Instincts hardwired into us from humans’ earliest days lead us to relentlessly pursue happiness. But these instincts make us miserable today—our continual efforts to be happy lead instead to stress, anxiety, and greater unhappiness. We’re caught in a happiness trap.
As an antidote, therapist and life coach Russ Harris advocates ACT, or Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, which will help you accept pain as part of life and deal with it productively. While Harris didn’t develop ACT—it originated in the mid-1980s—his 2007 book helped popularize ACT, which uses a combination of behavioral and mindfulness strategies.
ACT is related to but moves away from CBT, or cognitive behavioral therapy, in that CBT focuses on changing your thoughts to lessen suffering, while ACT teaches awareness and acceptance of negative thoughts and feelings.
In this guide, we’ll explain ACT’s principles, and explore other ideas and practices for increased awareness and acceptance.
Harris explains that we have many misguided beliefs about happiness. These widely held beliefs trap us in vicious cycles that actually increase—rather than decrease—our suffering. The primary myth is that everyone can and should be happy.
Harris points out that we regard happiness as the most desirable human state. The pursuit of happiness is even enshrined as a fundamental human right, alongside life and liberty, in the US Declaration of Independence. Media and the internet bombard us with images of people who are beautiful, intelligent, and wealthy—and presumably happy. We envy them and believe we should strive to be like them. (Shortform note: Many companies also sell happiness by promising their products will make you happy. The late Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh wrote a 2010 book, Delivering Happiness, in which he argued that the way to build a successful business, and to be happy yourself, is to take extraordinary steps to make your employees and customers happy.)
While we expect to be consistently happy, Harris contends that our minds weren’t designed to work that way. He notes that the human brain has evolved with three traits that primitive humans needed to survive:
These traits have persisted on the evolutionary time scale, although they’re not helpful to us today.
(Shortform note: Another often-unhelpful adaptation is our inclination to accept our perceptions as reality, rather than seeking the truth. In some cases, this adaptation persisted because our ancestors simply didn’t need to know the truth—if they wrongly believed that the sun revolved around the earth, it had no impact on their survival. In other cases, acting on perceptions was a form of threat-aversion: For example, believing that people who are different are inherently dangerous helped our ancestors avoid threats from potentially hostile strangers and tribes. However, this fear creates harmful divides in diverse modern societies.)
Harris notes that these three traits have become dysfunctional because:
1. We no longer need threat detection and avoidance to protect us from predators in the wild. Instead, this instinct makes us detect imaginary threats, such as the possibility that we’ll never get married, or that a random ache is a symptom of a serious disease.
(Shortform note: At least some evidence supports the idea that the threat detection and avoidance mechanism is a vestige of our ancestors: Researchers found that anxiety is partially attributed to genetics in rhesus monkeys, which are similar to human primates. That means that there is some credence to the idea that an overactive threat detection and avoidance mechanism has a genetic component and could therefore be passed down from our ancient ancestors to modern humans.)
2. The ability to fit in is no longer the deciding factor in whether we starve to death, but we still compare ourselves to others and worry about whether we are normal. In the world of social media, where everybody is pushing an idealized version of themselves, this part of our brain looks at others and makes us worry that we compare unfavorably.
(Shortform note: Social comparison theory describes this human inclination to determine our self-worth based on how we compare with others. At its best, social comparisons can sometimes motivate us to improve, which raises our self-esteem—but at its worst, social comparison can make us feel insecure when we judge ourselves against people we deem superior.)
3. Our ability to accumulate and improve no longer determines whether we live or die. Still, our brains drive us to constantly accumulate more wealth, status, and happiness and to improve our lives as much as possible—but even when we accomplish these goals and improve our lives, the satisfaction doesn’t last long. So we quickly return to the cycle of accumulation and try to get even more.
(Shortform note: Marketing and idealized media portrayals of celebrities reinforce this psychological adaptation and make us believe that a material gain—like a job or house—will be the key to happiness. However, in our relentless pursuit of that one thing, we often neglect our health and relationships, creating more unhappiness. Additionally, according to prospect theory, the more you accumulate, the less satisfaction you feel from the additional gains.)
Because our minds naturally supply us with a constant stream of threats, worries, and concerns that don’t actually contribute to our survival, Harris argues the natural state for humans is psychological discomfort rather than happiness. (Shortform note: Studies of brain activity show that we have a “negativity bias”—our brains respond more to negative images than to positive or neutral images. ACT founder Steven C. Hayes identified five ways our brains fixate on the negative: imagining dangers, ruminating about the past, worrying about what others think, feeling not good enough, and always needing more.)
Now that we’ve discussed how we get stuck in the happiness trap, we’ll explain how to escape it through ACT’s six principles of psychological flexibility, the ability to respond productively to negative thoughts and situations in order to build a rich and meaningful life.
ACT’s first principle is connecting with the observing self. (Shortform note: In the book and in ACT literature, this is listed as the fourth of the six principles. However, we’ve chosen to examine it first because it provides helpful context for understanding the other principles.)
According to ACT, our minds encompass a thinking self and an observing self. Harris argues that the thinking self and the observing self are different faculties: The thinking self provides a judgmental running commentary on events, while the observing self neutrally observes this commentary.
While the thinking self thinks, judges, and acts, the observing self is a kind of “meta-awareness.” Your observing self notices everything you experience—your thoughts, physical sensations, and the world around you.
When you understand the relationship between the thinking self and the observing self, you can redirect the observing self’s attention away from the thinking self and toward other sources of input, like your five senses. This ability to redirect your attention is the foundation for mindfulness techniques that can alter the way you experience everything.
Self-as-Context
ACT literature refers to the observing self as “self-as-context”—the alternative to the “conceptualized self,” or the person we think we are because of the running commentary of the thinking self. This terminology makes the concept of the observing self a bit more clear—in the self-as-context model, our thoughts, feelings, and experiences occur within the context of the self, rather than being identified with the self.
Imagine the self-as-context as a playground and the individual thoughts, feelings, and experiences as children who are playing on the playground. Even when all of the children have gone home, the playground will still be a playground. It would be nonsensical to argue that the children are the playground—they often populate the playground, but they don’t define it.
When you mistake what your thinking self thinks for reality, ACT says you’re in a state of “fusion” with your thoughts.
Harris explains that the antidote to fusion is defusion, or separating ourselves from our thoughts. Rather than taking our thoughts as the absolute truth, through defusion, we harness the power of the observing self to take a step back and recognize them as stories our brain tells us to help us survive.
When we practice defusion:
By practicing defusion and accepting your negative thoughts, Harris says, you live a richer life and experience the world more fully—rather than continually trying to eliminate negative thoughts and feelings.
Common Hurdles in Defusion
Clinical psychologist and ACT trainer John T. Blackledge identifies common problems that people can experience when trying to apply defusion to their lives.
The idea of defusion can be a tough pill to swallow when we struggle with long-term, persistent negative thoughts: Fusion causes us to believe these thoughts are facts, so when someone tells us to defuse from such a thought, it feels like they’re saying we can’t reliably interpret our own reality.
The idea of defusion, taken to an extreme, can lead to a sense of meaninglessness. If thoughts are just thoughts, then what about the important thoughts that we have concerning our morals and ethics?
When we practice defusion, it can be difficult to separate our factual thoughts from our nonfactual thoughts. Some factual thoughts are clear (like “This is made of steel”), but sometimes it’s unclear whether a thought is factual (and therefore useful to you, even if it makes you feel bad).
The third principle of ACT—expansion—does for the feelings and urges of our physical body what defusion does for the thoughts and images of our thinking self. We use our observing self to create space for the negative feelings and urges in our bodies, allowing us to stop struggling with our emotions and instead focus on acting to improve our lives.
Harris identifies four steps for using expansion to accept your emotions:
Step 1: Use your observing self to connect with the sensations in your body.
Take a few moments and notice the sensations or discomfort in each area of your body. We register emotions as physical sensations, so essentially, you’re scanning your body for negative emotions so that you can respond to them.
Focus on the least comfortable physical sensation. Notice its dimensions: Is it large or small? Uniform or irregular? How deeply do you feel the sensation? If you can, visualize this sensation as a distinct object with its own material and properties.
Step 2: Use deep breathing to explore the sensation.
As you scan the uncomfortable sensation, focus on breathing deeply. Your deep breathing should decrease the tension in your body. As your tension decreases, imagine your deep breath forming an eggshell-like shelter around the discomfort.
Step 3: Make additional room in your body for the sensation.
Imagine that eggshell growing until your body can freely accommodate the discomfort. Rather than feeling that the sensation is trapped in your body, causing disruption and tension, feel that it has room to move and grow, because your breathing can accommodate it.
Step 4: Tolerate the sensation, and give it space to exist.
Accept the emotion, rather than listening to your thinking self, which might be saying that the emotion is a threat (and therefore something you need to eliminate).
The Physiological Effects of Deep Breathing
Meditation exercises like this help release tension in our bodies and process emotions that we can’t simply “reason” our way out of. But just how does it work?
Research has shown that specific emotions have different kinds of breathing associated with them. For instance, an emotion like joy involves deep, slow breathing, while an emotion like anger involves rapid, shallow breath.
The deep breathing we practice in expansion is associated with calmness and joy. Thus, the feeling of release from emotional discomfort may be our body’s physiological response to deep breathing, rather than a mental and emotional response to the imaginative labor of “building an eggshell” around the sensation. Additionally, slow, deep breathing slows your heart rate and stimulates the vagus nerve, which is associated with your body’s recuperative processes, such as sleep and digestion.
The fourth principle of ACT—connection—is the technique of using your observing self to connect to the external world through your five senses. Often, despite what’s going on around us, we’re focused on the world of the thinking self: our memories, our plans, our judgments. The thinking self focuses on the past and the future.
Harris writes that connection is the practice of using our observing self to shift our attention away from the past and future in order to be fully engaged in the present moment.
Harris lists three reasons to practice connection:
(Shortform note: In addition to the benefits that Harris lists, research shows that connection—or mindfulness—strengthens relationships, makes stress more manageable, and improves symptoms of anxiety and depression.)
Achieving connection requires the techniques discussed in the previous principles, because when our thinking self obsesses over negative thoughts and feelings, we tend to disconnect from the present. Therefore, in order to achieve connection consistently, we need to practice defusion from our negative thoughts and expansion to accept our unwanted feelings.
Presence as the Means vs. the End
Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now focuses on the idea of connecting to the present moment as the solution to the problems of the ego (what Harris would call the thinking self) and the pain-body (the sum total of negative emotions that you carry). In contrast to Harris’s view that connection is one of many tools to help us live in alignment with our values, Tolle argues that being connected with the present moment can serve as a sole solution for the problem of suffering.
Still, both Tolle’s and Harris agree that:
The thinking self (or ego) is a huge problem for most people.
The thinking self is predominantly concerned with the past and the future instead of the present moment.
Harnessing our observing self (what Tolle calls “the inner body”) connects us to the present moment.
The first four principles form the foundation of the concept of “acceptance” in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Taken together, they constitute a foundation that Harris calls mindfulness.
(Shortform note: Mindfulness isn’t unique to ACT. You can find it in many ancient Eastern traditions and religions, such as yoga, Buddhism, and meditation.)
