There is a version of the story you have probably been telling yourself, possibly for years. When I am less anxious, I will start. When the weight lifts. When I feel more ready. When I have done one more piece of preparation. That is the story, and it is false in the most important way stories can be false: it doesn't work. People who wait for anxiety to clear before starting do not start. They wait. The waiting is not the path. The waiting is the problem.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy — ACT — was built around the other version. You do not need to feel calm before you act on what matters. You do not need to be ready. The anxiety can be in the room, and you can still move. The moving is often what makes it possible for the anxiety to eventually loosen. Not the other way round. This piece is about how.
Sources: Hayes et al. (1999, 2012); A-Tjak et al. (2015) meta-analysis; Harris (2019) on ACT principles.
What values actually are — and what they aren't
The single most important distinction in ACT is the one between a value and a goal. Confusion between the two has killed more good intentions than almost any other cognitive error.
A goal is something you want to achieve, acquire, or reach. Get a promotion. Run a marathon. Have £50,000 in the bank. Meet a partner. Goals are binary. You either hit them or you don't, and until you do, you are not yet there. They are future-tense by nature.
A value is a quality of action you want to bring to your life, ongoing, now and throughout your days. Being a caring parent. Being creative. Being honest. Being physically active. Being present. Values are verbs. You never finish them. There is always another small action available to you right now that is either moving toward that value or away from it.
The reason this matters is that goals leave you stranded if they fail or if you haven't reached them yet. Values do not. A person whose goal is "run a marathon" either achieves it or does not. A person whose value is "being physically active" can act on that value today by walking to the shops with their kids. Same underlying material. Completely different psychological relationship.
Why goals fail under anxiety and values don't
When anxiety is present, goals become fragile. They require sustained effort and future-orientation, both of which anxiety taxes heavily. They also become all-or-nothing — you have either hit them or you haven't, and the distance between you and your goal is a daily reminder of what is not yet true.
Values behave differently under pressure. Because they are always available — the next small action is always possible — anxiety can be present and you can still act. A writer with social anxiety can still write. A parent with depression can still read a bedtime story to a child. A person with panic disorder can still walk to the supermarket, even if their chest is tight doing it. The anxiety does not need to be absent for the action to count. It just has to be endurable long enough to take one step.
This is why ACT treats values as the engine and everything else — defusion, acceptance, mindfulness — as the tools that make values-based action possible when your mind is actively discouraging it.
The values people actually name
If you ask a hundred thoughtful adults what they actually value in their lives — not what society tells them to value, not what their parents valued — the answers cluster into a surprisingly consistent set. Here are the domains that come up most often in ACT clinical work.
Notice what isn't on this list. Success. Wealth. Being respected. Looking a certain way. These can be goals, but they rarely turn out to be values when people look honestly. The values underneath tend to be relational, creative, or about integrity. If what you thought were your values feels more like items from an outside script, that is worth noticing.
The Life Compass
Values clarification is not a philosophical exercise. It is practical. The most useful version, developed in the ACT literature by Tobias Lundgren and others, is called the Life Compass: you rate a handful of life domains on two dimensions — how important each is to you, and how well you are currently living it. The gap between the two tells you where your next move is waiting.
Your Life Compass
For each domain below, tap how important it is to you (1 = not at all, 5 = very). Then tap how well you feel you are currently living it. Your result appears below.
Your compass, read
How values-based action works when the anxiety is still there
The move in ACT is counterintuitive in one specific way: you don't take action because the anxiety has eased; you take action while the anxiety is still present, and the acting itself teaches your nervous system that the anxiety is survivable. Over repeated small actions, your relationship to the anxiety changes. Not because you fought it. Because you moved forward with it in the room, and your life got bigger alongside it.
The values-based action cycle
How acting on what matters — even briefly — builds momentum
Avoidance-based living vs values-based living
"I'll commit to things when I feel less anxious. I need to be ready first."
Life shrinks around what you can manage with the anxiety absent. Decisions are made by what avoids the feeling rather than by what matters to you. The anxiety becomes the central organising principle of your days. The world gets smaller, not calmer.
"I'm going to keep moving toward what matters. The anxiety can come along. I'm not going to wait for it to leave."
Life stays organised around what you actually care about. Decisions are made by what you value rather than by what you fear. The anxiety is still present, but it is a passenger, not the driver. Over time, the world stays your size or grows back.
One week, one value, one action
If the Life Compass above showed you a gap — a domain where what matters to you and how you are currently living it don't line up — here is the most reliable way to start closing it. You are looking for an action so small that refusing to do it feels more effortful than doing it.
- Pick one domain. Not all of them. The biggest gap from your compass is usually the right one.
- Name the value underneath it. "Being a present father" is a value. "More family time" is a domain. Get to the verb.
- Identify one action this week. Ten minutes on the floor playing with your kids, no phone. A walk with your partner without planning anything. A sentence written toward a project that has been gathering dust. Small is the point.
- Do it with the anxiety present. Notice the urge to wait until you feel more ready. Do it anyway. The anxiety does not get the casting vote.
- Notice what happens after. Not what happens during — during might be uncomfortable. Notice the quiet aliveness afterwards. That is what you are training your nervous system toward.
The ACT proposition, in one line: you cannot control what your mind produces. You can control what your feet do next. Move your feet toward what matters, and the rest — over time, imperfectly — follows.
A final note, on being imperfect at this
You will not act on your values every day. Some weeks you will be tired, or anxious enough that even tiny steps feel too much, or simply off. That is not failure. Values are not a new stick to beat yourself with. They are a direction, and directions don't care whether you moved one metre or a hundred today. They only care that the next step, when you can take it, points the way it should.
The anxiety may not leave. You can still build the life you want alongside it. That is the whole point. That is the work.
