Values Bullseye Worksheet: See Where You Are on Target and Where You Have Drifted

About this tool

The Values Bullseye is a practical ACT tool developed by Tobias Lundgren to make values concrete and trackable. Values in ACT are not goals to achieve or boxes to tick. They are chosen life directions: the kind of person you want to be and the qualities you want to bring to what you do. Unlike a goal, a value is never finished, the way 'being a loving parent' is something you live out daily rather than complete.

The bullseye divides life into four domains: work and education, leisure, relationships, and personal growth and health. For each, you name what you value and then mark how closely you have been living in line with it. A dart in the center means you are acting fully on that value; a dart out at the edge means you have drifted far from it. The picture that emerges shows, at a glance, where your life is aligned and where the gaps are.

The point is not to score yourself or feel guilty about the gaps. In ACT, a gap between your values and your actions is simply useful information: it tells you where committed action would be most meaningful right now. Many people find that even a small step toward a neglected value lifts their sense of vitality more than chasing feeling good directly.

This exercise pairs naturally with a fuller values clarification and with a committed action plan, where you turn the gaps you find here into specific, doable steps.

The Bull's-Eye Values Survey was validated by Lundgren and colleagues in a 2012 psychometric study, which found the four-domain rating format reliably captured both how much people valued each life area and how consistently they were living in line with it, and that larger gaps between valued and lived ratings were associated with greater psychological distress (Lundgren et al., 2012).

There is no total score to aim for since the four domains are independent snapshots, not a single number to optimize. A domain sitting near the edge is not a failure, it is a pointer. Many people find it more useful to track this bullseye every few weeks than to fill it out once, since the picture that matters is whether the gap in the domain you chose to work on is narrowing.

If you complete the bullseye and find every domain sitting far from center, or committed action feels impossible no matter how small the step, that is a sign to bring this to a therapist rather than work through it alone. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is built for exactly this kind of stuck point, and you can search the Psychology.com therapist directory for one who practices it.

Reviewed by Michael Callans, MSW
Reviewed the domains and rating structure for fidelity to the ACT Bull's-Eye exercise.

References

1. Lundgren T, Luoma JB, Dahl J, Strosahl K, Melin L. The Bull's-Eye Values Survey: a psychometric evaluation. Cogn Behav Pract. 2012;19(4):518-526.
2. Harris R. The Happiness Trap. 2nd ed. Trumpeter; 2022.

Values Bullseye Worksheet FAQ