Addendum: Exercises in Values Clarification
Exercises in Values Clarification
A Practical Addendum to Values in ACT: Why Feeling Better and Living Well Are Not the Same Goal
The following exercises are drawn from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and are designed to help you begin identifying the values that are already operating in your life. They build on one another and work best practiced in the order presented, though each can also be used independently.
A few notes before beginning:
These exercises are not tests. There are no correct answers. The goal is not to produce a polished values statement or to identify what you should care about. It is to notice what actually carries weight in your experience — the qualities of living that generate the particular sense of aliveness and rightness that the main post describes as the "scent" of genuine values.
If an exercise produces unexpected emotion — a catch of something difficult, a sense of grief or longing — that is not a sign that something is wrong. It is often a sign that the exercise is working. The places that carry emotion are usually the places where something genuinely matters.
None of these exercises require a therapist to use. They are, however, more effective with time, patience, and a willingness to move slowly. Rushing through produces analysis. Slowing down produces contact.
Exercise 1: The Sweet-Spot Exercise
What it is: A guided, memory-based exercise developed by Kelly Wilson for use in ACT. The name comes from Wilson's description of what it is designed to locate: a moment with "some of the sweetness and richness of life" — a moment where there is a heartfelt sense of Ah, this is it. Something complete and precious in itself.
What it is for: This exercise accesses values through direct felt experience rather than through reasoning about them. It works by using a real memory from your life — one that carries the quality of genuine aliveness — and allowing that memory to reveal what has actually mattered to you, as opposed to what you think should matter. The memory does the work. Your job is to inhabit it, not analyze it.
How long it takes: Allow at least 20–30 minutes, including the reflection afterward. It can be done alone, in writing, or in conversation with a therapist.
When it works best: When you are not rushed, not distracted, and willing to sit with whatever arises. It works particularly well when you feel disconnected from a sense of direction or meaning — when life has contracted around managing difficulty and the things that used to matter feel distant.
Step 1: Settle into the present moment
Find a comfortable position, seated or reclining. Close your eyes if that feels right. If not, let your gaze soften and rest on a neutral point.
Spend one to two minutes simply noticing. Notice the physical contact between your body and whatever is supporting it. Notice the quality of sound in the room — not labeling or evaluating it, just allowing it to be there. Notice the weight and ease of your body. Notice your breath, without trying to change it.
This brief settling has a purpose. It reduces the mental chatter that characterizes analytical thinking and creates conditions for a different kind of attention — the kind that can actually feel something rather than reason about it.
Step 2: Allow a memory to surface — do not search for one
From this quieter state of attention, allow your mind to drift back through your life. Do not look for anything important. Do not try to identify a meaningful moment. Simply drift — the way your eyes might move across a familiar room without fixing on anything in particular.
Let a memory arrive rather than choosing one. You are waiting for a moment that carries that quality — the sweetness and richness Wilson describes. It may present itself as a full scene or as a fragment: a color, a sound, a felt sense in the body, a quality of light. Let whatever arises be enough to begin with.
The memory does not need to be exceptional. It does not need to involve a major achievement, a proud moment, or a significant event. Small and apparently unremarkable moments are often the most revealing. A quiet afternoon when everything felt right. An ordinary exchange with someone that carried unexpected warmth. An hour absorbed in something that felt like exactly what you were built to do.
If multiple memories present themselves, choose the one that seems to carry the most of that quality — the aliveness, the sense of this is it — without overthinking the choice.
Step 3: Inhabit the memory through your senses — do not analyze it yet
This is the most important step, and the one most easily skipped.
Once a memory has surfaced, the instruction is not to think about it. It is to be inside it. Shift from observing the memory to inhabiting it — as if you are stepping back into that moment rather than watching it from a distance.
Ask yourself, slowly and without rushing past the question:
What do you see? Let the image sharpen. What is the quality of the light? What is the physical space around you? What objects, people, or landscape are present?
What do you hear? Is there sound — voices, music, a quality of quiet, the particular sounds of a place?
What does your body feel? Where is the sensation of aliveness in this memory? Is there warmth? Ease? A sense of fullness or expansion? Where do you feel it — in the chest, the belly, the face, the hands?
What is the quality of your attention in this moment? Are you absorbed, present, unhurried? Is there a sense of being exactly where you are supposed to be?
Stay here for several minutes. Do not move to interpretation. If your mind begins to analyze — "this means I value X" — notice that, and gently return to the sensory experience of the memory. The analysis will have its turn. Right now, you are simply allowing the memory to be present, in as much fullness as possible.
Step 4: Allow the memory to speak
After several minutes of sensory inhabitation, shift your attention gently toward meaning.
The question is not: What should this tell me about my values?
The question is: What is actually here, in this moment?
Notice what qualities of experience are present in the memory. Not what the moment represented or accomplished — what it felt like to be in it. Some prompts to support this:
What kind of connection, if any, is present here?
What are you doing, or being, in this moment?
What quality of engagement or attention is here — absorbed, caring, creative, physical, connected?
If you had to name what made this moment carry that quality of sweetness, in a single word or phrase, what would it be?
Write down whatever arises. Do not edit or evaluate it. A single word is sufficient. A phrase is fine. Whatever surfaces is a data point — one point of light in a larger pattern that becomes more legible over time.
Step 5: Repeat with additional memories
The pattern of your values becomes clearer across multiple memories, not just one. Consider returning to this exercise with two or three additional memories from different periods of your life.
After several repetitions, look at what you have written. Ask: Is there a thread running through these moments? A quality that appears consistently — a type of connection, engagement, or way of being that was present in each?
That thread is a values direction. It is not invented — it has been present throughout your life. The exercise is not creating it. It is making it visible.
