Stress and Struggle Are Not the Only Way
Activate your life for success without barriers
A Different Approach for Engaging with Life
Acceptance and Commitment Training or ACTraining is tool suite that fosters psychological flexibility. Psychological flexibility is the ability to persevere or change their behavior to achieve the desired outcomes, even when the action is difficult. You might call it grit or resolve or crisis management. It is the characteristic that allows you to keep going when you want to quit.
Psychological flexibility is not something you have or don’t have--it is something you can learn. And more importantly, it is something that you can get good at, so you don’t have to struggle to stay engaged with life when things get hard.
Key Components of ACT
There are three basic steps in ACT with six integrated components to add to your tool belt for success. Don’t let the steps overwhelm you: it’s an approach that is easy to learn and can be applied to any setting--your job, your home, your relationships, your future goals! Once you know how to think about your role in the world differently, you will interact with your world differently--and better.
3+6=
A- You need to be able to Accept and identify that certain things—like your current situation, your current circumstances, your health, -- may be out of your control, but your ACTIONS are in your control
C- You need to CHOOSE actions that are consistent with your plan of action and COMMIT to engaging in those actions
T-You need to TAKE ACTION, even when it is not comfortable and you want to avoid the engagement.
The ACT Difference
What can ACT do for you
Increase your stress tolerance so you can keep going through stressful situations
Increase your ability to act and engage in activities no matter what
Create a more peaceful and purposeful interaction with you and your surroundings
Identify your values and goals to increase your enjoyment of life
Remove the paralysis that occurs when setbacks occur
Give you the confidence to follow your goals and desires
Increase your behavioral effectiveness, so you achieve more
Who Can Benefit from ACT
Anyone Can Benefit from Becoming more Psychologically Flexible, but ACT is ideal for:
People who have high levels of stress
Parents who are overwhelmed by the pressures of parenthood
Executives and leaders who must constantly manage change
Workers in high performance jobs
People who suffer from depression and anxiety
People who want to manage their stress and life with clear concrete steps
How Does ACT Work?
Move away from avoidance and towards action
ACTraining represents a change in how you talk to yourself and how you act. It’s a reframing process that frees you to act in the way that you want to meet your values and goals. ACTtraining turns negative emotions on their head and let’s you have more control over how you act. Instead of avoiding engaging you life, you learn to embrace it, negative feelings and all.
How it happens?
1. Evaluating the past strategies
You’ve tried all kinds of ways to address your stress, but it’s still there and impacts your life. The first step is to evaluate the things that you have been avoiding and understand all the triggers that keep your from engaging and cause psychological harm.
2. Identify why it doesn’t work
It’s not your life that’s hopeless, it’s your strategies. The way humans generally address psychological stress makes it worse. The more we avoid negative feelings, the more negative feelings we have about ourselves.
3. Identify your values
Choose a direction that you want your life to go and make a plan to go that way. Connect to your values and understand why you want to act. Gain meaning in what you are doing by purposefully connecting to self-chosen values.
4. Re-establish control of your emotions with new strategies
Learn different ways of addressing your stress and negative feelings. Don’t keep doing the same thing and expect different results.
5. Separate yourself from your experiences
Learn strategies that let you see identify when your emotions threaten to create stress and anxiety and realign your thinking with your values.
6. Commit to the process
Take your identified values and goals and commit to pursuing them even and especially when it feels hard using the tools you’ve learned to give you control and power in your life.