Withdrawing behaviors happen not only with the activities that are important to you, but also with things that are fun, enjoyable, and pleasurable. In this series, Getting Mobilized: From Behavioral Avoidance to Behavioral Activation, you’re learning different steps to get back on track.
In part 1, you learned the different empirically-supported approaches for dealing with withdrawal, disconnecting, and disengagement. In part 2, you were asked to identify your values and hold onto them as the compass of your behavior. But when feeling down, a common go-to behavior is to disconnect not only from activities that are important to us but also from the fun, enjoyable, and pleasurable things we like to do. In this blog, you are invited to identify those common, day-to-day, fun activities you have been avoiding and want to start participating in.
“We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.”
Seneca
If you have a hard time coming up with ideas, here is a list of popular ones for inspiration. Keep in mind that this list is a generic one, and you may want to add a more-specific activity. For instance, if “exercising” is something you want to start doing again, try to narrow the activity to running, biking, or whatever you enjoy doing.
Visiting friends or family
Talking to friends or family on the phone
Going to movies or plays
Watching videos or TV
Exercising
Playing games
Chatting on the Internet
Listening to music
Going away for a weekend
Planning a vacation
Pursuing a hobby
Collecting
Doing crafts
Enjoying the sun
Walking or hiking
Reading
Gardening
If you are still struggling with coming up with some ideas, ask your friends and relatives for suggestions. Also, think back over the years to the things you’ve enjoyed. Try to remember everything you’ve ever done that was fun.
Now, take some time to jot down specific activities that you have enjoyed or can imagine enjoying in the future.
Exercise: Identifying fun, pleasurable, and enjoyable activities
In the next blog, we will look at another type of activities you may have been struggling with because of ongoing disconnecting behaviors. Let’s break the cycle of inactivity, and let’s get you moving.
In part 1 of this series, engagement: from behavioral avoidance to behavioral activation, you did an assessment of how you’re spending your time and inventory on all the stuff you have been avoiding. Now, to get back into your life you will learn how to go back to your values, fun activities, and your to-dos.
This blog post focuses specifically on getting you back on track by doing what you care about.
“Work on Purpose, Play on Purpose, Rest on Purpose. Do not let yourself or anyone else waste your time.” Izey Victoria Odiase
Getting mobilized with your values
Values have been the source of inspiration for artists, creators, makers, and almost every single person on Earth who wants to live with meaning, purpose, and intention. “Values” is a word that gets thrown around a great deal these days, and it means different things to different people. Based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and for the purposes of this series, let’s think of values as the response to these key questions:
Are you living the life you want to live? What sort of person do you want to be? Are you the relative you want to be? Are you doing what matters to you as a friend? Are you treating yourself the way you really, deeply want in your heart?
Before we dive into figuring out your values, a couple of clarifications:
Values are different from goals
Values are the “why” of what you do, and they’re different from goals. Goals are specific stepping stones along the path leading you in the direction of your values. Goals are actions that are completed and checked off a list. For instance, Rebecca, as a mother, identifies her value as “being caring” and her goals are to 1) prepare a meal for her daughter three times a week, 2) drive her daughter to school twice a week, and 3) attend her daughter’s volleyball games on the weekends. In essence, Rebecca sets her goals and actions in line with her values; her actions may change, but her values don’t.
Values are not feelings
We are all wired to experience a full range of emotions—that’s our natural makeup—but experiencing one feeling versus another does not mean you’re living your values; you’re just feeling. And our feelings, like waves in the ocean, come and go. You don’t have control of what you feel, but you do have control over how you act and how you want to live your life. Now let me break the news to you: those are also dead goals because, as much you may wish it were true, you don’t have control over what you feel. You simply feel what you feel. But values are not about feeling good. In fact, living your values and doing what matters comes with uncomfortable feelings at times.
For instance, for Joe, being caring with his relatives is a core value; every month he travels for six hours to spend a weekend with his ninety-year-old grandmother who cannot travel, barely recognizes him, and requires assistance at all times. As soon as he arrives, Joe changes her clothing, grooms her, reads her a favorite book, and leaves pictures of her great-grandchildren. Even when she calls him by the wrong name, he holds her hand. Joe feels sad and frustrated, and he believes it is unfair that a woman who raised nine children is slowly dying. Yet even though performing these actions in service of his values makes him uncomfortable, he does them.
