Category Archives: ACT

The Possible Pitfalls of Trying to Feel Good

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“What are you tired of feeling? What would you love to never feel again?”

This is Danielle LaPorte’s introduction to “The Desire Map,” which she describes as a “multimedia guide to what you want the most.”

“Knowing how you actually want to feel is the most potent form of clarity that you can have,” LaPorte adds. “Generating those feelings is the most powerfully creative thing you can do with your life.”

LaPorte’s ideas are not unusual. In fact, they point to a core premise of many spirituality and self-help books—the idea that happiness means feeling good.

To be fair, I have not done The Desire Map. So, I cannot offer an informed opinion about LaPorte’s program.

Still, I urge you to think critically about the invitation to The Desire Map—and any teaching with a similar premise.

What if trying to feel good is the real problem?

One of the world’s great spiritual teachers pinpointed attachment to desire—the quest to continually feel good—as the root cause of human suffering. That person was the Buddha, and his teachings have been vetted by practitioners across the world for over two millennia.

More recently, the new wave of cognitive-behavioral psychotherapies—backed by a growing body of research—echoes the Buddha’s insight.

In his masterful overview of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Russ Harris makes this point:

In general, clients come to therapy with an agenda of emotional control. They want to get rid of their depression, anxiety, urges to drink, traumatic memories, low self-esteem, fear of rejection, anger, grief and so on. In ACT, there is no attempt to try to reduce, change, avoid, suppress, or control these private experiences. Instead, clients learn to reduce the impact and influence of unwanted thoughts and feelings, through the effective use of mindfulness. Clients learn to stop fighting with their private experiences—to open up to them, make room for them, and allow them to come and go without a struggle.

ACT is based on the clinical observation that emotional control backfires. In fact, emotions—like the weather—are inherently uncontrollable. From this perspective, you might as well try to stop a hurricane by shaking a stick at it.

Harris and other ACT practitioners describe happiness as defining your values and aligning your actions—while accepting whatever you feel in the moment.

How shall we live?

So here we have two contrasting visions of human well-being—emotional control versus emotional acceptance and values-based action.

This is not just an interesting ambiguity. It is a stark and genuine contradiction—one that leaves us with a high-stakes choice about how to live.

Related posts:

Happiness is Not a Feeling

The Problem With Bliss

And by psychotherapist Bobbi Emel:

How to live a more meaningful life: An open invitation

Naming your values: The compass for a rich, meaningful life

Be Honest About What You Offer Readers—Theory, Model, or Anecdotes

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I’m reading a wonderful book right now—How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton Christensen from Harvard Business School. It was written in the wake of ethical scandals by some of the “best and brightest” graduates of that institution—such as Jeff Skilling, a classmate of Christensen’s.

Animating the book are three questions:

How can I be sure that:

I will be successful and happy in my career? 

My relationships with my spouse, my children, and my extended family and close friends become an enduring source of happiness? 

I live a life of integrity— and stay out of jail?

What a strong premise for a book!

Christensen’s answers are fascinating. But what interests me at the moment is the role of theory in guiding our thinking and our writing. Consider this passage from Christensen’s book:

Indeed, while experiences and information can be good teachers, there are many times in life where we simply cannot afford to learn on the job. You don’t want to have to go through multiple marriages to learn how to be a good spouse. Or wait until your last child has grown to master parenthood. This is why theory can be so valuable: it can explain what will happen, even before you experience it.

I read that paragraph several times. It points to the highest good that authors of self-help, business, and other “how-to” books can offer the world—a real, honest-to-goodness theory.

Theory is one of the most understood words in the English language. We often hear the term used derisively—as in “that idea sounds good in theory, but it will never work in reality.”

Whenever you hear this, know that you are listening to someome who’s truly clueless about theory.

A theory is a set of assertions that state causal relationships between observed phenomena. It is not a set of vague, half-assed guesses about how the world works.

A genuine theory allows you to predict the consequences of your actions. If a set of assertions doesn’t do that, then it doesn’t deserve to be called a theory.

This is why I’m excited by books such as Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life and Mind and Emotions. They are grounded in a theory—Relational Frame Theory, to be exact. These are examples of the gold standard of how-to books—those that are wedded to scientifically-tested theory.

