ACT Values Worksheet: Clarify What Truly Matters Across Every Area of Your Life

About this tool

The ACT Values Worksheet helps you identify how you want to behave in the areas of life that matter to you. Use it to turn broad priorities into everyday choices when competing demands or difficult feelings make decisions harder. Values are the heart of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. In ACT, values are freely chosen directions for how you want to live: the qualities you want to bring to your behavior over the long run. They answer questions like 'What kind of partner, friend, parent, or worker do I want to be?' and 'What do I want to stand for?' Values give life meaning and serve as a compass, especially when difficult thoughts and feelings make the path unclear.

A crucial distinction in ACT is between values and goals. A goal is something you can achieve and tick off: get the job, run the marathon, get married. A value is an ongoing direction you can never finish: being diligent, being healthy, being loving. Goals describe an outcome you can reach; values describe how you want to act while working toward it. This matters because once you reach a goal, the question becomes 'now what?', whereas a value keeps guiding you. It also means you can act on a value today, no matter your circumstances.

Clarifying values is freeing because it shifts the focus from feeling good to living well. ACT does not promise to remove pain, and chasing pleasant feelings often shrinks a life. But you can choose, right now, to act in line with what matters, even alongside discomfort. People often find that doing so brings a deeper sense of vitality and purpose than pursuing happiness directly.

Once your values are clear, the natural next steps are to see where your life is and is not aligned with them, using the Values Bullseye, and to turn the gaps into concrete steps with a committed action plan.

Research on valued living helps explain the purpose of this exercise. Wilson and colleagues developed the Valued Living Questionnaire to examine the importance of life domains and consistency with values (Wilson, Sandoz, Kitchens, & Roberts, 2010). A-Tjak and colleagues reviewed ACT as a treatment and found benefits compared with control conditions (2015). That evidence concerns a broader therapeutic approach with several components. It does not establish that completing this worksheet alone treats a mental health condition or predicts how much someone will improve.

There is no score to calculate here. Read back what you wrote in each domain and look for words that repeat: a quality that shows up in both the relationships section and the leisure section is likely a core value rather than a domain-specific one. Notice too where a domain felt blank or forced, since that can point to an area of life you have been avoiding rather than one that simply matters less. The single value you named in the 'pull it together' section is the one to build your first committed action around. A blank domain can also reflect privacy, exhaustion, limited opportunity, or a category that does not fit. Treat it as an invitation to be curious, rather than evidence of avoidance or a personal failing.

If naming your values leaves you feeling stuck, flat, or unable to picture wanting anything, that is worth raising with a licensed therapist rather than working through alone. Our therapist directory at /therapist/ lets you search by specialty, including therapists trained in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and there is no account needed to browse.

When values seem to conflict, describe the situation before choosing an action. For example, caring for family and protecting your health might mean offering help within a boundary you can sustain. Ask what is within your control, what support you need, and what a workable expression of each value would look like. You do not need to rank every relationship or life domain to make a useful decision. Distinguish an action you can choose from a response you hope to receive. Being honest might mean explaining a limit respectfully; getting someone to approve of that limit is outside your control. When reviewing the worksheet, ask whether you acted with the quality you chose, even if the other person was disappointed. You can adjust the action to fit your circumstances while keeping the value in view.

Use the completed sheet as a draft you can revise. Beside a chosen quality, write an observable action: curiosity could mean asking a sincere question, while care could mean arranging a needed appointment. Notice whether the action expressed the quality you intended, even if your mood did not change. The Values Test can offer additional self-reflection, and the ACT Worksheets Library provides related exercises. Neither a questionnaire result nor a completed worksheet decides your values for you.

Reviewed by Jack Bartel, PsyD
Reviewed the domains and prompts for fidelity to ACT values clarification.

References

1. Hayes SC, Strosahl KD, Wilson KG. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: The Process and Practice of Mindful Change. 2nd ed. Guilford Press; 2012.
2. Harris R. The Happiness Trap. 2nd ed. Trumpeter; 2022.
3. Wilson KG, Sandoz EK, Kitchens J, Roberts M. The Valued Living Questionnaire. Psychol Rec. 2010;60(2):249-272.
4. A-Tjak JGL, Davis ML, Morina N, Powers MB, Smits JAJ, Emmelkamp PMG. A meta-analysis of the efficacy of acceptance and commitment therapy for clinically relevant mental and physical health problems. Psychother Psychosom. 2015;84(1):30-36.
5. Association for Contextual Behavioral Science. Valuing as a Choice. https://contextualscience.org/valuing_choice
6. A-Tjak JGL et al. (2015). PubMed record for the ACT meta-analysis cited above. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25547522/

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