Harris explains that in the context of ACT, mindfulness is a psychological state of openness and awareness attainable through consistent practice of mindfulness skills (such as defusion, expansion, and connection).
But attaining this state is not an end unto itself—instead, ACT advocates practical application, or applying behaviors to develop a valuable and enriching life. In other words, mindfulness is a practical skill (or set of skills) for improving your life in the real world.
(Shortform note: The assertion that acceptance is a means to improving your life addresses the common misconception that accepting a negative situation means “giving up” or condoning harmful behavior. In actuality, accepting the reality of a situation is the first step toward developing healthier ways to respond to or change it.)
In this section, we’ll explain how to use mindfulness skills to apply the fifth principle of ACT: clarifying your values. Values are the principles that govern how you want to act. Harris writes that, by clarifying your values, you set yourself up for the final step in the ACT process: committed action, or living in alignment with your values.
Harris explains that values are:
(Shortform note: It’s important to recognize the difference between values and beliefs, which can also be continuous, action-oriented, and focused on you: Values concern your individual behavior, while beliefs are general statements of conviction that we accept as true. For instance, the statement “lying is bad” is a belief, whereas the statement “I want to be honest” is a value. Often, identifying your strongly held beliefs can help you identify your own values.)
Harris recommends an exercise derived from the work of psychologists Kelly Wilson and Tobias Lundgren to help you clarify your values in four domains: relationships, education and work, personal development and wellness, and leisure.
You can determine your values in each of these areas by asking yourself questions, including the following:
1. Relationships:
2. Education and work:
3. Personal development and wellness:
4. Leisure
Don’t Just Identify Your Values—Choose Them
In Awaken the Giant Within, Tony Robbins asserts that most people adopt values unconsciously, based on their life experiences and conditioning from family, friends, and society. While many of these values are virtuous, some may conflict with your goals. He argues that being unaware of your values—which guide your behavior—often leads to disappointment and frustration as you pursue your goals.
To take control of your life, Robbins says you must consciously choose your values. He suggests you first take stock of the values you hold and how you prioritize them—for example, you may value success over passion, and that causes you to behave differently than if the opposite were true. Next, reflect on what type of person you want to be and what type of life you want to live. Finally, eliminate values that don’t serve that vision, adopt values that do, and prioritize them to align with your goals.
While Harris’s exercise focuses on identifying—rather than choosing—your values, it may still help to consider Robbins’s point that you could be unconsciously carrying values that need to be identified, reprioritized, or eliminated to allow you to achieve the life you want.
With the final ACT principle, Harris argues that knowing our values isn’t sufficient for us to live fulfilled lives—we also have to take effective action, or action aligned with our values. In order to take effective action, we have to translate our values into achievable goals.
Harris gives five steps for creating goals:
Set Purpose-Driven Goals
In First Things First, Stephen R. Covey has a slightly different take on how to set meaningful goals. He suggests three strategies:
1. Set recurring goals. Covey says your goals should follow a “mission,” a “vision,” and “principles”—rather than just the values that Harris has you define. Covey recommends recurring goals that you consistently accomplish week after week, such as setting a goal to cook dinner for your spouse every Friday.
2. Set “context” goals. Set mid- to long-term goals that your weekly goals build toward. Consider the “what” (the goal itself), “why” (the reason for the goal; in ACT, the “why” will also be the underlying value), and “how” (the means by which you’ll reach the goal).
For example, if your weekly goal is eating one serving of vegetables with every meal, your longer-term goal may be to switch to a vegetarian diet (“what”) because you want to eat healthier (“why,” or value), and you’ll get there with mid-term goals to replace meat with legumes twice a week (“how”).
3. Make a “perhaps” list that is filled with goals you’re interested in but not fully committing to. This breaks from the relatively rigid goal-setting structure, and it may help you set more ambitious goals.
Now that you’ve set some goals, make an action plan that breaks down each goal into manageable steps so that you don’t get overwhelmed.
An action plan has three parts. Ask:
Once you’ve answered these questions, you have an action plan.
An Alternative Approach to Action Plans
In The Psychology of Selling, Brian Tracy presents another way to turn your goals into actions. Tracy’s method reorders and expands Harris’s steps, but most significantly, Tracy also adds a step: prioritizing the to-dos in your action plan. This is Tracy’s approach:
Write your goal down. This makes your goal real. If you’ve been following Harris’s exercises, you’ve already done this step.
Set a deadline. By defining the “when” of your goal first, you set your subconscious mind working on the other steps necessary to achieve your goal. This reverses the order Harris suggests, which specifies the “when” in the final step.
Make a list of everything you can do to achieve your goal. This is similar to steps 1 and 2 of Harris’s method.
Organize this list. Prioritize the actions to figure out which steps need to be completed first and which can wait until later.
Take action.
Harris clarifies that while goals and an action plan are components of effective action, they don’t constitute committed action. Committed action is effective action coupled with the additional components of fortitude and commitment.
Harris defines fortitude as accepting that effective action will come with unwanted side effects, such as negative thoughts, feelings, and urges. Fortitude means being fully present in our lives even when we don’t enjoy the thoughts and feelings we’re experiencing.
We all must practice fortitude to engage with society. For instance, when we buy food, spending money is an undesired side effect—but it’s one that we’re willing to accept.
Fortitude is also necessary to live a meaningful life. When we confront an obstacle, we either practice fortitude to deal with it or we don’t. If we don’t practice fortitude, then we close ourselves off to the possibilities of life. If we practice fortitude, we can overcome that obstacle even if it causes us pain.
The 4 C’s of Mental Toughness
The idea of mental fortitude, or toughness, is a loaded term in American culture. You can find hundreds of people trying to sell their own particular brand of mental toughening online—and almost none of these align with what Harris proposes in The Happiness Trap. One of the most common models for mental fortitude is called the 4 C’s of mental toughness:
Control your emotions and your life circumstances. By contrast, Harris’s model emphasizes we can’t control our emotions—only manage them.
Commitment means consistently setting and achieving goals. While goal-setting is also part of Harris’s model, ACT emphasizes that these goals must align with your values.
Challenge means seeking the highest possible challenges for yourself and adapting quickly to adversity. While ACT doesn’t specifically advocate seeking challenges, it does hold that challenges are opportunities for growth.
Confidence is your belief in yourself and your ability to influence others. ACT doesn’t promote self-esteem, which stems from your thinking self, but rather self-acceptance, which grows from connection with your observing self.
Harris defines commitment as accepting that failure is inevitable, while also realizing it isn’t final.
Every time we fail to meet a goal, we have the opportunity to practice commitment. ACT emphasizes that you can treat any problem as an opportunity for personal growth. The alternative is to fall back into the happiness trap: When you struggle to come to terms with your failures, you generate more negative thoughts and emotions.
Harris explains that practicing commitment is a three-step process:
Commitment Requires Grit
Grit is a similar concept to what Harris calls commitment. In Grit, Angela Duckworth emphasizes that grit is a combination of passion and perseverance, and she defines perseverance as Harris defines commitment: having the resilience to overcome setbacks and work hard to finish.
Here are five ways to embody grit:
Shift your perspective. Failure is an inevitable part of life, and it doesn’t have to be negative—instead, it’s an opportunity to try again, or try something different.
Don’t try to be perfect. One reason failure can be so difficult to stomach is that it challenges the idea that we can be flawless. Let go of that ideal, develop humility, and try again.
Get used to living outside of your comfort zone. Failures lead us to circumstances that feel foreign or uncertain. When you accept this discomfort, you’ll find even more opportunities to learn from your mistakes.
Don’t be afraid to seek support. While Harris offers an individualistic approach to escaping the happiness trap, you don’t have to face failure alone. Lean on your support system.
Focus on your goals. Failure doesn’t mean that you have to abandon your goals. You may simply need to try again—or try a new strategy.
Instincts hardwired into us from humans’ earliest days lead us to relentlessly pursue happiness. But these instincts make us miserable today—our continual efforts to be happy lead instead to stress, anxiety, and greater unhappiness. We’re caught in a happiness trap.
As an antidote, therapist and life coach Russ Harris advocates ACT, or Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, which will help you accept pain as part of life and deal with it productively.
While Harris didn’t develop ACT—it originated in the mid-1980s—his 2007 book helped popularize ACT, which uses a combination of behavioral and mindfulness principles strategies.
He touts it as a “revolutionary” development in human psychology based on behavioral science. ACT is related to but moves away from CBT, or cognitive behavioral therapy, in that CBT focuses on changing your thoughts to lessen suffering, while ACT teaches awareness and acceptance of negative thoughts and feelings. The “commitment” part of ACT refers to committing yourself to taking action. Proponents say ACT can help you free yourself from stress, anxiety, and depression.
By developing “psychological flexibility” toward negative feelings instead of trying to eliminate them, and then acting in accordance with your values, Harris argues that you’ll live a more satisfying life.
Harris is a medical practitioner, psychotherapist, life coach, and consultant to the World Health Organization. (He wrote a stress management protocol for use in refugee camps.) He’s presented hundreds of workshops and trained more than 50,000 health professionals in ACT in the US, UK, Europe, and Australia.
Harris claims that discovering and practicing ACT as a physician in Australia in his late 20s helped him overcome depression and stress. He noticed that many of his patients suffered from the same problems, so he switched his field to therapy to help more people.
He’s since written multiple ACT-based textbooks and self-help books besides The Happiness Trap, including:
Harris also offers ACT courses online for laypeople and clinicians, as well as corporate programs. In addition, he is co-director of PsyFlex, which works with businesses and organizations to improve their work environments by applying a non-therapy version of ACT.
Connect with Russ Harris:
The Happiness Trap was published in Australia in March 2007. According to Amazon, it’s an international bestseller, having sold more than one million copies, with editions published in more than 30 languages.
It ranks fourth among Amazon bestsellers on depression and 22nd among cognitive psychology books.
Positive-thinking approaches to living a happier, more successful life, have dominated self-help books and media since the genre’s blooming in the 1920s. In 2007, the year The Happiness Trap was published, competing titles about harnessing your thoughts for change included:
In contrast to these books’ focus on changing your thoughts and yourself, Harris advocated self-acceptance, especially accepting negative thoughts and feelings as inevitable and, at times, useful. Further, he presented ACT as empirically supported, unlike the ideas of some self-help gurus.
ACT (pronounced like the word “act”) was developed by psychologist Steven C. Hayes and other researchers in the mid-1980s. It aims to help people handle painful thoughts and feelings while living a meaningful, satisfying life by applying six techniques or skills to develop “psychological flexibility.” (Hayes discussed the latter concept in a TED talk.)
In The Happiness Trap, Harris cites studies indicating this behavioral/mindfulness method helps people with a range of concerns, including anxiety, stress, chronic pain, drug addiction, smoking, and depression.
ACT is the opposite of positive psychology, started in the 1990s by psychologist and bestselling author Martin Seligman to study what happiness is, and to help patients live happier lives (rather than studying what makes people mentally ill). In contrast, ACT proponents like Harris argue that happiness isn’t human’s natural state, therefore positive psychology raises unrealistic expectations.
Further, Harris notes that we sometimes need to pay attention to and deal with negative feelings. Also, many of our most meaningful experiences encompass both happiness and unhappiness. While ACT and positive psychology take opposite approaches, both are recognized as valid by the American Psychological Association (APA).