Standing below these books are books based on models. Whereas theories describe why things happen, models describe how things happen. Though this is a lesser level knowledge, it can help us a lot. Examples from the self-help literature are books based on Albert Ellis’s Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy. Ellis didn’t convince me why people make themselves miserable, but he did a hell of a job in describing how they make themselves miserable.

At a lower level are books based on anecdotes, such as Stephen Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.  I don’t find theories or models in such books. They’re not research-based, and their explanatory and predictive power is often nil. Even so, they can be illuminating and even useful in the conduct of daily life.

So in summary, we’re talking about three levels of writing:

  • Books based on a theory
  • Books based on a model
  • Books based on anecdotes

If you truly understand the differences between these levels—and where your own book stands on this hierarchy—you will place yourself among the top 10 percent of nonfiction authors.

Define Your Values in a Way That Makes a Difference

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I just finished reading Spontaneous Happiness by Andrew Weil. This book is filled with practical insights. And, I still disagree with Weil’s tendency to equate happiness with pleasant feelings. There’s a more practical and powerful definition—acting in alignment with your values, moment by moment.

As the body of literature on Constructive Living reminds us, feelings are inherently unpredictable and uncontrollable. Our constant attempts to influence them—even in the  sophisticated ways that Weil suggests—can frustrate us.

I prefer the perspective of Steven Hayes, creator of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and his colleagues. They offer a rich and useful conversation about happiness as acting in alignment with values.

It starts from the fact that behaviors, on the whole, are far more controllable than feelings. This means that you can start acting on your values right now, in the midst of your current circumstances—now matter how miserable you feel.

The trick is define values in a way that promotes action. You might begin with a list of lofty ideals, such as compassion, integrity, and wisdom. The problem is that these notions are too abstract to guide your very next action.

You can solve this problem with a short list of your most important domains of activity. Here’s one from Peter Bregman’s wonderful book, 18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done:

  • Serve current clients.
  • Attract future clients.
  • Write about my ideas.
  • Be present with family and friends.
  • Have fun and take care of myself.

Notice that each item on Bregman’s list starts with an active verb. That makes it  easier to think of a physical, visible action you can take right now to act in alignment with your values. For example, “take care of myself” can translate to taking a 15-minute walk. “Write about my ideas” can mean starting a 300-word blog post.

For more details on defining values from an ACT perspective, see this cool worksheet from psychotherapist Russ Harris, author of The Happiness Trap: Stop Struggling, Start Living.

And contemplate these words from Steven Hayes, from his book Get Out of Your Mind & Into Your Life:

We believe that right now at this very moment, you have all the tools you need to make meaningful and inspiring life choices for yourself….the actual ability to live in the service of what you value. That doesn’t mean that circumstances will necessarily allow you to achieve all of your goals; this is not a guarantee about outcome. And it doesn’t mean that you have all the skills you need to accomplish your stated goals. But it does mean that you have what you need to choose a direction. 

Big Sky Mind—Three Ways to Discover the Observing Self

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There is an aspect of you that is free of suffering—immune to stress and untouched by difficult circumstances. And, it is available to you in any moment, in any place, if you only know how to access it.

In many meditation teachings, this aspect of ourselves is called the witness, the observer, or big sky mind. Practitioners of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) call it the observing self and teach a variety of ways to discover it.

According to Steven Hayes, psychotherapist and developer of ACT, the observing self transcends our ordinary identity. That identity is created by language—specifically, by the ways that we complete the sentence I am. . . . For example:

  • I am sad.
  • I am angry.
  • I am happy.
  • I am afraid.

Language is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it creates a coherent sense of self—a definite someone who experiences the events of everyday life and creates a story to make sense of them.

On the other hand, we can hypnotize ourselves into thinking that our sentences tell the whole truth about ourselves.

The problem is that language is static and reality is dynamic. Thoughts and feelings—even the most ecstatic or distressing—come and go. Nothing about our internal experience is fixed or permanent. Sentences such as I am sad and I am happy just don’t do justice to this fact. As result, they lock us into a sense of suffering.

Our refuge is big sky mind—the witness, the observer. The challenge is to discover this aspect of ourselves, since it cannot be fully captured in language.

In his book Get Out of Your Mind & Into Your Life, Hayes offers three questions that point to a direct experience of the observing self:

  • Where is “here”? This word does not always refer a specific place, such as the address of your home or office. In essence, “here” is a place from which observations are made.
  • When is “now”? This word does not always refer to a specific time such as Tuesday or 8 am. In essence, it is the time from which observations are made.
  • Where is “I”? You can’t use your finger to point to “I.” Again, this is simply a space from which observations are made.