Exercise 2: The Bull's-Eye Values Survey
What it is: A structured self-assessment tool developed by Tobias Lundgren and colleagues (Lundgren, Luoma, Dahl, Strosahl, & Melin, 2012) and widely used in ACT. It uses a visual target — a dart board — to help assess how closely current behavior aligns with personal values across key life domains.
What it is for: While the Sweet Spot exercise helps identify values through memory and felt experience, the Bull's-Eye addresses the gap between values and current behavior. That gap — between what matters and how one is actually living — is one of the most clinically informative and practically useful things to understand about one's own life.
How long it takes: 15–20 minutes for the initial completion; longer if used as the basis for a more extended reflection.
Step 1: Identify your values across four domains
Before using the dart board, briefly note what you care about in each of the following four life domains. Draw on what emerged in the Sweet Spot exercise if helpful. Write briefly — a phrase or sentence per domain is enough.
Relationships (intimate partnerships, friendships, family — not including parenting if that is addressed separately):
What kind of person do you want to be in your close relationships? What qualities of connection matter to you?
Example: Being fully present with the people I love. Being someone who shows up consistently and honestly.
Work and education (career, professional contribution, learning):
What do you want your work or learning to be about? What kind of contribution matters to you?
Example: Doing work that genuinely helps people. Continuing to learn and improve throughout my career.
Health and personal growth (physical wellbeing, mental health, self-development):
How do you want to relate to your physical and psychological health? What qualities of care or development matter to you?
Example: Treating my body with basic respect and consistency. Facing my own patterns honestly rather than avoiding them.
Leisure and creativity (rest, play, creative expression, activities pursued for their own sake):
What do you want your time outside of obligation to be about? What activities or experiences carry genuine meaning for you?
Example: Making things. Being in nature. Spending time doing things that feel genuinely alive rather than just filling time.
Step 2: Use the Bull's-Eye
Draw four concentric circles — a dart board — on a piece of paper. Label each quadrant with one of the four domains above.
The center of the target (the bull's-eye) represents a life completely aligned with your values in that domain — not perfection, but genuine, consistent engagement with what matters. The outer rings represent increasing distance from that alignment.
For each quadrant, mark an X where your current behavior places you — not where you aspire to be, but where you actually are, based on how you have been living over the past week or two.
Be honest. The purpose is not self-evaluation or self-criticism. The purpose is a clear map of where things stand.
Step 3: Reflect on the gaps
Look at where your Xs are. Notice where the largest gaps exist between the center and your mark.
For one domain where the gap feels most significant, consider:
What has been getting in the way?
Is the barrier primarily external (circumstances, time, resources) or internal (avoidance of difficult feelings, fear of failure, waiting until conditions are different)?
What is one small, specific, concrete action that would move the X slightly closer to the center in this domain?
Write it down. Specific and small is better than ambitious and vague. "Call my sister this week" is more useful than "be a better sibling."
Exercise 3: The Values-to-Action Sentence
What it is: A brief linking exercise adapted from ACT committed action work (Wilson & DuFrene, 2009; Dahl, Plumb, Stewart, & Lundgren, 2014). It connects a specific action — one that you have been avoiding or neglecting — to the underlying value that makes it worth doing.
What it is for: The gap between knowing a value and acting on it is often closed not by more values clarification but by explicitly connecting the action to the value in language. This exercise creates the verbal bridge. It is particularly useful for actions that feel effortful, tedious, or anxiety-provoking — things that are hard to do precisely because they matter.
How long it takes: 5–10 minutes per action.
The sentence structure
Complete the following sentence for one action you have been avoiding or postponing:
"It is important to me to [specific action] because [underlying value]."
Or:
"It is important to me to [specific action] so that [what it serves or contributes to]."
Examples:
"It is important to me to have that difficult conversation with my partner because I value genuine honesty in our relationship over comfortable avoidance."
"It is important to me to keep working on this project even when it feels hard, so that I can contribute something real to the people I am trying to help."
"It is important to me to get enough sleep consistently because caring for my physical health is something I genuinely value, not just something I am supposed to do."
Notice how the sentence lands
Once you have written the sentence, read it slowly. Notice what happens in the body when you do.
Does it feel hollow and obligatory — like a rule you are stating rather than a value you are contacting? If so, the sentence may be accurate at the surface level but not yet connecting with the underlying value. Try writing a different version that gets closer to what actually matters.
Does it feel like something lands — a small shift in motivation, a sense of the action becoming slightly more possible? That quality of landing is the functional signal that the sentence is working as a motivative augmental — that the value is doing its job.
Using These Exercises Over Time
These exercises are not one-time assessments. They are practices — ways of returning, repeatedly, to the question of what matters and how life is being lived in relation to it.
The Sweet Spot exercise benefits from repetition. New memories reveal new facets of the same underlying values, and the pattern becomes richer and more legible over time.
The Bull's-Eye works well as a regular check-in — monthly or quarterly — not to evaluate progress, but to maintain honest contact with where things stand.
The Values-to-Action sentence can be applied to any specific challenge or obligation, as often as needed.
None of these exercises resolve the problem of living a meaningful life. They create the conditions for beginning — and for returning when the beginning has been lost.
These exercises are drawn from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. The Sweet Spot exercise was developed by Kelly Wilson (Wilson & Sandoz, 2008). The Bull's-Eye Values Survey was developed by Lundgren, Luoma, Dahl, Strosahl, & Melin (2012). The Values-to-Action sentence is adapted from Wilson & DuFrene (2009) and Dahl, Plumb, Stewart, & Lundgren (2014). For a comprehensive overview of values work in ACT, see LeJeune & Luoma (2019) and Berkout (2022).