Still, in 2011, APA published a critical analysis noting that while ACT presented itself as a new, “third wave” of behavioral treatment, proponents of traditional CBT (cognitive behavior therapy) believed that ACT didn’t deserve the hype because it represented only minor variations of CBT.
In addition, critics caution that ACT’s techniques of contemplating negative thoughts and feelings may not always be appropriate for trauma recovery. (While there’s little research on the adverse effects of mindfulness practices like those ACT promotes, one study found that mindfulness-based programs caused adverse effects in 37-58% of participants.)
Harris disagrees that ACT is an inappropriate tool for trauma recovery, although he advises that trauma patients practice the techniques with a therapist rather than on their own. Harris’s 2021 book, Trauma-Focused ACT, advocates resolving traumatic memories through “flexible exposure.”
Many psychologists and therapists recommend the book to clients because of its accessible presentation of ACT principles, as well as its practical exercises. It also appears on multiple lists of therapists’ most-recommended books.
Many readers praise the book for offering specific, practical techniques for easing stress and anxiety, while not making sweeping claims; some call it life-changing. Others call the book a great introduction to ACT, lauding its simple explanations of ACT concepts and the fact that ACT overall is evidence-based.
Steven C. Hayes, the founder of ACT, praised the book for its exploration of how we fall into the happiness trap and for presenting the practical techniques in a creative, accessible way.
However, some readers feel the book is too elementary for those who already have basic self-awareness and who have worked on examining their thoughts and behaviors. A few think it should carry a warning for trauma survivors.
Additionally, some readers deem Harris disrespectful for failing to mention or credit Eastern religion and philosophy, especially Buddhism, for the mindfulness concepts and practices at the foundation of ACT. Another questioned the extent to which ACT theories may or may not apply to non-white people and cultures, claiming that the studies on ACT’s effectiveness focused on white sample populations.
The guide is organized in two parts:
We’ve reordered the six ACT techniques to start with the observing self because understanding this concept provides helpful context for understanding the other principles, which incorporate the observing self. We’ve also merged chapters for coherency–here’s a mapping of the sections of the guide to the chapters of the book:
In this guide, we’ll provide background on the development and uses of ACT, and we’ll compare ACT principles to other therapies and practices. We’ll also provide additional exercises and techniques beyond Harris’s for practicing mindfulness in everyday life.
In The Happiness Trap, Russ Harris explores Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT, a psychological discipline developed by Steven C. Hayes in 1982. Hayes developed ACT in the context of evolutionary psychology, which holds that our early survival instincts influence our modern brains—and that failing to recognize this connection undermines our happiness.
The Happiness Trap contends that humans are not wired to be naturally happy. To the contrary, the psychological mechanisms that helped our ancestors survive and reproduce make us uncomfortable (and unhappy) in the modern world.
Harris argues that fighting the natural inclinations of our brains in an effort to be happy all the time is a futile endeavor and only makes us more unhappy in the long term. Harris calls this paradox “the happiness trap.” He offers ACT as an empirically supported remedy to this universal problem of human experience.
Happiness—and Unhappiness—Are Essential to Motivation
Although many scientists agree that the human brain is not wired to be consistently happy, happiness does play an important role in human motivation. A 1950s study, researchers implanted electrodes in rats’ brains that allowed the animals to push a lever and get a pulse of stimulation to their brains’ pleasure centers. The rats became so obsessed with the pleasure stimulation that they didn’t pause to eat, drink, or sleep. The dopamine hits that fueled the rats’ obsession also feed drug addiction.
The brain is wired to get these dopamine bursts from external rewards—like money and material goods—more than intrinsic rewards, like contentment. The catch: The dopamine surge from external rewards is more short-lived, creating the unhappiness that motivates us to pursue more happiness. Evolutionary psychologists argue that this unhappiness was key to our ancient ancestors’ survival because it helped them remain vigilant to threats and motivated to continually progress.
The long-term goal of ACT is to help people develop “psychological flexibility,” a mindset that allows them to productively deal with their suffering and take meaningful action. ACT seeks to promote psychological flexibility through six foundational principles. We’ll explore each of these in greater detail in later chapters.
Psychology of the Normal
Steven C. Hayes, who developed ACT, has described the approach as “psychology of the normal.” Whereas other frameworks focus on detecting and correcting abnormal processes through diagnosing psychological disorders, ACT teaches people how to use normal brain functions in a productive way. For example, the abilities to analyze and evaluate are essential to our survival and ability to thrive—but, when these functions become overactive, they can send us into anxious spirals that actually inhibit our productivity and happiness.
Hayes explains that since brain processes like analysis, evaluation, and problem-solving are necessary for everyday life, therapists can’t encourage people to stop them altogether, as they do with abnormal processes like obsessive compulsions. Instead, they must teach patients how to use these functions responsibly and productively. In this way, Hayes says that his purpose is not to “cure” or “fix” patients' problems, but rather to give them the tools to overcome obstacles that naturally come up in life.
Harris began his career as a medical doctor in 1989 but transitioned out of medicine and into therapy after noticing how many of his patients struggled with stress and unhappiness. He has written numerous books on ACT for both specialized and general audiences, and he leads ACT training for therapists across the world.
This guide will begin by taking a deeper look at our cultural beliefs about happiness, why those beliefs don’t align with evolutionary psychology, and how the conflict between our beliefs about happiness and the actual function of our brains creates the happiness trap. Then, we will examine each of the six principles of ACT in turn, giving the context necessary to understand each concept or technique, as well as a practical summation of how to apply these principles to your own life.
Harris explains that we have many misguided beliefs about happiness. These widely held beliefs trap us in vicious cycles that actually increase—rather than decrease—our suffering.
This chapter will discuss four common myths about happiness, and debunk them with human psychology rooted in empirical evidence, rather than cultural misconceptions.
Our society constantly reinforces the idea that everybody can (and should) be happy.
Harris points out that happiness is widely regarded as the most desirable human state. The pursuit of happiness is even enshrined as a fundamental human right, alongside life and liberty, in the US Declaration of Independence.
Harris writes that the media and the internet bombard us with images of people who are beautiful, intelligent, and wealthy—and presumably happy. We envy them and believe we should strive to be like them. (Shortform note: Many companies also sell happiness by promising their products will make you happy. The late Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh wrote a 2010 book, Delivering Happiness, in which he argued that the way to build a successful business, and to be happy yourself, is to take extraordinary steps to make your employees and customers happy.)
All of this combines to make it seem like happiness is humanity’s natural state. But although we expect to be happy today, our minds weren’t designed to work that way.
The human brain has evolved over hundreds of thousands of years in conditions that don’t even slightly resemble modern society, but we retain certain evolutionary traits. Harris specifies three traits that primitive humans needed to survive:
Human beings with these traits were more likely to survive and reproduce than humans without them. Accordingly, these traits have persisted on the evolutionary time scale, although they’re not helpful to us today.
(Shortform note: Another often-unhelpful adaptation is our inclination to accept our perceptions as reality, rather than seeking the truth. In some cases, this adaptation persisted because our ancestors simply didn’t need to know the truth—if they wrongly believed that the sun revolved around the earth, it had no impact on their survival. In other cases, acting on perceptions was a form of threat-aversion: For example, believing that people who are different are inherently dangerous helped our ancestors avoid threats from potentially hostile strangers and tribes. However, this biased fear creates harmful divides in diverse modern societies.)
Harris explains that the same traits that ensured that our ancestors survived and reproduced in prehistoric times make our suffering practically inevitable in the modern world. He notes that these three traits have become dysfunctional because:
1) We no longer need threat detection and avoidance to protect us from predators in the wild. Instead, this instinct makes us detect imaginary threats, such as the possibility that we’ll never get married, or that the random ache in our body is a symptom of a rare and potentially fatal disease. These anxieties make us unhappy.
(Shortform note: In some cases, our desire to avoid threats can become hypervigilance or hyperalertness—extreme alertness and sensitivity to your environment, which is associated with mental health problems such as PTSD.)
2) The ability to fit in is no longer the deciding factor in whether we starve to death, but we still compare ourselves to others and worry about whether we are normal. In the world of social media, where everybody is pushing an idealized version of themselves, this part of our brain looks at others and makes us worry that we compare unfavorably.
(Shortform note: Social comparison theory describes this human inclination to determine our self-worth based on how we compare with others. At its best, social comparisons can sometimes motivate us to improve—which raises our self-esteem—when we compare ourselves to people who excel in one particular trait, but who are otherwise similar to ourselves. At its worst, social comparison can make us feel insecure or arrogant, depending on whether we make upward comparisons (judging ourselves against people we deem superior) or downward comparisons (judging ourselves against those we deem inferior).)
3) Our ability to accumulate and improve no longer determines whether we live or die. Still, our brains drive us to constantly accumulate more wealth, status, and happiness and to improve our lives as much as possible—but even when we accomplish these goals and improve our lives, the satisfaction doesn’t last long. For example, if you’ve wanted to upgrade your car for a while, the thrill of buying a new one lasts for a few weeks or months. But before long, the new car has become ordinary and you set your sights even higher—we quickly return to the cycle of accumulation and try to get even more.
The Futility of the Chase for More
Society reinforces this psychological adaptation through marketing and idealized media portrayals of rich and famous people. Together, these forces make us believe that a material gain—like a job, house, or income level—will be the key to happiness. However, this drive for more leads to our detriment for multiple reasons. First, in our relentless pursuit of that one thing, we often neglect their health and relationships, creating more unhappiness.
Additionally, as noted, that one thing is never enough—we are wired to want more. However, according to prospect theory, the more you accumulate, the less satisfaction you feel from the additional gains. As a result, we continually chase more wealth, status, and happiness while getting diminishing satisfaction from our pursuits.
In other words, not only is the belief that humans are naturally happy not true, but Harris contends the opposite is true. Because our minds naturally supply us with a constant stream of threats, worries, and concerns that don’t actually contribute to our survival, the natural state for human beings is psychological discomfort. (Shortform note: Studies of brain activity show that we have a “negativity bias”—our brains respond more to negative images than to positive or neutral images. ACT founder Steven C. Hayes identified five ways our brains fixate on the negative: imagining dangers, ruminating about the past, worrying about what others think, feeling not good enough, and always needing more.)
The Limits of Evolutionary Psychology
Evolutionary psychology, which links mental traits to natural selection, has been criticized on the grounds that:
There is no way to test its hypotheses.
We have little insight into the environment in which our human ancestors lived.
Political and cultural bias are confounding factors that make it unclear whether evolutionary psychology explains current human behavior or merely justifies it.
However, there is plenty of nuance to be brought to the discussion. For instance, although the hypotheses of evolutionary psychology are not testable, neither is the hypothesis that the universe was created from the Big Bang, but we still hold the latter to be the best working theory of the origins of the universe.
The evolutionary claims of The Happiness Trap are broad enough to appear plausible on the surface, but it’s important to understand that there’s a high degree of speculation at play. The idea that the tendencies Harris describes are modern-day expressions of a primitive drive is one working hypothesis, but it may discount the role that capitalist culture plays in generating desires that serve no adaptive purpose. In other words, our desire to buy a shiny new car may have nothing to do with an ancient accumulate-and-improve instinct, but rather a desire cultivated by consumerist culture.