This sense of a observer is fascinating. We have direct experience of it. Yet is has no boundaries in time or space:

  • Recall a memory from your childhood. Who was it who watched those events unfold?
  • Who is it that ate your breakfast this morning?
  • Who is reading this blog post right now?

“Notice that you are here in this moment reading, and notice too that the person behind these reading eyes was there when you ate breakfast this morning and was there when you were a child,” Hayes writes. “You’ve been you your whole life, though there have been many changes in your thoughts, your feelings, your roles, and your body.”

In my next post, I’ll explore how ACT uses the observing self to reduce suffering.

Image by  lrargerich, Flickr Creative Commons

Two Speech Habits That Kill Possibilities

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As a writer, I worry about word choice. The ways that we speak can do more than  clarify or confuse. They can also open up possibilities—or put us on a path to needless suffering. Following are two examples and how to avoid them.

The language of resignation

Notice how many times you start a sentence with phrases such as:

  • I have to….
  • I’ve got to….
  • I really should….

These are all variations on the phrase I must. When speaking this way, we hypnotize ourselves into believing that we are victims—that we have no options in a given situation. Psychotherapist Albert Ellis called it “musterbation.” I call it resignation.

In a wonderful post, Michael Hyatt offers a simple and powerful alternative. In place of I must or any of its variations, substitute I get to. For instance:

  • “I have to exercise this morning” becomes “I get to exercise this morning.”
  • “I’ve got to go to work” becomes “I get to go to work.”
  • “I really should see my dentist” becomes “I get to go see my dentist.”

If you think this sounds a tad corny, just try it. The resulting shift in attitude is subtle but significant.

The fact that you get to exercise means that you’re still alive, still able-bodied, and still capable of aerobic movement. Can any of these things truly be taken for granted?

The fact that you get to go to work means that you’re still employed. Even if you hate your job, the fact that you’re working any job will make it easier to get your next job. (See Richard Bolle’s excellent book, The Job-Hunter’s Survival Guide: How to Find a Rewarding Job Even When “There Are No Jobs.”)

The fact that you get to see your dentist means that you have access to health care—and dental care that’s more gentle, overall, than at any time in human history.

I get to opens the door to expressing gratitude—a strategy for increasing happiness.

The language of identification

A second experiment: Notice what you say in response to the question How are you? Depending on the day, you might say:

  • I am exhausted.
  • I am angry.
  • I am sad.

The problem with such sentences is that they identify you with an unpleasant emotion. You become the exhaustion. You are the anger. You are fused with the sadness.

If you ever choose to practice mindfulness meditation, you’ll learn another subtle but significant shift. As a meditator, you simply witness what arises in your mind or body.  You also discover that thoughts and bodily sensations are constantly changing. And, as Steve Hagen explains in Buddhism Plain and Simple, anything that changes is not “you.”

Think about it: The notion of self implies something that is stable and unchanging—something that persists in the midst of change. From this perspective, the thoughts and sensations that make up emotions such as exhaustion, anger, and sadness are not your self.

So, let’s speak in a way that acknowledges this. Take a cue from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, which recommends language for defusing from thoughts and sensations:

  • “I am exhausted” becomes “I’m noticing exhaustion.”
  • “I am angry” becomes “I’m having angry thoughts.”
  • “I am sad” becomes “There’s sadness again.”

Do you see how tweaking those sentences puts a little space between you and the emotions?

Defusing reminds you that a sensation is present but not forever—that a thought is present but that you are more than that thought (or any thought, for that matter).

But if we are not our thoughts or our sensations, then what are we? Damned if I know. That’s another post.

How to Defuse from Upsetting Thoughts

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When you feel upset, beliefs such as “I am worthless” and “nothing ever works out for me” can seem so real. The sheer force of repetition gives them a strange power. We start to believe such thoughts simply because we have them so often.

Fortunately, you have two broad options for freeing yourself from the irrational beliefs that create depression, anxiety, rage, and other forms of emotional disturbance. One is to dispute those beliefs (the subject of posts one and two in this series). The second is to defuse from those thoughts.

What it means to defuse

To understand this word, first consider what happens when we fuse with thoughts. This means what we automatically accept them as true and self-defining.

In a state of fusion, I identify with my thoughts. I believe that I am my thoughts. And, if I have “bad” thoughts, then I must be a “bad” person.

