questioned and even ridiculed it. On the flipside of what we most value is always something that we fear. Therefore, for the really big decisions in life we need to:. Without this willingness, it is very difficult to break out of patterns that are not working. Change is essential for renewal, but it always takes courage to take that first step. There is always the temptation to see career change in terms of black and white. Do I stay in my job, or leave? Yet the reality is rarely like this. All of my clients make intelligent transition plans to gradually shift towards something better.

After all, the plan is where we deal with the reality of what follows. But in general, whilst it is usually easier in the short term to stay, I notice that those who leave rarely regret it.

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In fact, they almost all start to feel more authorship over their own decisions, and greater vitality, meaning and purpose in life as a result. It was beyond embarrassing, and the end for Ranieri after only 4 games in charge. It was also probably the end of his career. His quirky, kindly personality seemed out of kilter with the hard realities of modern football. Meanwhile the league title was again being won by Chelsea, a team managed by Jose Mourinho who had replaced Ranieri some years previous.

Mourinho was the opposite of Ranieri; knowing, calculating, snide. He is the kind of man who stamped on insects as a child. Even his jokes contain a bitter aftertaste. But Mourinho seemed modern, Ranieri a relic.

Chelsea, at the top of the league, had the manager and the money. The following season started out like any other, but then unfolded as though reimagined by Picasso. One by one the established realities were inverted:. The odds of Leicester winning were against. To put that into perspective, the odds of finding Elvis alive today are It was unthinkable, impossible. The greatest upset in sporting history. Of course Ranieri is no longer seen as a relic. Certainly for months he had joked with the press, smiled with the fans, laughed at any talk of winning the league. Suddenly he seemed a refreshing alternative to the cynicism of Mourinho.

The psychology behind their success lies in being able to hold thoughts lightly , whilst focusing on constructive, workable actions in each moment. Although thoughts are not reality, they feel like reality. This is fusion — the process of seeing thoughts and reality as the same thing. Fusion can be very useful, especially for survival.

Even now it feels wrong for Leicester to be champions, which is perhaps why so many people say that it still feels more like a dream than reality. Yet the traps are set by fusing to thoughts like:. Whilt these stories may contain elements of fact, they are not reality. We feel trapped by these thoughts, but we are not trapped in a way that say, a dog would understand.

The problem is that when we buy into our thinking and stories wholesale, we risk acting within the confines of the story and failing to author our own story. We fall into the comfortable illusion that there is nothing to be done, events are outside of our control. And this is what Leicester have really taught us. Most of us find it hard to control our thinking. Fusing to stories of hard luck or powerlessness may make life easier in the short term, but it also makes it smaller. Leicester have shown us that reality is far from what our minds tell us it is.

If we learn to hold our thoughts lightly, and focus instead on workable behaviours in the direction of what really matters to us, then the world opens up. Skip to content This week someone asked me for a meeting, so I looked at my diary…. So what can be done? Tackling Stress at Work In a recent interview for the New Scientist on behalf of one of my Fintech clients , I argued that interventions at both organisation and individual level were required.

Dahl, Wilson and Nilsson Behavior Therapy, This study gave an ACT intervention to a group of Swedish care workers selected as being at high risk of long term work disability due to stress and musculoskeletal pain. Waters, Frude, Flaxman, Boyd, British Journal of Clinical Psychology, This study demonstrated that even a short, one-off training intervention can have positive effects. Conclusion Of course, training psychological flexibility is only a part of the solution to a complex problem. Right from the start, the ACT model made sense to me, and made so many things clearer. Apart from the bit about values.

That bit left me confused, but I let it go, thinking it would all work out. Yet at the same time, I feel like values have changed my life. How the hell did that happen? This is how I understand values. Values help with hard choices Values, therefore, are different from decisions, and from ethics and morals. Not in order to get the perfect life, with the fancy car and the posh job, but so that we give ourselves a fighting chance to achieve the things that really do matter, which probably include: The usual hierarchies are dropped.

Individuals are given much more autonomy. People often work in small, semi-autonomous groups that are nested together to create a larger system. Everyone is seen as able to take on a leadership role whenever needed. All employees are provided with training in the skills they need in order to navigate the complexity of this sometimes challenging environment. Individual workers can make important decisions — as long as they seek advice from those who will be affected by the decision. You can watch Laloux explaining his research in more detail in this talk: My Granny died last month, aged There are four reasons why ACT is the future of mindfulness: An opportunity to live your values.

For example, a hospital cleaner can choose to see themselves as an important part of the process of healing patients which, of course, they are and as a result express values of kindness or conscientiousness in their work. If it genuinely feels meaningless, then you might want to start to work on a career change. It might just save your life!

It is a great way of unearthing the meaning that is already present in your life. Here is what you do: When you have done — notice what you photographed and what you wrote under the photographs. Notice what stands out. Notice any recurrent themes. Craft yourself a meaning statement. Now as you go through your day, notice when there is an opportunity to treat an event as meaningful and see what happens.

Here is one of my photojournalist images. The photo is of my partner fixing my chicken pen.

Finding Meaning

A small moment but it has deep meaning for me. It is about relationships, caring, family tradition. Rachel gained 15 years experience as a psychiatrist before moving into management consulting in She now lectures on the Executive MBA program at QUT and provides leadership, executive and career coaching to senior and high potential leaders.

To learn more, visit - http: In addition to the affirmation you suggest, at times a more explicitly questioning approach could also be helpful: Thank you for sharing it. New York, NY t. It seems to be the great panacea but the only challenge is that there are no proven interventions Mike Steger acknowledges this. And reserach suggests ,the more you pursue meaning the unhappier you will be.

Thanks Oz, I agree, this is a complex area. I am not sure that the best response to the pain of pursuing meaning is to decide not to pursue it. That sounds like experiential avoidance. I was quite careful in choosing the interventions I suggested. Values interventions do have research to support them in terms of improving performance and wellbeing.

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I think The photojournalist activity is something that most people would enjoy — and, of course, it is only a suggestion. Could you give me the link to the research on stumbling on meaning — sounds interesting. You are commenting using your WordPress.