However, at least some evidence supports the idea that the threat detection and avoidance mechanism is a vestige of our ancestors: Researchers found that anxiety is partially attributed to genetics in rhesus monkeys, which are similar to human primates. That means that there is some credence to the idea that an overactive threat detection and avoidance mechanism has a genetic component to it and could therefore be passed down from our ancient ancestors to modern humans.
Harris argues that one consequence of the first myth is that assuming humans are naturally happy suggests something is wrong with anyone who is unhappy or experiences psychological distress. We may characterize an unhappy person as “weak.” This is the underlying premise when one person tells another to “toughen up,” as though emotions were a kind of threat that can simply be faced down and defeated (and happiness floods into the gap left by the banished emotion, says the myth).
Harris explains that social media reinforces this second myth by providing a platform where people can display only the best parts of their lives, which give the impression of maximum happiness. It’s easy to look at these projections of other people’s happiness and feel that your life doesn’t measure up. Some people then conclude that there must be something wrong with them.
However, because humans are not, in fact, naturally happy, there’s nothing inherently wrong with unhappy individuals.
The Harms of Treating Unhappiness as a Problem
Research has shown that this myth—that being unhappy means that there’s something wrong with you—is misguided. Furthermore, actually treating your negative thoughts and feelings as a problem can create secondary emotions, such as shame and guilt, that intensify your psychological suffering.
Despite this, modern psychologists consider some typical signs of unhappiness when diagnosing psychiatric disorders. For instance, symptoms of depression include feelings of sadness, angry outbursts, and anxiety. In order to diagnose an individual with depression, these symptoms have to be so overwhelming that they affect the individual’s ability to function in society—but even for individuals without diagnosed depression, these symptoms are pathologized (or linked to mental illness) and regarded as potentially problematic.
On the other hand, some experts argue that depression is an evolutionary adaptation meant to trigger social support, among other purposes. According to this hypothesis, diagnosing and treating depression does not worsen the problem—rather, those are modern forms of help that depressive symptoms exist to elicit.
Society tells us that we should seek to get rid of our mental suffering and replace it with positive feelings. This is the theme in some advertisements with a before-and-after structure. The world around a person using an inferior product is dark and gloomy. It’s only after buying the product advertised that the world becomes bright and positive. The implicit message is that you should do everything in your power to transform your dull, unhappy life into a happy one (in this case, buy a product). (Shortform note: This advertising approach is a strategy in emotional marketing, which uses color, storytelling, ideal images, and associations to trigger consumers’ emotions that motivate them to act in certain ways. Research shows that a consumer’s emotional response to an ad is two to three times more influential than the ad’s content in swaying their decision to buy the product.)
However, if we consider the problem more deeply, it becomes clear that even experiences that we regard as positive carry with them a negative counterpart.
For instance, many people consider having a child to be one of the highest forms of happiness. But having a child is a positive experience that has many potentially negative feelings associated with it, such as the stress of sleepless nights when your child is an infant, the fear that your child won’t be accepted by her peers, and anger when your child is a disobedient teenager. The positive experience can’t exist without its negative counterparts.
Therefore, we cannot achieve our deepest happiness without also experiencing potentially negative feelings.
Don’t Reject Negative Feelings—Accept Them
Although society pressures us to reject negative feelings, accepting all of your feelings can enhance self-esteem. When we separate self-esteem from the experience of positive feelings, we free ourselves from the myth that we’re defective if we’re not happy, and we release ourselves from the (futile) task of trying to eliminate our negative feelings. This allows us to value ourselves as we are—negative feelings and all—rather than as we’d like to be (people who don’t experience negative emotions).
Furthermore, humans vary on the scale of dispositional negativity, or the degree to which we experience negative emotions relative to context. For instance, someone with high dispositional negativity may get cut off in traffic in the morning and still be thinking about the experience later that night. Someone with low dispositional negativity could experience the same thing and recover five minutes later. In addition, people with high dispositional negativity can experience negative emotion even if there is no appropriate context for that emotion—for example, they can feel down even when there’s no apparent reason.
Instead of suggesting that people with high dispositional negativity simply think happier thoughts, or eliminate their negative feelings, psychologists recommend that they accept their negative thoughts and feelings without judgment.
Harris derives the fourth myth about happiness from the third: Implicit in the belief that you should eliminate negative feelings is the belief that you can eliminate negative feelings. This misguided belief is constantly reinforced.
Starting in childhood, we’re socialized to believe we should be able to control our feelings. Think of a parent telling their toddler to “be a big boy” and stop crying. We learn, at some point in our development, that we should control our negative thoughts and feelings—or, at the very least, the expression thereof.
How Children Learn They “Should” Control Their Emotions
Research has identified three dominant ways we’re socialized to experience our emotions in early childhood:
How our parents react to our emotions: If a parent tells their child to stop crying, the child thinks they should be able to stop, even though children have poor impulse control.
How our parents discuss emotions: If a parent tells a child to control their anger, the child picks up the idea that anger is bad.
How parents express emotion: If a child sees a parent trying to control their own emotions, the child assumes that they can and should learn how to control their emotions, too.
Similarly, as children get older, they pick up further lessons about emotions from their peers, through:
How their peers react to their emotions
How their peers discuss emotions
How their peers express emotion
Furthermore, Harris writes that we assume we have control over our thoughts and emotions because, as humans, we’re able to control the physical world and transform it for our use. It’s hard to accept that the same species that invented the internal combustion engine by harnessing the power of fire, steel, and steam can’t simply dismiss an unhappy thought.
Finally, he points out that this myth is one of the fundamental claims of many self-help books, such as The Happiness Advantage and The Power of Positive Thinking. These books argue that you can control your thoughts and feelings to replace negative thoughts, like anger and guilt, with positive ones, like joy and gratitude.
However, Harris argues that we actually exert less control over our thoughts and feelings than we think we do: Tell yourself not to think of an elephant. Now, you’re probably thinking of an elephant. Therefore, you don’t control your thoughts.
Plus, he writes that the more intense our negative thoughts become, the more difficult they are to control. So while it may be possible to dismiss something minor, like irritation that your child is chewing with their mouth open, it would be much more difficult to dismiss grief over a loved one’s death.
Most Thoughts Are Beyond Our Awareness and Control
The truth is that we only control a small minority of our thoughts.
Most of our thoughts are subconscious, meaning that they’re part of a constant background process of thinking. A small fraction of these slip into our conscious thinking, but we are unaware of the rest, and, thus, we don’t have the power to dismiss them.
Even actions that we believe we’ve actively chosen are executed largely by unconscious processes. For instance, we can choose to try to catch a football when it’s thrown to us, but the action of actually catching the football is something that the unconscious mind is more responsible for than the conscious one. This might be why we’re often surprised when our reflexes take over—like when your roommate unexpectedly tosses you the keys to the apartment and your hand snaps out to catch them.
The four myths work together to trap us in unhappiness: Since nobody talks about feeling bad (for fear that others will think there’s something wrong with them), we falsely believe that we’re supposed to be happy, that everyone else is happy, and that we must learn to control our thoughts and feelings well enough to eliminate the negative ones—even though we can’t actually control them.
Harris contends that our erroneous beliefs about happiness (that humans are naturally happy; if you’re unhappy, there’s something wrong with you; and you can and must eliminate negative thoughts and feelings) lead to misery.
Which of Harris’s happiness myths has had the greatest impact on your life; how has it affected you?
Describe a time when you acted on a negative event or emotion based on this myth—what did you do, and how did you end up feeling afterward?
How would rejecting this myth change your response to a negative emotion or event next time?
In the previous chapter, you learned some of the common myths about happiness, which rely on a misunderstanding of how our brain has evolved to function.
In this chapter, you’ll learn how these mistaken beliefs about happiness lead people to adopt “control strategies” to deal with negative thoughts and feelings and how these control strategies create vicious cycles that generate, rather than eliminate, negative thoughts. This, in a nutshell, is the happiness trap.
We’ll define control strategies and explore the most common ones. Then, we’ll examine why and how these control strategies make us feel worse.
Harris explains that we use two types of control strategies: fight strategies and flight strategies. A fight strategy involves trying to confront and overpower your negative thoughts and feelings, forcing them to abate or disappear. A flight strategy involves retreating from or trying to ignore negative thoughts and feelings in the hopes they’ll disappear. Following are examples of each strategy:
Fight-Flight-Freeze Is Our Stress Response
The fight-flight-freeze response is central to Harris’s treatment of control strategies. It’s an involuntary response to a perceived threat, typically accompanied by physiological changes such as elevated heart rate, a rapid rate of breathing, dilation of the pupils, and increased sweating. These changes prepare the body to choose:
Fight: Physically attack the threat.
Flight: Physically flee the threat.
Freeze: Stay in a holding pattern indefinitely.
It may seem strange to apply this response to something as abstract as thoughts and feelings, rather than, say, a grizzly bear we’ve encountered in the wild. However, Harris believes negative thoughts and emotions can qualify as perceived threats. We don’t necessarily experience all of the physiological changes that accompany a literal fight-flight-freeze response, but the basic problem is the same: Our minds enter into an involuntary state of confrontation, and our control strategies emerge within that context as viable alternatives to continuing to freeze.
In fact, fight-flight-freeze is our typical response to modern-day stress—and control strategies are part of that response: The fight strategies try to argue with whatever is causing stress,while the flight strategies try to retreat from the source of stress.
Harris explains that, to some extent, everybody uses control strategies—because they can be positive at first. When the thoughts we’re trying to control are relatively unimportant, control strategies can make us feel good in the short term. For instance, if you’re annoyed at your neighbor for using a leaf blower after dark, there’s no harm in distracting yourself by putting in headphones and listening to music.
The fact that we can exert control over minor thoughts and feelings gives us an illusion of control that can be comforting. But we can’t actually get rid of our negative thoughts and feelings—we can only choose how we respond to them.
Harris notes that control strategies begin to have a negative impact when they become vicious cycles. A vicious cycle, or downward spiral, forms when the strategy we’re using to deal with a problem becomes part of the problem.
For example, imagine that you want to purchase a laptop but can’t afford one right now. You successfully apply for a credit card with a credit limit sufficient to purchase the computer, and you buy it. When it’s time to make a credit card payment, you don’t have the money to make one. You apply for another credit card, and you use your new credit card to make payments on your old credit card until the new card is maxed out—and the cycle continues.
Generally, control strategies become vicious cycles when:
1. We rely on them too much. For instance, Michael’s control strategy is the flight strategy distraction. Whenever he feels overwhelmed by life’s problems, he sits down on the couch and distracts himself by eating a pint of ice cream. This makes him feel good in the short term, but soon his increased weight is just another one of his life’s problems, which means that he’s eating more ice cream and gaining more weight.
(Shortform note: Some experts argue that control strategies become behavioral addictions, comparable to drug, sex, and gambling addictions. Because these coping mechanisms relieve emotional distress and discomfort, they trigger reward systems in the brain that respond to pain relief, and the coping mechanism becomes encoded as habit.)
2. We try to apply them to situations they can’t resolve. For example, let’s say that Angela has just lost her dream job, and she’s questioning her self-worth. Whenever she has negative thoughts and feelings about herself and her job, she tries to dull them by drinking a few glasses of wine. This helps her feel better for a short time, but it doesn’t affect Angela’s employment or her self-esteem—instead, she thinks less of herself for drinking so much. When she’s sober, her negative thoughts return and she wants to drink again. Since drinking doesn’t actually address the root causes of Angela’s despair, her strategy becomes a vicious cycle.