Defusing reverses this process. When you defuse, you step back from your thoughts. You detach from them. You observe them. You no longer are your thoughts. You simply have thoughts.

It’s like meditation

If you go to a meditation workshop or retreat, you’ll probably hear the “cloud analogy.”

Meditation is like watching clouds come across a big expanse of blue sky. As each cloud floats into your awareness, you notice its characteristics (shape, texture, color). But you don’t become personally involved with or emotionally attached to any individual cloud. You simply observe each one as it arises and passes away.

We can take exactly the same stance toward our thoughts. Like clouds, thoughts appear in our field of awareness in a natural and spontaneous way. And like clouds, thoughts are impermanent. They will billow up and float away if we just let them.

In short, meditation is moving from “cloud mind” to “big sky mind.” Instead of identifying with thoughts, you simply stand back and watch them arise and pass. You defuse.

Ways to defuse  

In Get Out of Your Mind & Into Your Life: The New Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Steven Hayes and Spencer Smith define defusing as being able to “watch your thoughts without belief or disbelief, without entanglement, without struggle.” And they suggest many exercises to build your defusion muscles. Following are some examples, including exercises that harness the power of humor.

Label your thoughts. Preface them with an introductory phrase, such as “I am having the thought that. . . .” Instead of saying “my life’s a mess,” for example, say, “I am having the thought that my life’s a mess.” Adding the extra words gives you some distance from thoughts and helps you to stop fusing with them.

See thoughts as leaves floating down a stream. Each time a thought pops into your head, visualize it as a leaf that’s dropping into a gentle stream and floating away. Your goal is to stand by the stream without trying to change anything. Don’t try to control which leaves fall into the stream. Don’t try to change the speed of the stream. If the stream stops flowing because you fixate on a certain leaf, or because your mind wanders, gently bring your attention back to the image of the stream.

Say it slowly. Take a judgmental thought and say it slowly, out loud. Elongate each word. If the thought is “I am worthless,” then stretch out the word “I” so that it lasts for one inhalation of your breath. Say the word “am” for the whole exhalation. Then say “worth“ for your next inhalation and “less” for the next exhalation. The purpose is to experience thoughts simply as sounds and columns of moving air—not statements of fact.

Say it in a different voice. Speak judgmental thoughts while doing an impression of Mickey Mouse, Homer Simpson, Sponge Bob, or your least favorite politician.

Turn the thought into a song. For instance, take a cue from “The Sound of Music.” In a loud and full voice, sing “My mind is alive—with the thought of sadness.”

Broadcast the thought on “bad news radio.” Like a cable news station, your mind broadcast thoughts without interruption. Using an announcer’s voice, “report”
the judgmental thoughts that pop into your mind:

This is bad news radio! We’re here 24/7. Remember. All bad news. All the time. Flash: [insert your name] is a bad person! She thinks she’s not as good as she needs to be! More news at 11.”

Image by kugel, Flicker Creative Commons

How Disputing Your Irrational Beliefs Can Backfire

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This is Part Two of a three-part series. Part One is Understanding the ABCs of Emotional Disturbance. Part Three is How to Defuse From Upsetting Thoughts.

For decades the conventional wisdom in psychology was that you should ruthlessly dispute and replace irrational beliefs such as “I am unlovable” and “I am powerless to solve my problems.” A new movement in psychotherapy questions this approach and offers an alternative.

In their book A CBT Practitioner’s Guide to ACT, Joseph Ciarrochi and Ann Bailey take a fresh look at the whole topic of disputing irrational beliefs. (For background, see this post about the ABC model of emotional disturbance, which provides the rationale for disputing.)

Ciarrochi and Bailey offer the following reasons why disputing can fail.

(By the way, ACT stands for Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, a recent innovation in therapeutic psychology.)

Disputing leads to suppression

Right now, do everything you can do avoid thinking about a pink elephant. Do not under any circumstances allow any image of a pink elephant to enter your mind.

Did you succeed? Probably not. In fact, you probably experienced how attempts to suppress a thought can have exactly the opposite effect. You just couldn’t help thinking about that pink elephant.

Here’s the paradox: In order to suppress that mental image, you had to bring it to mind in the first place.

One logical effect of disputing irrational beliefs is the assumption that we should suppress them. Unfortunately, this sets us up for the “pink elephant paradox.” Trying to suppress such beliefs can actually increase their frequency. (More about the supporting research is here.)

