My friend and colleague Egide Altenloh developed a model he calls “The wheel of Satisfaction”. I invite you to go to this page and answer, in your own way, the questions proposed. You will discover a first overview of the quality of your life and gain more clarity about which key-dimensions of your life need to taken care of more.
In the therapeutic sessions, we can go further: to discover what really matters in your life, what are your deeper values beyond the desires you long to fulfill and the objectives you strive to obtain.
You may want to feel better loved. And then you can ask questions like, “When I feel better loved, in what way my life will be different?” And above all: “In what way could I be different, then?” In other words: “What human qualities could I embody better”?
These qualities, these “ways of doing” are what in ACT we consider our values which can give more meaning and vitality to our lives.
The therapeutic dialogue can then serve to find ways to be more in tune with these values.
However, when we move closer to our values, we also discover that this “forces” us to face and deal with emotions that not always pleasant, sometimes downright painful.
Often these are “old” emotions that have remerged and are at first difficult to accept.
Unfortunately, the so “normal” tendency to want to avoid these experiences maintains a fight with “parts of ourselves”, a kind of civil war within us that stresses us, that depletes our energy and reduces our “appetite for life” …
On the next few pages, you will find a number of approaches that can help to go beyond such struggles and increase your ability to live in harmony with your values.