(Shortform note: Since control strategies are methods for dealing with negative feelings, by definition, the only situations they can resolve are emotional management or avoidance. Considering that emotions are reactions to external circumstances (like someone’s actions) or internal events (like thoughts), control strategies never address the root problem.)
3. They stop us from doing things that are truly meaningful to us. For instance, Frank is a writer who’s drafted a book, but every time he thinks about sending the manuscript out to publishers, he’s reminded of the possibility that he might be rejected, and he puts the manuscript away. By trying to avoid his fear of failure, Frank prevents himself from achieving something meaningful to him: publishing a book. His behavior guarantees his failure.
(Shortform note: Research finds that procrastination is a strategy to avoid the negative emotions associated with doing a task—including the boredom of a tedious chore and the anxiety of underperforming. As with the control strategies we’ve discussed, procrastination provides immediate, short-term relief from negative feelings, but ultimately exacerbates them.)
Harris writes that psychologists call an overreliance on—or misapplication of—control strategies “experiential avoidance.” Specifically, experiential avoidance involves a continuous attempt to eliminate negative thoughts and feelings even though such efforts don’t work or they exacerbate the problem. Experiential avoidance has been linked to a variety of psychological problems, including depression, anxiety, and substance abuse.
Vicious Cycles in Depressive Rumination
The happiness trap isn’t the only manifestation of vicious cycles of negative thoughts. Cyclical negative thoughts and feelings are a regular feature of depressive rumination.
In depressive rumination, people have repetitive negative thoughts and may even experience secondary emotions, such as shame or guilt, for having such thoughts. When people try to break these cycles with logic and rational thought (in terms of The Happiness Trap, this is the fight strategy called arguing), the negative thoughts prove unshakable. Depressive rumination deepens existing depression and can even predict depression in non-depressed people. However, some scientists believe the depressive rumination is an evolutionary adaptation: The rumination allowed humans to work through complex problems, while the depression made them avoid activities and social interaction, which would disrupt their focus on problem-solving.
Depressive rumination involves two parts of the brain: the default mode network (DMN) and the subgenual prefrontal cortex (PFC). The DMN is part of our brain that activates whenever we’re reflecting, daydreaming, or reminiscing. The subgenual PFC steers the DMN toward reflecting on problems in order to solve them.
In depressive rumination, the subgenual PFC malfunctions, prompting the DMN to dwell on problems and negative thinking without any motivation to actually solve the problems.
To help with depressive rumination, you can:
Focus on a single task, such as washing the dishes or doing a puzzle like sudoku. This will shift your brain activity away from the self-reflective DMN to the areas of your brain associated with focus and task completion.
Go for a hike. Research shows that going for a 90-minute walk through nature will decrease depressive rumination and activity in the subgenual PFC.
Practice meditation. By training your focus, or awareness, you can decrease activation in the DMN, which is primarily for reflection or other unfocused “mind-wandering.”
Now that we’ve discussed how we get stuck in the happiness trap, we’ll explain how to escape it through ACT’s six principles of psychological flexibility, the ability to respond effectively and productively to difficult situations in order to build a rich and meaningful life.
In the last chapter, you learned about how our attempts to escape negative thoughts and feelings create what Harris calls the happiness trap.
In this chapter, we will begin delving into Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) by focusing on ACT’s first principle: connecting with the observing self. (Shortform note: In the book and in ACT literature, this is listed as the fourth of the six principles. However, we’ve chosen to examine it first because it provides helpful context for understanding the following principles.)
According to ACT, our minds encompass a thinking self and an observing self. By harnessing the power of the observing self, we can engage in mindfulness techniques to help us accept our negative thoughts and feelings and connect more meaningfully with the world around us.
In this chapter, we’ll define the thinking self and the observing self. Then, we’ll explore the relationship between them to prepare for the mindfulness techniques we’ll learn in the next few chapters.
In order to understand the observing self, we first need to define the thinking self.
Harris explains that the thinking self, or “conceptualized self,” is what most people in Western society think of when we think about ourselves, or who we are. (Shortform note: And it’s no accident that we think this way. One of the linchpins of Western philosophy is René Descartes’s famous cogito ergo sum: I think therefore I am. In his Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes takes his own thoughts as evidence of his existence.)
According to Harris, the thinking self operates primarily through words and images. It constitutes an uncontrollable running commentary on our lives. Any thought you have, no matter how serious or trivial, comes to you through the thinking self.
In ACT, the thinking self is a product of hundreds of thousands of years of evolution to avoid threats and danger. The thinking self’s running commentary is meant to keep us safe from harm, but the conditions under which the thinking self evolved no longer pertain to our modern existence. Therefore, most of its efforts are wasted. Furthermore, the thinking self’s constant stream of negative thoughts and images decreases our quality of life—and struggling with those thoughts and images only makes our predicament worse.
The Thinking Self Categorizes Experiences
In Mindfulness in Plain English, Bhante Gunaratana describes ordinary thought (or the thoughts of the thinking self) as an automatic response to the stimuli we experience in our lives. Anything can cause the automatic process of thought to respond: an attractive person, a barking dog, or a traffic light.
Gunaratana says that our brain separates our experiences into three categories: good, bad, and neutral. Our brain deals with these types of experiences in different ways:
When an experience is good, we naturally want more of it, but our brain also automatically presents us with the idea that the good experience will end eventually, which means that we can’t fully enjoy the experience of good things.
When an experience is bad, we try to avoid it. This is similar to Harris’s argument about control strategies creating a happiness trap. Unlike Harris, Gunaratana does not argue that attempting to avoid bad experiences generates more bad experiences.
When an experience is neutral, we tend to view it as boring and ignore it.
Gunaratana asserts that this categorization causes us to be constantly dissatisfied with life—we always want more, want less, or want something more exciting, rather than simply being content. As an antidote, he proposes using meditation to achieve mindfulness, or awareness, in order to free ourselves from the automatic process of thought that either chases good feelings, flees bad feelings, or ignores neutral ones. Harris will propose a similar solution—although he doesn’t promote meditation by name—in the form of the observing self, which he defines as a kind of awareness that underlies the experience of consciousness.
Harris notes that many forms of psychology and self-help try to help us control the thinking self. For instance, the positive thinking movement tries to control the thinking self by saying that we can replace the negative thoughts of our thinking self with positive ones. (Shortform note: In The Power of Positive Thinking, Norman Vincent Peale argues that you can cultivate a peaceful mind by emptying your mind of negative emotions each day, saying peaceful words like “tranquility” and “serenity,” having positive conversations with others, and spending at least 15 minutes a day in silence’s.)
ACT takes a slightly different approach by connecting us with the other half of our mind: the observing self, which has the power to mediate the thinking self’s influence on our lives.
In contrast to the thinking self (which thinks, judges, and acts), Harris writes that the observing self only observes.
The observing self observes the thoughts of the thinking self, the feelings of the body, and the external world we experience through our five senses. While the thinking self interprets our experiences, the observing self directly experiences reality.
To understand the difference between the thinking and the observing self, imagine you’re at a festival, slow-dancing with a partner in a crowd. You’re immersed in the scene, engaged with your observing self. As you move your body in tandem with your partner’s, you aren’t actively thinking about where to place your next step. You aren’t focused on the crowd, only the space directly in front of you. You move in time with the music and your partner’s body.
Then, your thinking self derails your observing self by distracting you from the immediacy of your experience: You start to second-guess your movements. You feel the gaze of the crowd and wonder if you are a good dancer. Suddenly, you find yourself stepping all over your partner’s toes and tripping up what had once been an effortless flow.
Harris lists several characteristics of the observing self:
Harris describes the observing self as a constant, unchanging awareness that you experienced even before you had a name to give it. By connecting with the observing self, you can stop identifying with your thinking self.
Self-as-Context
ACT literature refers to the observing self as “self-as-context”—the alternative to the “conceptualized self,” or the person we think we are because of the running commentary of the thinking self. This terminology makes the concept of the observing self a bit more clear—in the self-as-context model, our thoughts, feelings, and experiences occur within the context of the self, rather than being identified with the self.
Imagine the self-as-context as a playground and the individual thoughts, feelings, and experiences as children who are playing on the playground. Even when all of the children have gone home, the playground will still be a playground. It would be nonsensical to argue that the children are the playground—they often populate the playground, but they don’t define it.
Elsewhere in the ACT literature, Harris emphasizes two major benefits of the self-as-context that he doesn’t mention in The Happiness Trap:
It provides us with a secure sense of self. In contrast to the conceptualized self, where we are our thoughts and feelings (both negative and positive) and therefore change rapidly from moment to moment or day to day, the self-as-context is a less variable configuration for our lives.
It can provide us with a transcendent sense of self. While Harris generally eschews mysticism in The Happiness Trap, the ACT literature suggests that the self-as-context is a “higher” and more enduring form of being than the conceptualized self. It’s not merely that we are not our thoughts and feelings, but that we are more than our thoughts and feelings.
Harris argues that the thinking self and the observing self are fundamentally different human faculties: As we discussed, while the thinking self operates as a running commentary on the events of your life, the observing self observes this running commentary.
You can think of the observing self as a kind of “meta-awareness.” For every thought you think, the observing self notices you thinking that thought; for every sensation you experience in your body, the observing self notices the sensation. Your observing self notices everything you experience—from your thoughts to your physical sensations to the world around you.
When you understand the relationship between the thinking self and the observing self, you can redirect the observing self’s attention away from the thinking self and toward other sources of input, like your five senses. In the following chapters, we’ll explain how this ability to redirect your attention is the foundation for mindfulness techniques that can alter the way you experience your thoughts, your feelings, and the world around you.
Your Thoughts and Feelings Don’t Define You
We’ve referred to the conceptualized self in relation to the thinking self, but it’s important to underscore that the conceptualized self is more than an entity that produces thoughts—it’s the person we think we are when we identify with those thoughts. Without the observing self, we can come to the conclusion that we are our thoughts, feelings, and urges.
The ACT literature explains that when we identify with our thoughts and feelings, we can excuse behavior that would be inexcusable in a more objective context. For instance, if someone frequently gets angry and lashes out, they may begin to think of themselves as an angry person. Once they’ve adopted that identity, they may excuse their continued outbursts because they already believe that they’re an angry person.
However, the observing self enables people to see that they are not their thoughts and feelings, but rather a context in which thoughts and feelings occur. With this insight, they can separate themselves from their thoughts and feelings, rather than feeling controlled by them.
Harris explains that we have two minds or “selves” that affect our response to events: The thinking self provides a running (judgmental) commentary on events, while the observing self neutrally observes this running commentary.
Describe a time when you acted in a situation based on the interpretation or judgment of your thinking self (for example, taking something your partner said as criticism and responding angrily).
How did the situation turn out? How did your reaction influence the outcome?
How would sidelining your thinking self and activating your observing self have affected your response to this situation?
In the last chapter, you learned about the observing self, the part of your awareness that notices what you’re thinking, feeling, and doing.