Values are not about avoiding feelings
If your mind says that the outcome you want in life is to feel less pain, to have less intense and fewer stressful emotions like anxiety or sadness, I totally get it. It’s understandable that we don’t want to feel any discomfort because it’s no fun at all. But here’s where this thinking gets tricky. A client told me once that being funny was a very important value for him; when I asked more about it, he said that telling jokes and being funny makes him likable to others and creates a good impression. When asked what would happen if he isn’t funny, he said that he would be worried about not being liked and would even be afraid of people no longer wanting to be friends with him. For my client, acting funny is not a value but emotional escapism. He is avoiding the feeling of being disliked or abandoned by others. Values-based on running away from painful emotions are not actually values, because the actions you do actually take you away from your values.
Values are not your preferences
There are things that we like, love, and go out of our way to get. For instance, you may love your morning coffee, a sunny day on the beach, or salsa dancing; all those things are nice and fun, and you may want to have a lot of those moments, but those are preferences, not values. Your morning coffee, as tasty as it is, isn’t pointing you in the direction of doing what matters to you; your values do that. Your values are like the arrow on a compass that points the way for you to go.
Values are not your wishes for others’ behaviors
Sometimes, when having a conversation about values, I hear comments along the lines of “I want to be respected by others.” It’s natural to want to be seen, appreciated, and respected by others, and we certainly deserve it. But, here is the takeaway: we simply do not have control of other people’s reactions, behaviors, and feelings about us. Now that we have gone over a few points about values, I hope you can see that living your values is an actionable task. Taking steps toward what matters to you gives you a new way of being in the world; it is not pain-free, but it means you get to choose how you want to live your life, instead of your emotions choosing for you and dragging you around in the process. The more steps you take toward becoming the person you want to be, the better it gets—and as they say, “What you practice grows.” The next section of this chapter will help you to clarify what matters to you and how you can take steps toward them.
Identifying your values
Below are two exercises that you can use as a guide to identify your values; feel free to do both of them since they are complementary.
Exercise 1: Identifying your values (part 1) Grab a piece of paper and write about three different moments when you had a sense of vitality and felt alive, when you were doing what speaks deeply to you, when in that moment life was just perfect. Describe each situation, the person you were with, and what you were doing. Imagine that someone was recording you in those moments—what would they see in the camera?After recalling and writing about these three different memories, try to identify any qualities that stand out to you across all of them. Ask yourself: What was special for me about those moments? How did I feel about myself? What was the quality or way of being I was embracing that made me feel good in those moments?Your answers will point you to your values. Write them down, keeping in mind that your values are verbs. You don’t need to have a shopping list of your values, just a refined list of what you strive to be and stand for in your personal life. As a reference, you can look at this list of values:
For instance, after completing this exercise, Anne came up with the following sweet memories:
Memory 1: When celebrating my daughter’s sixth birthday, I looked at her and felt a strong sense of connection with her and felt how much I wanted to be a constant part of her life in a way that she knows I love her.
Memory 2: On a rainy day, my partner and I were struggling to figure out what to do to entertain ourselves. We flipped channels and didn’t see anything interesting. We thought about eating, but nothing seemed exciting. We decided to walk our dog in our neighborhood and, to my surprise, that was one of sweetest moments we had. It was cold, we were wearing our heavy jackets, but when walking together we remembered the first home we had, how hard we worked for it, how we decorated it, how much we argued about the tile in the bathroom, and how we couldn’t stop smiling when thinking of the bright yellow door we painted in the kitchen. I felt so clear about not needing extravagant or fancy things all the time to enjoy myself and my husband’s company.