Disputing links experiences with irrational beliefs

When a client stated an irrational belief, psychotherapist Albert Ellis asked: “Where’s the evidence?” That’s a reasonable question, since many irrational beliefs have no supporting evidence.

But there’s a potential problem with asking for evidence for an irrational belief: It forces us to filter experiences through the lens of that belief.

Suppose that the belief under dispute is “I’m unlovable.” For an entire day, I make a resolution to look for possible evidence that supports this belief. Now all my interactions with people during these 24 hours become tinged with the question: “Is this person rejecting me or not?” Instead of being freed from the irrational belief, I am forced to refer to it more often.

Disputing implies that thoughts cause behavior

One purpose of disputing beliefs is to change the self-defeating behaviors associated with those beliefs. Yet it’s easy to fall into another trap here—the assumption that we have to change our beliefs before we can change our behavior.

This assumption is false. In fact, we can deliberately act against our beliefs. For instance, you can ask someone for a date even if you believe you’re unlovable. You can sign up for a public speaking class even though you believe you’ll fail.

Ironically, Ellis often encouraged his client to dispute beliefs by acting against them. This was the basis of his legendary shame-attacking exercises.

Disputing assumes that we’re motivated by the accuracy of our beliefs

Disputing is one way to reveal that irrational beliefs are inaccurate. However, we hold beliefs for many reasons other than accuracy.

For example, stating an irrational belief can elicit social approval. If you tell a lot of people that you’re unlovable, you’re likely to get some positively reinforcing responses: “That’s not true at all. You really are lovable.”

Disputing is inefficient

Disputing is a lot of work. You take individual beliefs and tear them apart, examine their logic, scrutinize their supporting evidence, and review the arguments for and against them. Then you systematically replace irrational beliefs with carefully-constructed rational beliefs.

The problem is that you can only do this with one belief at a time. And if you’re dealing with dozens of irrational beliefs, then you’ve just signed up for a lot of work.

An alternative to disputing

Is there a way to deal with more than one irrational belief at a time? There is. It’s called defusing.

Instead of disputing and replacing thoughts one by one, defusing allows you to immediately unplug from whole streams of thoughts. How you do this is the subject of Part Three, coming soon.

Image by joshfassbind.com, Flickr Creative Commons

Three Ways to Deal With Disturbing Thoughts

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Recently I saw a bumper sticker: “Don’t Believe Everything You Think.” I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

We can classify schools of psychotherapy based on their ways of dealing with the thoughts that fuel depression, anxiety, and other mental health challenges.

Some major options are the “three D’s”—dispute, defuse, and distract.

1. DISPUTE

Albert Ellis—godfather of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT)—was the first to champion this option. He prodded clients to bare their unconscious irrational beliefs and rigorously dispute them.

According to Ellis, the three beliefs responsible for most human suffering are:

  • I must always be perfectly competent.
  • Other people must always behave exactly the way that I expect.
  • Events must always turn out exactly the way I expect.

Since these statements all include the word must, Ellis also referred to them as examples of musterbating.

2. DEFUSE

REBT was an early form of cognitive therapy. More recent forms put much less emphasis on disputing irrational thoughts. The rationale is that “what we resist, persists.” That is, arguing with such thoughts focuses our attention on them and might actually reinforce them in a perverse way.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, and similar approaches recommend that we defuse instead. This is the opposite of fusing with thoughts—identifying with them and assuming that they are true.

Defusion means stepping back from our stream of thoughts and simply observing them. We see them as spontaneous mental events that occur without conscious intention.

Thoughts arise and pass, like clouds drifting across the sky. We watch them float by, focus on those serve us, and let go of the rest. This approach draws heavily on mindfulness meditation.

3. DISTRACT

Years ago I wrote a book about caregiving (alas, now out of print) with two other men. One of them was living with AIDS. He and his partner spent so much time dealing with the disease that they literally wore the topic out.

At one point they chose to basically stop talking about it.

“Is that denial?” I asked.

“No,” they said. “We’re 100 percent honest about AIDS. It’s impossible to ignore. We’re doing everything that we can to treat it. Beyond that, why dwell on it? We prefer conscious distraction.”

Well said.