In this chapter, you’ll learn about a mindfulness technique called defusion. Harris explains that, in ACT, mindfulness means being aware of our thoughts, feelings, and the world around us. Defusion allows us to separate ourselves from our thoughts, which enables us to accept negative thoughts rather than being engulfed by them.
To begin, we’ll define the concept of fusion (the opposite of defusion), then explain the process of defusion. Next, we’ll outline four defusion techniques that you can use to detach from negative thoughts. Finally, we’ll explain the goal of defusion within the context of ACT.
When you mistake your thinking self—the part of you that thinks, judges, and acts—as a direct reflection of reality, ACT says that you are in a state of “fusion” with your thoughts. Let’s take a closer look at how fusion functions.
Harris reiterates that the thinking self operates primarily through thoughts and images.
A thought is a word or phrase that you experience within your mind. For instance, if you’re driving to the grocery store and the words, “I think I’ll take the expressway” pop into your head, those words are a thought.
An image is a picture, or an extended movie, that you experience within your mind. For example, if you visualized the Nike logo, your mental picture of the logo is an image.
Although thoughts and images are different, they often occur simultaneously in our minds.
The Interplay Between Thoughts and Images
A study at Harvard found that the relationship between words and images—the two main components of human thought—is even more complicated than is presented here. Not only do words and images occur simultaneously in thought, but visual images “intrude” into the mind even when our mode of thought is primarily verbal (or word-based). These images are less like movies and more like brief flashes, or interruptions, in the ordinary course of thought.
Researchers found more visual activation in people’s minds when they discussed—or imagined—things that were closer to them. By contrast, verbal activation occurred when the subjects discussed or imagined places, people, and things that were more distant. For instance, when a subject focused on a place they were familiar with, researchers found activation in the visual centers of the brain, but when they focused on a place farther away and less familiar, the subject’s thoughts were more word-based.
Harris asserts that we rely on the running commentary of our thoughts in order to live. These words and images come together in our mind to tell us stories about who we are and our place in the world. For instance, we would not be able to form judgments about good or bad, right or wrong, without input from our thinking self.
However, most of these stories are neither true nor false, Harris explains. They reflect our thinking self’s partial viewpoint of complex events (both in our minds and in the world around us) and they determine how we orient ourselves with respect to those events. When we accept these incomplete stories as reality, we are experiencing fusion.
For example, imagine that you’re late picking up your children from school. Your thinking self may think that it’s okay for you to speed (because everybody does it and the roads are fairly clear). Later, when you get a speeding ticket, your thinking self may think it’s unfair because you were simply trying to be a responsible parent. This is your partial viewpoint of the situation. From the officer’s perspective, you deserve the ticket simply because you were driving over the speed limit.
When we are experiencing fusion:
Taken as a whole, our thinking self’s perspective of the world can be called a “worldview.” And not only are our worldviews flawed and partial interpretations of reality, but our worldviews are also resistant to information that contradicts them. For instance, people who believe that global warming is not real are likely to reject the scientific evidence of human-caused climate change.
Based on this information, fusion with our worldviews is a real danger, causing us to choose our thinking self’s stories over reality simply because those stories are familiar.
Harris notes that fusion isn’t necessarily a bad thing. For example, if you’re on a first date and you perceive that it’s going well, it’s unlikely you’d consider it a problem that you’re treating your pleasurable thoughts as reality.
But fusion becomes a problem when it prevents us from living rich and meaningful lives. Making matters worse, Harris cites research showing that about 80% of the thoughts we experience contain negative content. (Shortform note: We can easily connect this kind of thinking back to the concept of the happiness trap. When we identify too completely with our thoughts, any negative thoughts that we experience become threatening. So we try to eliminate them through control strategies, which creates new negative thoughts (with which we also “fuse”)—and the cycle continues.)
Harris explains that the antidote to fusion is defusion, or separating ourselves from our thoughts. Rather than taking our thinking self’s stories as the absolute truth, through defusion, we harness the power of the observing self to take a step back from those stories and recognize them for what they are: only words and images.
Harris calls defusion an “acceptance strategy” as opposed to a control strategy: You don’t have to like or agree with your thoughts in order to practice defusion—you simply have to accept them. Similarly, the goal is not to eliminate our negative thoughts. If you practiced defusion with the goal of eliminating your negative thoughts, you would end up back in the happiness trap.
Instead, according to Harris, the goal of defusion is to acknowledge that our thoughts are stories the brain tells us in order to help us survive.
When we practice defusion:
By practicing defusion and accepting your negative thoughts, Harris says, you live a richer life and experience the world more fully—rather than continually trying to eliminate negative thoughts and feelings through experiential avoidance.
Common Hurdles in Defusion
Clinical psychologist and ACT trainer John T. Blackledge identifies common problems that people can experience when trying to apply defusion to their lives. He identifies these problems within the clinical context, where a professional therapist is leading a patient in ACT, but we can still take a look at the common issues to be prepared in our more personal practice.
The idea of defusion can be a tough pill to swallow when we struggle with long-term, persistent negative thoughts: Since fusion causes us to take a thought as objective reality, persistent thoughts are even more ingrained as facts. Being told that we should defuse from such a thought might come across as being told that we need to accept that we can’t reliably interpret our own reality. In this case, we must remember that thought is inherently an unreliable narrator—it’s not something that’s specific to us.
The idea of defusion, taken to an extreme, can lead to a sense of meaninglessness. If thoughts are just thoughts, then what about the important thoughts that we have concerning our morals and ethics? It can seem as though we have to throw out the good with the bad. But Blackledge emphasizes that our core morals and values are shaped by our direct experience of what’s meaningful in life, not merely a parade of thoughts.
When we practice defusion, it can be difficult to separate our factual thoughts from our nonfactual thoughts. For instance, when describing an object, a factual description is “That object is made of steel.” But at other times, it may not be entirely clear whether a thought is factual (and therefore useful to you, even if it makes you feel bad). For example, describing yourself as “fat” carries a lot of cultural baggage in Western society, so the acknowledgement of the physical fact of fat on the body may blur into the nonfactual associations that fat carries with it. You can distinguish between the factual and nonfactual by asking yourself what a presumed statement of fact means to you—this will give you a sense of the nonfactual elements that may be loaded into the factual description.
Now that you know what defusion is, Harris provides some simple ways to practice it. But first, he emphasizes the limits of these techniques:
ACT Requires Practice
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is, above all, a practical approach to mental health and well-being. While understanding the principles of ACT may bring you some clarity and offer potential avenues forward, direct and repeated action is the only path toward psychological flexibility, the ability to acknowledge and productively deal with difficult thoughts and feelings.
Thus, it’s essential to apply these techniques in your everyday life. They take little time to practice—from 30 seconds to five minutes a pop—and arm you with permanent tools for dealing with unwanted thoughts. It’s a good time investment.
The first technique Harris describes aims to train your observing self to notice the thoughts of your thinking self as thoughts rather than as reality. Follow these steps to practice distancing:
You can experiment with this technique by adding more layers of separation to the beginning of the thought. For instance, you could rephrase your original thought this way: “My observing self is noticing that my brain is having the thought that I’m never going to succeed.”
The Labeling Technique
A variation on the distancing technique is called the labeling technique. Both exercises help you train your observing self to practice defusion.
First, take a powerful recurrent negative thought and label it as either descriptive or evaluative. If a thought is descriptive, it derives from the five senses and can be independently verified. For instance, this thought is descriptive: “She has brown hair.” If a thought is evaluative, it extends beyond the senses into the realm of abstract evaluation. For example, this thought is evaluative: “She is beautiful.”
As with the distancing technique above, labeling creates a distance between your thoughts and reality. Rather than adding layers of language between you and the thought, you’re adding a layer of judgment.
Harris’s next technique requires you to imagine a cartoon character saying your thoughts. Putting your thinking self’s commentary in another voice makes it easier to recognize that your negative thoughts are only sequences of words loosely bound together—and that helps you dissociate from those thoughts.
The “Say It Slowly” Technique
An alternative to this technique is called the “say it slowly” technique. To practice this, pick a recurring negative thought and slow the thought down in your mind, taking time to stretch out the syllables and put extra space between the words.
Like the cartoon characters technique, the idea behind this exercise is that slowing down the pace at which a thought occurs and distorting it (almost as though you’re applying a voice filter to it) makes it more obvious that the thought is simply words you can speed up or slow down.
Harris’s third technique helps you recognize that your thinking self’s running commentary is meant to keep you safe—even if it’s not the absolute truth. To practice this:
If you struggle with this, remember that your thinking self is merely doing its best to keep you safe in a world it assumes poses many threats to your life. Even if you’re inconvenienced, hurt, or bothered by your brain’s attempts to keep you safe, acknowledge that it’s trying to work in your best interest. (Shortform note: In The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle argues that your ego (which Harris would call your thinking self) is not acting in your best interest when it generates negative thoughts. Instead, Tolle says that the ego manufactures problems and abstract fears in an effort to keep you engaged with it and prevent you from connecting with your true self (your observing self).)
The Pop-Up Mind Technique
An alternative to thanking your mind is called the “pop-up mind” technique. While thanking your mind reminds you that your thinking self is well-intended, this technique emphasizes that the nature of the thinking self is automatic. Just as a website automatically delivers pop-up ads to your computer, your thinking self delivers thoughts to your awareness. Rather than feeling that you absolutely must click on the ad, the exercise reminds you that you can simply choose not to engage.
Practicing this technique is fairly simple: Whenever you experience a negative or unwanted thought, imagine that the thought is an internet pop-up ad. Then, practice closing the ad.
Unlike the previous techniques, this technique is specifically designed to help you process negative images, not negative thoughts. Harris writes that this practice helps you recognize that you can radically recontextualize your painful image or memory until it loses its negative connotation and becomes a picture next to a thousand other pictures—ultimately harmless.
As a caveat, Harris advises that people who have traumatic histories and strong memories associated with trauma should not use this technique on their own. (Shortform note: In The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk explains that certain images and memories can trigger powerful flashbacks in trauma survivors, and that the brain responds to flashbacks as intensely as if the danger were present in that moment.)
The Movie Theater Technique
An adaptation of this technique is called the “movie theater” technique. Like the television images technique, this approach helps you to disengage from your images and memories by seeing yourself as a mere viewer.
First, imagine that your thinking self’s thoughts and images are a movie playing on the big screen at a theater. Allow yourself to “watch” the movie as it unfolds—each thought can be a character with its own motivations and flaws, and each image can be a still frame captured on the big screen. The important thing is to watch without judgment or involvement. For the time being, you’re merely a spectator.
Then, after about a minute of “watching” the movie, allow yourself to become aware of the beam of light from the projector that casts the images onto the screen. Raise your eyes from the movie and follow the beam of light to its source.
Now that you’re familiar with the concept of defusion and have a handful of techniques to practice, let’s consider the end goal of defusion.
After you’ve successfully defused a negative thought, the question becomes: What do you do with it?
Harris advises asking, “Is this thought helpful?” If yes, then the observing self gives you the power to allow that thought to guide you toward effective action. If no, then the observing self gives you the power to let the thought go and refocus your attention somewhere more helpful.
To see this process in action, let’s consider an example: Alyssa plans on meeting a friend at the bar for some drinks. Her friend arrives 15 minutes late because of traffic, and Alyssa yells at him. They argue, and her friend leaves.
