Note: This is a chapter from a new, short book I’m writing on ACT. I’m publishing chapters to find out what you think and to enjoy the nice feeling of sharing free content. Feel free to leave feedback in the comments below. :)

ACT stands for Acceptance and Commitment Therapy or Acceptance and Commitment Training. It’s a well-tested approach based on over 40 years of scientific research that offers practical ways to navigate through the challenges you face in modern life.

The aim of ACT is to help you create a life that’s rich, meaningful and fun – a fulfilling life. It achieves this by improving what is called your psychological flexibility.

Psychological flexibility is the skill of taking action to do what matters most to you in your everyday life, and being able to flexibly navigate through any unhelpful thoughts and feeling that come up in the process. You can improve your psychological flexibility by developing six specific skills, called flexibility skills. 

People who have developed high levels of psychological flexibility have been found, in over 3,000 studies, to live healthy and fulfilling lives. And because it’s a skill, you can learn them too.

The great thing about ACT is it’s ‘process-based’ rather than technique-based. So, once you learn the six flexibility skills, you can integrate them into your life however you wish. Use whatever techniques that work and appeal to you.

In essence, ACT seeks to help you relate to your challenges in a radically different way, so life has greater purpose and you can enjoy greater peace of mind.

ACT is beneficial whether you’re feeling stuck in life right now, or not. This is because greater psychological flexibility is beneficial for everyone, from children to teachers to refugees to corporate executives to Olympic athletes. Yes, Olympic athletes have used ACT to help them achieve gold medals. So, who knows what you’ll achieve or who you’ll be able to help with these skills over the long term!

The Characters in Your Mind

Everywhere you go, you always take your mind with you. So let’s imagine the different thoughts and emotions you have are represented by different characters that follow you around everywhere you go.

Some of them are friendly, but most of them are not. Some are angry and judgemental. And some are scared and don’t want you to take risks. Some put you down and tell you you’re not good enough.

Now imagine you love going for a walk in your local forest every day. And you’d love to try a new and exciting path in the forest. But everytime you consider it, these characters start saying ‘no, that’s scary, you can’t do it, don’t bother, stick to the safe path’ and so on.

You didn’t ask these people to come along on your walk. You want to get rid of them. So you fight and try and push them away. But they fight back. No matter how hard you try, they come back stronger. So you try running away from them… but they always catch up. They discourage you from taking on challenges or trying anything new.

You decide to just avoid them. You put your fingers in your ears and close your eyes. You feel relieved for a short time. But you soon realise you can’t experience any of the nice scenery – and you can’t walk anywhere.

Eventually, you try the ACT approach. And the ACT approach is to stop fighting or avoiding the characters that walk with you. Just accept them, and take them with you! You realise if you stop fighting them, they stop fighting you too. And when you’re kind to them, they are more likely to calm down.

They can say whatever they want, but they can’t physically stop you going wherever you want to go! So now you’re free to follow your heart and they’ll just come along, sometimes complaining and sometimes not. You accept them for who they are and take them with you in your life’s adventure. You get to choose where you’re going to go.

(c) 2021 Shamash Alidina

To learn more about ACT, visit our ACT resources.

Go here to read Chapter 2