Image by h.koppdelaney, Flickr Creative Commons

Why I Love Twenty-First Century Psychology

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Over the last 30 years, I’ve found it fascinating to watch psychology rise from the arid ashes of Skinnerian behaviorism to the rebirth of cognitive-behavioral therapy.

You might ask: Why does this matter?

Well, it matters a great deal.

Many followers of psychologist B. F. Skinner denied that you have thoughts, feelings, and dreams. These aspects of our internal world could not be quantified or measured. Hence, according to the hard-core behaviorists, they do not exist.

Other Skinnerians claimed to be agnostic about whether we have thoughts or feelings. No matter. The resulting conclusion was the same: Only behavior can be observed and measured. Only behavior matters. Your thoughts and feelings—the worries that wake you up in the middle of the night, your fear of death, your love of God, your love for your children, your love of music and art and poetry, the ultimate meaning of your orgasms—all these are pre-scientific delusions.

If you came of age during the 1970s (like me), you probably heard of Walden Two, B. F. Skinner’s vision of an ideal society based on the denial of your internal world.

I don’t hear much about that book any more.

Behaviorist human psychology—at least Skinner’s narrow brand of it—had to die.

It did.

Though let’s be fair: Behavior does matter. It can be quantified and measured.

But so can thoughts and feelings.

What ultimately killed behaviorism was technology such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Under laboratory conditions, scientists can now hook people up to fMRI machines that display blood flow to different parts of the brain. Subjects can say, “I feel afraid.” “I feel depressed.” Or, “I feel love.” And scientists can watch resulting physical changes in the subjects’ brains take place in real time.

Today it is okay to have an internal life. We can actually verify that it exists. Our rich, complex, baffling, and essential subjectivity is restored.

Albert Ellis, the founder of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, even made thinking and feeling the basis of his work. Painful emotions, he believed, begin with irrational beliefs about ourselves, other people, and the external world. Our job is to rigorously argue with those beliefs and replace them with rational alternatives.

Then came the latest wave of cognitive-behavioral therapy, including Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy.

These approaches all validate our internal world, but in a way that differs from Ellis: Thoughts and feelings exist, but we do not need to argue with them or resist them. Instead, we can see thoughts and feelings simply as mental events. They come and they go. They arise and they pass. They are not necessarily true. They do not define who we are. And they do not dictate what we ultimately do.

More about all this in later posts.

The bottom line for now: If you love psychology, this is a great time to be alive.

Happiness is Not a Feeling

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Back in the 1970′s, when B.F. Skinner ruled academic psychology, happiness was taboo. Research centered on visible behavior change produced by schedules of reinforcement. A suggestion that we study something as squishy and invisible as happiness was likely to be scorned or ignored.

That’s changed, thank God.

Happiness is now a hot topic. You can easily find best-selling books that summarize the recent research and suggest how to apply it. Examples are:

  • Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment by Martin Seligman
  • The How of Happiness: A New Approach to Getting the Life You Want by Sonja Lyubomirsky
  • Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment by Tal Ben-Shahar.

Though I enjoy this new crop of books, I’m troubled by one thing—their tendency to define happiness as a feeling. Ben-Shahar, for example, suggests that happiness is “the overall experience of pleasure and meaning.”

The problem is that pleasure, like any other feeling state, is fleeting, fickle, and unpredictable. Feelings arise spontaneously, for reasons that are often mysterious. We cannot directly control them. If we see happiness as a feeling, then it will ultimately elude us.

There is another option—defining happiness as value-driven behavior. This idea puts us in charge of our happiness rather than leaving it to chance.

At least two approaches to mental health are based on this premise. One is Constructive Living, pioneered by David K. Reynolds. The other is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), presented in books by Steven C. Hayes and others.

ACT is especially interesting. It was developed for people with anxiety, depression, phobias, and other conditions that undermine pleasure. If we define happiness as warm and fuzzy feelings, then we automatically exclude these people.

It’s more compassionate—and practical—to focus on what we do rather than what we feel. Physical behavior is easier to control. As Hayes points out, we can take action based on our values right now rather than waiting for some magical moment in the future when we might feel better.

In Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life, Hayes defines values as domains of activity. Examples are health, relationships, career, education, recreation, and citizenship.

At any moment we are free to set a goal related to one of these domains—such as exercising regularly to promote health—and act directly on that goal.

This is more liberating than trying to get rid of problems and push unpleasant feelings away. Focusing on value-driven behavior means that we can be happy now—even in the midst of problems and pain.