Sitting at the bar afterward, Alyssa has the powerful negative thought, “I was a real jerk to my friend.” The thought is painful, so she defuses it. She takes a step back and remembers: It’s a painful thought, but it’s just a thought.
Now, she asks herself whether it’s a helpful thought. She decides that it is a helpful thought, because it can motivate her to reflect on her behavior (it was wrong to yell at her friend in public) and ensure that she doesn’t lose her temper in the future. She calls her friend and apologizes.
While some approaches that employ mindfulness techniques consider mindfulness an end in itself, ACT differs in the sense that it employs mindfulness as a means to an end. Specifically, ACT uses mindfulness to facilitate actions that align with your values.
How to Identify Helpful Thoughts
One question that you might have is: How do I determine whether a thought is helpful?
One way to think about the question is to figure out what thoughts are for. In theory, thoughts serve any number of purposes—they can inform us, warn us, represent a situation (accurately or inaccurately), inspire us, motivate us, or discourage us. But whether a thought is helpful or not will always boil down to one thing: whether they align with our goals and values.
Later in The Happiness Trap, Harris explains how to clarify your values and set goals. But meanwhile, you might consider asking yourself what your underlying motivations are as you move through the world. Are you trying to be a good person? What does that look like, specifically—being kind, being polite, being honest?
Once you’ve established some values and goals for yourself, you can determine whether a thought is helpful if it advances your goals and values. Even a potentially painful thought can advance one of your goals if acknowledging that painful thought makes it more likely that you’ll act in alignment with your goals in the future.
ACT doesn’t aim to eliminate suffering. Rather, it seeks to make the most of our suffering by either accepting that suffering and moving forward or using it productively to improve our lives.
Defusion allows you to separate yourself from your thoughts, so you can simply accept and consider negative thoughts rather than being engulfed by them.
Recall a situation in which you “fused with” or treated a negative thought or feeling as reality. Was the thought helpful—why or why not?
Reflecting on this thought or feeling, walk through one of Harris’s defusion exercises to distance yourself from it. Describe the process.
After the exercise, does the thought or feeling seem any different (for example, less urgent or less definitive)? If so, in what way?
How can you be more accepting and analytical toward a negative thought or feeling in a similar situation next time?
In the last chapter, you learned about defusion, a mindfulness technique that allows you to recognize your thoughts as thoughts rather than as reality.
In this chapter, we’ll examine the next principle of ACT: expansion. In a nutshell, expansion does for the feelings and urges of our physical body what defusion does for the thoughts and images of our thinking self. With the technique of expansion, we learn how to use our observing self to create space for the negative feelings and urges in our bodies, allowing us to stop struggling with our emotions and instead focus on taking meaningful action to improve our lives.
This chapter begins by discussing what, exactly, emotions are and how they function. Then, it tackles the subject of the “fight button,” a metaphor for the fight-or-flight response we experience in response to strong emotions. Finally, we’ll dive into the technique of expansion and how to apply it.
Harris begins by pointing out that there is no scientific consensus about what emotions are. However, experts generally agree on three things:
This doesn’t mean that emotions cause us to behave in particular ways, only that emotions are frequently accompanied by urges to act. Following through on these urges when we’re experiencing a strong emotion may cause us to regret those actions in the long run. For example, it’s common for people to be angry, say something cruel that they might not have said under ordinary circumstances, then regret having said it.
In general, Harris explains, the experience of an emotion occurs in three steps:
Let’s make this process clearer with an example.
This process generates a single instance of emotion, or a feeling. Harris asserts that we register our feelings as discrete sensations in our physical body. Over a protracted period of time, many similar episodes of emotion coalesce to form a “mood.” (Shortform note: The technique of expansion deals with individual feelings, not moods.)
The Three Components of Emotion
There’s no scientific consensus on emotion, but most scientists agree that emotions have three components, which echo Harris’s steps: experiences (or stimuli), physiological changes, and behavioral responses. However, scientists disagree about the order in which we experience each of these elements of emotion.
Let’s treat each of these elements in turn:
The first component of an emotion is an experience, or stimulus. The experience of a stimulus is subjective—for example, one person may respond to a child’s doll with fear while someone else wouldn’t have this response. Harris’s definition of an “event” reflects that this stimulus can be external (seeing the doll) or internal (the feeling associated with the doll).
The second component is physiological changes. These physiological changes are regulated by the autonomic nervous system, which controls our fight-or-flight response (among other things). Physiological changes are involuntary—the brain reacts automatically to stimuli, whether an approach or an avoidance reflex is triggered. So while Harris’s explanation that the brain “decides” whether an event is good or bad is misleading.
The third component is behavioral responses. Behavioral responses include smiling, grimacing, and frowning. This behavioral element of emotion is similar to Harris’s concept of “urges” or “action tendencies” that prepare us to take action.
As we learned in the last section, the final step in the process of emotion involves our thinking self interpreting the sensations and urges in our body. Harris argues that the thinking self applies judgments to the emotions that we experience, separating them into “good” or “bad.” Thus, it treats an emotion like love as a “good” emotion, but an emotion like anger as a “bad” emotion.
These judgments are informed by multiple factors:
When the thinking self judges our emotions as “good” or “bad,” we are assigning abstract values to physiological processes. These assigned values motivate us to act:
The Problem With Defining Emotions as “Good” or “Bad”
Research has shown that the logic behind labeling emotions as “positive” or “negative” may be fundamentally flawed. There are good things about supposedly “negative” emotions and bad things about supposedly “positive” ones. Furthermore, we need to accept both our positive and negative emotions in order to live a rich and meaningful life.
Specifically, classically “negative” emotions have two benefits:
They serve as warnings for situations that require our attention. For instance, unhappiness can prompt someone to get out of an unhealthy relationship.
They are accompanied by detail-oriented thinking, reduced stereotypic thinking, and greater endurance when it comes to achieving complicated cognitive tasks.
On the other hand, classically “positive” emotions have their downsides:
They increase selfish behavior, stereotyping of strangers, and dishonesty. They also decrease empathy. For example, if you’ve ever been in a good mood and told somebody a white lie so that you wouldn’t ruin the mood, your positive emotion might be to blame.
They lead to increased levels of distraction and decreased performance on detail-oriented tasks. For example, remember being a child and feeling so excited about something (maybe your birthday) as a child that you couldn’t focus on anything else.
Because positive emotions lower your inhibitions, they can lead you to take unwise risks and even die. The internet is filled with videos of clearly happy people making decisions with bad results.
Imagine this dynamic (the thinking self judging our emotions and setting us up for struggle) as a button in our brain called the “fight button.” When we activate the fight button, we rebel against our emotions and the sensations that accompany them, creating a whole new host of negative feelings. ACT calls this “dirty discomfort.”
When we choose not to activate the fight button, we accept our emotions and don’t try to fight them. We may still experience unpleasant emotions, but we’re not locked in a useless struggle against them. ACT calls this “clean discomfort.”
Fusion (discussed in the last chapter) plays a vital role in this process. Our thinking self judges an emotion we’re having, labeling it “positive” or “negative.” If we fuse with this thought, we experience it as reality. As a consequence, we treat “negative” emotions as threats. And, as discussed, when our brain perceives an emotion as a threat, we experience the fight-or-flight response. This creates even more negative emotions, such as anger or anxiety.
So, you might be wondering, if the fight button causes all of these problems, how do we deactivate it?
Avoiding Negative Emotions Does More Harm Than Good
Another way to describe the fight button is “emotional avoidance.” In emotional avoidance, we try to stave off our negative emotions, which only makes things worse. (There is a subtle distinction between emotional avoidance and experiential avoidance, which we discussed in Chapter 2: Experiential avoidance involves avoiding internal experiences—including emotions, physical sensations, and memories—emotional avoidance focuses only on averting emotions.)
Emotional avoidance is generally a bad strategy because:
Many of your individual goals may require you to experience negative emotions in order to achieve the goals. If you decide to sacrifice those goals in the name of avoiding a negative emotion, you’re making a long-term sacrifice for a short-term gain.
Attempts to avoid negative emotions can’t work. Your emotional experience isn’t voluntary and trying to avoid a negative emotion (like guilt) is just wasted effort.
Emotional avoidance is a form of truth-denial and therefore a bad foundation to build a life on. The truth is that you will experience negative emotions from time to time and denying that fact in pursuit of emotional avoidance will only make it more difficult to do the things that really matter to you.
Emotional avoidance is accompanied by anticipation of the emotion you’re trying to avoid. You become hypervigilant in your attempts to avoid the negative emotion. Specifically, you can experience anticipatory anxiety, where your mind comes up with catastrophic scenarios in which you experience negative emotions that have no relationship to reality.
In contrast to emotional avoidance, emotional acceptance carries real benefits:
When you accept your emotions, you’re accepting the truth instead of wasting effort trying to work against it.
When you accept your emotions, you can learn how to deal with them productively. Emotional avoidance can’t teach you this, because you spend all of your time trying to avoid negative emotions instead of experiencing them and seeing what you can learn from them.
When you accept your emotions, they reveal themselves as less destructive than you originally imagined. Rather than fighting the current of the emotion, you allow yourself to be taken wherever the current leads—and you’re much less exhausted on the other end of the journey.
As we mentioned, expansion is a technique that uses our observing self to create space in our body to accept our emotions, rather than fight against them. To understand this, Harris explains that we first have to develop a concept called body awareness.
Harris describes body awareness as using the observing self to notice your physical sensations and where they’re originating—without engaging the thinking self. He suggests practicing this exercise to attune with your observing self and internalize the difference between actively thinking about your body and passively noticing your body. If you do notice your thinking self engaging during this exercise, try to recognize that your thoughts about your body are separate from the attention you’re paying to your body.
The Benefits of Body Scan Meditation
This exercise is a body scan meditation. While Harris includes it in The Happiness Trap as a way to build body awareness and connect with your observing self, regular practice of this meditation technique carries benefits that Harris doesn’t mention.
The benefits of body scan meditation include:
Better sleep: Body scan meditation reduces insomnia and improves sleep quality by decreasing stress and anxiety, which are common reasons that people struggle to sleep.
Decreased anxiety and stress: Not only does body scan meditation decrease the general symptoms of anxiety (such as restlessness, irritability, and muscle tension), but it also helps you manage stress.
Decreased pain: While body scan meditation doesn’t necessarily stop chronic pain, it helps you pinpoint where pain is occurring—rather than feeling a globalized pain—and that can make it easier to accept.
Now that we’ve developed some body awareness, we can walk through how to use expansion to accept your emotions. Harris identifies four steps:
Step 1: Use your observing self to connect with the sensations in your body.
(Shortform note: This step is similar to the exercise on body awareness. If you struggle with it, go back to the previous exercise and practice it until you develop the skill.)
Take a few moments and notice the sensations or discomfort in each area of your body. Remember that we register emotions as physical sensations—essentially you’re scanning your body for negative emotions so that you can respond to them.
Focus on the least comfortable sensation in your body. Notice its dimensions: Is it large or small? Uniform or irregular? How deeply do you feel the sensation? If you can, visualize this sensation as a distinct object with its own material and properties.
Step 2: Use deep breathing to explore the sensation.
As you scan the uncomfortable sensation, focus on breathing deeply. Your deep breathing should decrease the tension in your body. As your tension decreases, imagine your deep breath forming an eggshell-like shelter around the discomfort.