Memory 3: I remember a tough conversation I needed to have at work with my sister, who was also my manager, about a salary raise. I couldn’t sleep for days, felt anxious, and asked for advice from any person I could find. In the past, no matter what I asked for, whether it was for something at work, at home, or anywhere, my sister would usually say no. Somehow she still sees me as the youngest kid and doesn’t want me to get away with stuff. Ridiculously, as an adult she still treats me like that. So, I usually don’t bother asking or insisting on what I need. This time, I prepared a draft of what I was going to tell my sister and rehearsed in front of a mirror. I even had a back-up plan if she didn’t raise my salary. On the day of our meeting, I made sure I had my coffee, wore my favorite sweater, and then walked to her office. She was friendly and then asked about my request for revising my salary. In those moments, I felt my body get sweaty all over, and I felt a rush like I wanted to run away, but I stayed and told her that I needed a raise and recited the reasons why. My sister looked at me, didn’t say much while I was talking, and after nodding her head, she said that she would think about it and discuss it. She wanted me to know that no one in my department had received a raise in the last six months. I was prepared for my sister to say something like that, so I took a deep breath, and then asked her when she could give me a response because I needed to make decisions accordingly. For the first time, I didn’t walk away from a conflict, didn’t apologize for asking for what I needed. And even though I didn’t get the raise immediately but instead two months later, I knew I did the right thing for myself. When writing down these three memories and going over them, Anne identified these personal values: being caring, down to earth, and authentic.
Jot down below the values you came up with; when doing so, don’t worry about finding the perfect word or the perfect value, just list the principles that you want to embrace in your life and be remembered for by others. The purpose of this exercise is not to identify the perfect value but to get in touch with what truly matters to you.
Exercise 2: Identifying your values (part 2) Read the following directions slowly, and then see what you come up with at the end of it.Imagine that you have lived your life the best you could up to this point. Some things went as you wanted them to go, some things were difficult, but here you are today. You planned some things and others just happened. However, things take a dramatic new course for you in this moment: Right now, you’re being notified that you’re going to die in the next twenty-four hours. Yes, that’s right, imagine that you’re going to die within the next twenty-four hours. Suddenly you may start breathing fast and realize you only have a short amount of time to be alive and prepare for your final departure. You might ask yourself: Given how things are right now, what type of person do I want to be? You’re living your last day on earth. You’re running out of time. There is no turning back. This is it. Please reflect on this, and instead of rushing to answer, breathe, and jot down your response.
Now that you have completed two exercises to identify what truly matters to you, let’s move on to acknowledging the life areas that you care about.
Exercise 3: Identifying areas that are important to you People tend to have strong values in ten general areas of life (Hayes and Smith 2005). Some of these areas will be more important to you than others. Read through the following descriptions of these domains and circle four that are most important to you.
Intimate relationships. What kind of partner do you want to be with your significant other? Parenting. What is most important to you about parenting your kids? Friends and social life. How do you want to show up to your friends? Health. What’s important to you when you think about your health? Family relationships. What is most important about your relationships with your parents and siblings? Spirituality or religion. What’s important for you in this area? Community life and citizenship. How do you want to show up to others in your community? Work and career. What are the qualities you want to embrace at work and in your career?
Now that you have a sense of your values and the areas of your life that are important to you, write down the four areas and respective values you want to start focusing on and commit to working on as you move forward:
.
Going back to Anne, she identified the following values and area:
You will be coming back to this exercise, so be sure to earmark it so you can return to it as you continue reading this series. Here is another thing to keep in mind about values: words about values without any action are like beautiful leaves swept away by the wind. We don’t want your values blown away. Instead, let’s move into identifying specific steps you can take to live those values
Identify actions toward your values
You cannot explore New York by driving the streets of Seattle, right?
The same applies here: You cannot live your values by taking actions in random directions. Rather, you must intentionally choose specific actions, steps, and goals you need to take in the right direction. How do you do it? By answering the three W questions: What, When, and with Whom.
For instance, Anne decided to live her value of being a caring daughter by spending every Saturday with her mom, who is struggling with Alzheimer’s disease. She did this even when her mother didn’t recognize her, or thought Anne was her cousin, or didn’t talk at all. Anne drove two hours every Saturday to spend the day with her mom, even when she thought, She doesn’t even know who I am.” and Does she know what I’m doing? and How did this happen to her? and It’s not fair. In the end, Anne wouldn’t trade those Saturdays for anything.
