ACT Values Worksheets: Clarifying What Matters and Turning It Into Action

Of the six processes in the ACT model, values are the one that gives the others a reason. Acceptance and defusion are hard work, and clients do not do hard work for its own sake; they do it to move toward something. Hayes et al. (2006) described values as chosen qualities of action that can never be obtained as objects, which is the distinction that separates them from goals and makes them durable. A goal reached is finished. A value is lived again tomorrow.

The evidence supports treating values as an active ingredient rather than a warm-up. In the meta-analysis of laboratory component studies, values interventions produced measurable effects on their own, alongside acceptance, defusion, and present-moment work (Levin et al., 2012). Across full treatments, ACT's efficacy is well established for a range of conditions (A-Tjak et al., 2015), and values are the process that most clients name afterward when asked what changed.

This guide covers the values sheets on the site, from discovery through ranking to committed action, plus the two acceptance exercises that clear the way. It is the companion to the complete ACT worksheets guide, which covers all six processes, and to the Choice Point guide, which is the tool for the moment of decision.

Most clients arrive with goals and call them values. 'I want to be less anxious' is a goal, and a slippery one, because it is about removing an experience rather than moving toward a life. The first task is to get underneath it: less anxious in order to do what? The answer is the value, and it is usually about connection, competence, contribution, or curiosity. Two sheets do this discovery work. Clarifying What Matters Most walks through values by life domain with reflective prompts, and Exploring Your Personal Values Across Life Domains covers the same ground in a shorter, more structured form for clients who prefer a grid to prose.

For clients who find direct questions about values abstract, the discussion sheets get there sideways. Exploring What Matters: Values Conversation Prompts is a set of prompts for adults, usable in individual work or as a couples or group exercise. Core Values Exploration: Guided Discussion Prompts is the version written for children and adolescents, where values tend to surface through stories about admired people and unfair situations rather than through lists.

A value that was handed down rather than chosen tends to produce guilt instead of direction. Circles of Influence on Personal Values maps the sources: self, family, friends, culture, and community, and asks which values in the client's list are theirs and which are borrowed. This is not an argument for discarding inherited values; many are worth keeping. It is a check that the values the client will commit to are ones they can stand behind when the family is not watching. In practice the sheet often surfaces the value the client has been avoiding naming because someone important would disapprove of it.

Once values are named, they have to be ranked, because they collide. Personal Values Discovery and Ranking is the working grid: value, rank, and one specific action for each. The ranking is what turns 'I value family and career' into a decision about Tuesday evening. Then Values-Based Goals: Turning Values into Action does the committed-action step, taking the top-ranked value and setting goals under it that are specific, scheduled, and small enough to happen this week. The order matters: goals set before the value is ranked tend to be the goals the client thinks they should have.

Committed action then meets its obstacle, which is where the Choice Point belongs. Every day contains moments that move toward the value or away from it, and the choice point sheet trains the client to notice the moment and what pulls them off course. It is the most-visited ACT sheet on this site for a reason.

Values-based action stalls on the feeling that shows up when the client moves. Two exercises address that directly. Making Room for Difficult Emotions (Expansion) is the acceptance skill: observing the feeling, breathing into it, and allowing it to be present without the struggle that usually accompanies it, so the action can happen with the feeling rather than after it goes away. Leaves on a Stream is the defusion exercise for the thoughts that arrive with the feeling: placing each thought on a leaf and watching it move downstream, which trains the client to hold thoughts lightly enough to act anyway. Both are guided exercises that run well in session and translate to a recording for home practice.

The two exercises are worth teaching before the client's first committed action, not after the first failure. A client who has practiced expansion once in the therapist's office is far more likely to attempt the difficult phone call than one who has only been told the value matters.

A workable order across four to six sessions: values discovery with the domain sheet or the discussion prompts; the circles-of-influence sheet in the following session, since it usually changes the list; the ranking grid; then expansion and leaves on a stream as in-session exercises before the values-based goals sheet is completed. Bring the choice point in as soon as the first goal is set, and revisit the ranking grid at month three. The ACT collection has the full set of ACT sheets for the processes not covered here.

A-Tjak, J. G., Davis, M. L., Morina, N., Powers, M. B., Smits, J. A., & Emmelkamp, P. M. (2015). A meta-analysis of the efficacy of acceptance and commitment therapy for clinically relevant mental and physical health problems. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 84(1), 30-36.

Hayes, S. C., Luoma, J. B., Bond, F. W., Masuda, A., & Lillis, J. (2006). Acceptance and commitment therapy: Model, processes and outcomes. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 44(1), 1-25.

Hayes, S. C., Strosahl, K. D., & Wilson, K. G. (2012). Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: The Process and Practice of Mindful Change (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.

Levin, M. E., Hildebrandt, M. J., Lillis, J., & Hayes, S. C. (2012). The impact of treatment components suggested by the psychological flexibility model: A meta-analysis of laboratory-based component studies. Behavior Therapy, 43(4), 741-756.