Ten Steps to Trying on a Value

Choose valued directions that you are willing to try on for at least a week. This should be a value that you can enact and a value that you care about. This is not a time to try to change others or manipulate them into changing.

Notice anything that comes up about whether or not this is a good value, or whether or not you really care about this value. Just notice all thoughts for what they are. Remember that your mind's job is to create thoughts. Let your mind do that and you stay on the exercise.

Take a moment to list a few behaviors that one might say are related to the chosen value.

From this list, choose one behavior or set of behaviors you can commit to between now and next session or the next few sessions.

Notice anything that comes up about whether or not that is a good behavior, whether or not you will enjoy it, or whether you can actually do that to which you are committing yourself.

Write down how you will go about enacting this value in the very near future (today, tomorrow, this coming weekend, at the next meeting with your supervisor). Consider anything you will need to plan or get in order (e.g., call another person, clean the house, make an appointment, etc.). Choose when to do that — the sooner the better.

Even if this value involves other people, do not tell them what you are doing. See what you can notice if you just enact this value without telling them it is an 'experiment'.

Things to look for are other's reactions to you, any thoughts, feelings, or body sensations that occur before, during, and after the behavior, and how you feel doing it for the second (or fifth, or tenth, or hundredth) time. Watch for evaluations that indicate whether this activity, value, or valued direction was 'good' or 'bad', or judgments about others, or yourself, in relation to living this value. Gently thank your mind for those thoughts, and see if you can choose not to buy into the judgments it makes about the activity.

Every day. Notice anything that shows up as you do so.

Please bring your Daily Reactions Diary back to your next session.