It’s your turn to identify specific actions that will bring your life into closer alignment with your key values. When thinking of actions and goals, keep in mind the following principles:
– Goals and actions must be concrete and achievable, given your circumstances. – Goals and actions must be specific, answering who, why, how, where, and for how long.
You can use a worksheet like the one below as an aid in this process. As a starting point, I invite you to choose only four areas from all the ones mentioned above. In the first column, write the area you want to focus on. In the next column, write at least three values for each area. And in the last column, think of a specific action you can do that reflects the key value.
Exercise: Identifying your values-based activities.
The next blog post will focus on other activities that you may have withdrawn from and need to restart to get fully mobilized and back into your life!
A couple of months ago, I didn’t have a choice other than having a complicated conversation with a friend. Four nights before having the conversation, I couldn’t sleep, was worried about the impact it would have on our friendship, future collaborations, and felt sad about having to sit and discuss something that could potentially make things hard for us to continue our friendship. I was scared!
Relationships are a messy business, period!
A life well lived has strong connections with the people we love. The reality is that we have survived as a species not only because of biological adaptation, but also because of our connections with others. Our ancestors learned very early on that in order to survive they required the group, and to be part of the group they needed to learn to foster different types of relationships.
I honestly think that building connections with others is one of the most precious things we can do in life; without these connections, we are vulnerable to suffering, loneliness, and isolation.
But relationships are not just like flowers and butterflies; they are difficult to look after, maintain, and be in. I think that most of us go through life using a trial-and-error approach to creating healthy, caring, and fulfilling connections with others. But do we really know what we are doing all of the time? Probably not.
Creating a relationship from scratch is not an easy project; it’s actually a complex undertaking because, as fun as relationships are, we also get hurt, disappointed, frustrated, and discouraged at times. And every time there is a rupture, there we are again: covered in visible or invisible tears, trying to pull ourselves together in the midst of the emotional turmoil and simply surviving from moment to moment.
In my case, I was scared about losing the connection with a person I love, care about, and cherish in life.
My fears, worries, and anxieties about this upcoming conversation came with images of us fighting, arguing, and crying; thoughts of “it won’t go well; What if everything ends here? How would it look when we are at the same party and still disconnected? Would this person speak badly about me? How awkward would that be? What if other friends have to choose who they continue in a friendship with? Would they choose me? Would this affect my work?”
My mind was quite busy anticipating what would happen, what would happen if this or that, and generating all types of hypotheses about a potential outcome, as it was supposed to do. My mind was working fast, quickly, at the speed of light, and doing the best it could to protect me from any hurt related to this friendship and soon-to-have conversation, all driven by fear.
But my fear – and all the thoughts that came along with it – was taking me away from asking myself key questions to handle this clashing moment:
What’s my value in this relationship?
How do I want to show up to this moment of fear that is consistent with who I want to be?
How do I want to respond to the distress that a person I care about is going through?
Our fears take us into all types of future scenarios, negative outcomes, and gloom-doom outlines; but the good news is that, instead of going along with all those thoughts, by bringing ourselves back to the present and checking what sort of relationships we want to build, we can learn to approach conflict as a source of growth, connection, and even as an act of love!
Sweet connections, rough conversations, & fearful moments can happen all at once, and all together can be opportunities to live our interpersonal values.
Living our interpersonal values is about discovering how we want to be within each relationship we have – especially when having a contentious moment – and while making room for our fears, worries, and anxieties as they come.
Because of Covid-19, many of the conferences I usually attend were done remotely. So, thousands of people were able to attend from the comfort of their home and without having to deal with the hassle of traveling. I was one of those people, with the caveat that, I was presenting at some of these conferences.
Webinars are such an interesting format for delivering a presentation; they’re trendy these days, they’re raw, and they’re real. They’re definitely different than what I’m used to. When I’m teaching, I have students to discuss, analyze, and unpack ideas. When I’m doing therapy or coaching, I have clients that I’m interacting with.
However, when delivering a webinar, I’m looking at a screen and a chat box, hoping to read all messages so I can interact with the attendees. I cannot see anyone’s face because most of the platforms don’t allow you to see the participants while using another application for your presentation; that’s very tricky for me given that I’m all about engaging with others when presenting.
While these webinars allowed me to connect with so many people all over the world, they also triggered fears of not doing things right and perfect for me – because of the format, the challenge of reading the messages, the technological problems, and so on. From time to time, my mind was shouting at me “oh boy, no one will take me seriously; aughhh I look and sound so informal.”
At the end of each one of those webinars, despite the newness of the format and the background noise my mind was making, I finished excited, revitalized, and amazed by people’s participation; forty-eight hours later, the views of the webinar were much higher than what I anticipated and received very interesting follow-up questions.
So, here is a reflection that I would like to share with you and hope it’s helpful to you in dealing with all the fear-based reactions you may encounter on your way:
-When doing what’s important to us, we naturally feel anxious.
– We feel anxious, because we care about what we’re doing.
– When doing what we care, our mind naturally comes up with thoughts like “it will be bad, terribly bad.”
Our mind is not our enemy, but a very protective device that wants to make sure we don’t mess up. At times, it comes with thoughts about the outcome of a situation with strong focus on what could possibly go wrong, terribly wrong so we are more careful, more cautious, and more intentional about what we do. The challenge is that while those thoughts are a possibility, there is no way for us to know whether they might happen or not, those are just hypothetical thoughts. So, dwelling on them is dwelling on pessimistic hypotheticals, spending time on negative possibilities, and ruminating in unwanted outcomes.
Not everything is, as we think it is.
I want to invite you to check the narrative, thoughts, or stories you’re willing to watch – and make room for – when doing what you care about this week.
Many times when watching movies we love, reading captivating stories, enjoying pieces of art, eating a delicious dessert, or dancing to an amazing song we see the final version of hundreds of hours of creation. But what’s behind the scenes of each one of those projects? How do they start? How do they evolve?
The reality is that the beginning of all projects is far from what we want them to be. And, even though we may know that, how often do we quit things because they’re not perfect enough? I think we need to radically accept that all those unpolished, messy, and imperfect early attempts to create something, start something, and make something, are just part of the process.
So, here I’m giving myself a permission slip and sharing with you the beginnings of a new project on youtube.
These videos are clip from interviews I’ve had with different podcasters this year; so they weren’t created with Youtube in mind or any other video platform. However, after these interviews, I got contacted by different people asking more questions about some of the ideas I shared in these interviews. Here I am sharing some of the clips that capture those ideas with all of you!
Why add values to your exposure exercises?
Exposure exercises are the front-line treatment to face our fears, worries, anxieties, and obsessions. And even though its effectiveness is well established, facing our fears is hard work. One-size doesn’t fit all and we need alternatives to get unstuck.
Source: Interview with Kimberly Quinlan from Anxiety Toolkit (2020)
Tips for developing a new relationship with your mind
We have been told that thinking defines us, that we need to change our thoughts, that we need to respond to thinking with more thinking. But actually, all those responses can keep us stuck if we don’t check how they work moment-by-moment.
I don’t have a recipe for how you should think, but I can tell you – learning to have a better relationship with your mind – watching what it does – taking it lightly – figuring out how you want to show up every day can lead to amazing moments!
In this clip, I share briefly some of those tips to give you an idea of what I’m referring to.
Source: Interview with Kimberly Quinlan from Anxiety Toolkit (2020)
Using acceptance and commitment skills to face your fears
This is certainly one of my favorite questions to answer, and while it’s short, it may give you an idea of why acceptance and commitment skills can make a difference to liberate ourselves from fear-based struggles and ineffective playing-it-safe actions.
Source: Interview with Adam Lowery from Cognitive Rampage (2020)
What is the fear of the fear?
Being afraid of being afraid is a very common response that hinders us from realizing that experiencing fear is the norm and not the exception. But what is it and how does it develop?
Source: Interview with Adam Lowery from Cognitive Rampage (2020)
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During a conversation with a podcaster, I heard the words “you need to be self-confident to do what you care about, to take action.” Well, as much as I would like to agree with that statement, I strongly disagree with it; here is why and what you can do when struggling with self-confidence.
What’s wrong with this idea?
Albert Bandura was one of the first psychologists who defined self-efficacy as a belief system in one’s capabilities to attain certain levels of performance (Bandura, 1997). In other words, Bandura suggested that our self-efficacy is defined by our beliefs on what we can do, what we can accomplish, or what we can excel at.
While many researchers have tried to distinguish self-confidence from self-efficacy, over the years the academic literature associated them as being the same, and of course, pop-psychology did the same thing. The outcome of this approach has been that we all have been taught that, to accomplish something we have to hold to the belief that we can do it, that we’re capable of it, and then, take action.
That’s when I say “oh boy, with capital letters” because current research in many fields has shown us, over and over, that our mind is an independent entity that comes up with thousands of thoughts, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
So, hoping to believe that you can complete a task, before doing the task itself, it’s not good advice!
In the last decade, many fields of study – neuro-affective science, cognitive science, sports psychology – have questioned this assumption multiple times. For instance, in an experiment involving novice and expert golfers, they were instructed to either engage in “instructional self-talk” or “motivational self-talk;” interestingly, most of the studies showed that with few exceptions, instructional self-talk – or going over the steps of a task – has a larger impact on golfers’ performance (Hatzigeorgiadis et. a., 2012)
So, golfers who received directions on how to hit the ball and then practiced hitting the ball did much better than golfers who were encouraged to trust themselves and then hit the ball.
Why are these findings important to you?
When doing what matters to you, when doing what you care about, when approaching an activity that is important to you, it’s quite likely that you play-it-self by taking your thoughts very seriously and using all types of thinking strategies. Yet, doing any of the following thinking strategies:
Listing your positive qualities
Telling yourself “I need to believe first I can do it, then I’ll do it
Thinking “everything will be fine, when I do this ….”
Telling yourself “I know I can do this, I just have to think better about myself.”
…could make things harder for yourself, because they may create much more noise in your mind.
Our mind relentlessly comes up with thoughts, one after another. It’s not the mind’s fault, but a natural function it has. When doing what you care about, your mind will naturally come with all types of thoughts to protect you, to make sure you don’t make a mistake, and will push you to get away from anything that could cause you pain.
Yet, responding to thinking with more thinking, might not be as effective as you hope.
If you play-it-safe by procrastinating, avoiding, and putting things off …
Action is your currency!
Doing the stuff you care about doesn’t happen in your head – of course, you need to think, dream, hypothesize, imagine, and so on – but, responding to doubtful thoughts with more thinking has the opposite effect of what you want: it keeps you stuck.
The more you take action, the more you will experience yourself differently. The way I see it is that action boosts how you experience yourself; action boosts narratives about yourself; action trumps belief!
Notice that this process starts with the steps you take – not with how you think about yourself or the story you hold about yourself.
You don’t need to feel motivated, to take action.
Don’t wait to feel a particular way to take action.
Motivation is overrated!
Start with your actions!
Most new ways of behaving, require that you start them first as routines so they become habits with time, and don’t require you to think about them.
A behavioral routine requires deliberate intention, repeated action, full effort, and committed intention. With enough practice, routines can turn into habits.
Many books have been written about building new habits and breaking problematic ones such as Atomic Habits by James Clear (2018), Tiny Habits by B.J. Fogg (2018), and The Power of Habits by Charles Duhigg (2012). You can read any of them and I’m sure you will find them helpful.
Today, I want to introduce you to …
Harmonious routines and habits
When I think about harmonious habits and routines, I’m thinking about adding intentionality and vitality into your life.
Here is what you can do when approaching a situation that you care about and have been procrastinating:
Choose intentionally a project, conversation, or task you are willing to approach (If the project is too big, choose a single action)
Ask yourself why it matters to approach that project in the long run. (What values do you want to focus on while approaching this task?
Commit to a time to do it
Acknowledge the noise your mind comes upwith (Start by saying “here are my thoughts about being not good enough; here are my thoughts that I’m fake,” and so on)
Make room for the uncomfortable feelings that come along the ride (Notice and acknowledge those feelings; you can say, I’m noticing this [name of the feeling]
Take action, it doesn’t matter how big or small the step is, just take one step.
Practice self-compassion when you feel like giving up and to encourage yourself to start with this routine again.