Step 3: Make additional room in your body for the sensation.
Imagine that eggshell growing in size until your body can freely accommodate the discomfort. Rather than the feeling that the sensation is trapped in your body, causing disruption and tension, you should feel that the sensation has room to move and grow, because your breathing can accommodate it.
Step 4: Tolerate the sensation, and give it space to exist.
Accept the emotion, rather than entertaining your thinking self, which might be saying that the emotion is a threat (and therefore something you need to eliminate).
If your thinking self is still active, use it to reinforce the goal of expansion: acceptance. This is called “acceptance self-talk.” For instance, you could say out loud, “This is a difficult feeling, but there’s enough space in my body to accommodate it.” While, eventually, you want to be able to practice expansion using only your observing self, these words can help in the interim.
(Shortform note: In the larger context of ACT, expansion is used alongside defusion, which we covered in the last chapter, and connection, which we’ll cover in the next chapter.)
The Physiological Effects of Deep Breathing
Meditation exercises like this help release tension in our bodies and process emotions that we can’t simply “reason” our way out of. But just how does it work?
Research has shown that specific emotions have different kinds of breathing associated with them. For instance, an emotion like joy involves deep, slow breathing while an emotion like anger involves rapid, shallow breath. Most people can remember a time when they were so upset that their breathing became irregular (for instance, while crying) or shallow (for instance, while hyperventilating during an anxiety reaction). It also works in the reverse: If you follow the breathing pattern for a particular emotion (even if it’s not one you’re experiencing right now), you can actually begin to feel that emotion.
The deep breathing we practice in expansion is associated with calmness and joy. Thus, the feeling of release from emotional discomfort may be our body’s physiological response to deep breathing, rather than a mental and emotional response to the imaginative labor of “building an eggshell” around the sensation.
Additionally, slow, deep breathing slows your heart rate and stimulates the vagus nerve, which is associated with your body’s recuperative processes, such as sleep and digestion. If you’re locked in a fight-or-flight response—as we often are when we experience negative emotions—deep breathing can engage your vagus nerve and redirect your body’s energies from an anxious or aggressive response to return to a calm and collected state.
When we defined emotions earlier in this chapter, we noted that emotions frequently have two components: physical sensations and action tendencies (also called urges). Harris explains that when we have urges associated with negative emotions, they’re often tied to the control strategies that keep us in the happiness trap.
While expansion in its ordinary form deals primarily with the first component, sensations, a slight adaptation of the technique—called urge surfing—addresses the second component, urges. Just as expansion helps you accept an uncomfortable sensation, urge surfing helps you accept difficult urges. (Shortform note: Psychologists G. Alan Marlatt and Judith R. Gordon coined urge surfing as a coping strategy for people struggling with addiction. Interestingly, Harris specifically notes that urges related to addiction—as well as those related to survival—are not directly connected to emotion.)
Harris details the five steps of urge surfing:
(Shortform note: We haven’t fully covered the ACT principles meant to guide step 5 in the process above, so it may be useful to revisit this technique after reading this guide’s chapter on values.)
Urge Surfing Reframes Urges
Urge surfing is not a practice specific to ACT. Rather, it’s a standard part of the therapeutic repertoire for addiction treatment all over the world.
Urge surfing is based on the idea that most urges won’t persist for longer than 30 minutes, provided that we don’t give in to the urge or “refresh” it by giving it attention or fighting it. Instead, urge surfing relies on a particular relationship to urges that allows us to tolerate them without engaging with them.
People often use different water metaphors to explain urges:
Some people describe an urge as an ocean wave, which rises, crests, and dissipates. Like waves, urges can vary in size, from small to massive, but you can treat your breathing as your “surfboard” as you ride the wave of the urge.
Others describe an urge as a riptide that sweeps swimmers away from the shore. If you try to swim against the current of a riptide, you become too tired and eventually drown. On the other hand, if you surf the urge, you swim parallel to the shore, you can escape the area of the riptide and find your way back to the beach.
Others describe an urge as a waterfall crashing down from unseen heights. If you put your body in the way of the waterfall, it will overwhelm you—but urge surfing allows you to step out of the path of the waterfall and watch the water pass by.
Some practitioners of urge surfing say that focusing on one of these metaphors while you urge surf can help you focus and put your problem—that your urge seems uncontrollable—into perspective.
Urge surfing can help you accept problematic urges, and act on them constructively.
Describe an urge, or tendency to act, that you’ve struggled with in the past, such as an urge to play video games rather than complete a work project that’s due.
Go through Harris’s five steps of urge surfing to accept the urge and decide what action to take. Which step was the most difficult and why?
What action did you decide to take and why? How was it different from what you’ve done in the past?
In the previous two chapters, you learned about defusion and expansion: how to use your observing self to accept negative thoughts, images, feelings, and urges.
In this chapter, you’ll learn about the fourth principle of ACT: connection. Harris writes that connection is the technique of using your observing self to connect to the external world through your five senses. The first four principles of ACT, taken together, constitute a group of skills we can call mindfulness.
In this chapter, we’ll begin by exploring connection. Then, we’ll walk through some exercises that will help you practice connection. Finally, we’ll discuss the first four principles of ACT as a whole, and how they connect to ACT more broadly.
As we’ve already covered, the thinking self produces a running commentary on our lives, both internal (through your emotions) and external (through your five senses). Harris asserts that we go through most of our lives not questioning our thinking self. Often, despite what’s going on around us, we’re focused on the world of the thinking self: our memories, our plans, our judgments.
The thinking self focuses on the past and the future. This is a consequence of the way our thinking self evolved: Harris notes that it was important for our primitive ancestors to be able to think about the future in order to make plans for survival. Similarly, our ancestors needed to be able to incorporate lessons from the past into their daily lives. When their minds did consider the present, they focused mainly on threat detection and avoidance. (Shortform note: It’s not mentioned explicitly here, but the primitive accumulate-and-improve mentality Harris described earlier also relies on an understanding of the future—and the ability to plan for it.)
By contrast, in the modern world, the thinking self’s running commentary poses a constant distraction. For instance, we’ve all caught ourselves zoning out in the middle of a conversation—thinking about our grocery list, our plans for the evening, or a past conversation.
Harris argues that the more attention we pay to the thinking self, the less we notice the world around us. Sometimes, that’s OK; for example, it’s appropriate to be absorbed in your thoughts when performing creative or scientific work. But more often than not, the distraction posed by our thinking self is an obstacle to a deeper connection with the world.
Mind-Wandering Is Natural, But Not Always Helpful
Psychologists at Harvard have found that our brains are hardwired to be distracted by our own thoughts. A study they conducted found that we spend 47% of our time in a state called “mind-wandering,” where we reflect on the past, plan for the future, or simply fantasize about being somewhere else. This, as Harris observes, is our brain’s natural function.
This is an important function because it allows us to learn, among other things. But it’s also the source of much of our unhappiness. For example, while 42.5% of people in the study reported that their minds wandered to pleasant topics, their mind-wandering did not make them any happier than if they’d been present and engaged in what they were doing.
Harris writes that connection is the practice of using our observing self to shift our attention away from the past and future in order to be fully engaged in the present moment. Connection sometimes occurs involuntarily, when we find ourselves in circumstances where the immediate experience of the present is overwhelmingly pleasant or stimulating. For instance, some people experience this kind of immersion on a great first date: They remember the view from the restaurant, the clothes that the other person wore, the food they ordered, and the taste of the wine. This feeling of complete immersion in the present moment is what Harris means by connection—however, involuntary connection can often be short-lived. This is why we must deliberately practice connection.
Harris lists three main reasons to practice connection:
(Shortform note: In addition to the benefits that Harris lists, research shows that connection—or mindfulness—strengthens relationships, makes stress more manageable, and improves symptoms of anxiety and depression.)
Achieving connection requires the techniques discussed in the previous principles, because, when our thinking self obsesses over negative thoughts and feelings, we tend to disconnect from the present. Therefore, in order to achieve connection consistently, we need to practice defusion from our negative thoughts and expansion to accept our unwanted feelings.
Presence as the Means vs. the End
Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now focuses on the idea of connecting to the present moment as the solution to the problems of the ego (what Harris would call the thinking self) and the pain-body (the sum total of negative emotions that you carry). In contrast to Harris’s view that connection is one tool among many, Tolle argues that being connected with the present moment can serve as a sole solution for the problem of suffering.
Still, there are some commonalities between Tolle’s and Harris’s approaches:
Both agree that the thinking self (or ego) is a huge problem for most people.
They agree that the thinking self is predominantly concerned with the past and the future instead of the present moment.
They agree that harnessing our observing self (what Tolle calls “the inner body”) connects us to the present moment.
But, whereas Tolle views being present as the goal of a spiritual journey, Harris argues that connection is merely a technique that we can apply in order to allow us to connect with our values and take committed action (consistently and fearlessly acting in alignment with our values). According to Harris, if we don’t do these later steps, then it doesn’t matter whether or not we live in the present moment.
Now that you have a sense of what connection is, here are some exercises that you can practice in order to develop it as a skill. (Shortform note: These techniques are all related to the concept of body awareness. Although Harris doesn’t explicitly link connection and body awareness, the organization of the six principles suggests that the technique discussed in each principle builds on the previous ones.)
The first exercise Harris suggests aims to help you connect with your environment. He recommends doing it a few times each day.
Use Your Senses to Battle Anxiety
This exercise is a variant of the well-known 5-4-3-2-1 exercise for dealing with anxiety. This exercise focuses your attention away from anxious, recurrent thoughts (which come from the thinking self, as Harris would describe it) and into the present moment.
To practice the 5-4-3-2-1 exercise, notice:
Five things you can see
Four things you can feel
Three things you can hear
Two things you can smell
One thing you can taste
Tapping into each of the five senses grounds you in your physical experience in the present moment.
In this exercise, Harris recommends using an unpleasant task as an opportunity to practice connection.
Harris suggests exercising connection with an unpleasant task two or three times a day. As you practice, it will become easier to achieve connection.
Single-Tasking
This exercise is an example of single-tasking (the opposite of multitasking), which entails being singularly focused on whatever task you're doing.
As you become more skilled at single-tasking, you can increase your connection to the present moment even further by:
Focusing on your breathing
Noticing how your feet feel against the floor, or your body feels in your chair
Noticing the sensation of your clothes against your skin
Paying attention to your posture
Just as deep breathing releases tension in Step 2 of expansion (as discussed in Principle #3), Harris’s third exercise uses deep breathing to lower the tension in your body to enable you to practice connection.
The exercise is simple: Breathe deeply 10 times.
Since deep breathing is a key aspect of accepting difficult emotions in expansion, this exercise is particularly effective when you’re overwhelmed by your thoughts and feelings. Taking 10 deep breaths can relieve tension and allow you to practice defusion, expansion, and connection.
Remember that the end goal of ACT is to enable you to take effective and committed action—behaviors that align with your values—to build toward a meaningful life. Occasionally, You may discover that there is no immediate solution to your problem. In that case, take some deep breaths and fully accept the thoughts of your thinking self, the feelings of your physical body, and the situation you’re in.
Mindful Breathing
This exercise is an adaptation of mindful breathing. However, while Harris’s exercise is a tool in the process of accepting difficult emotions and taking committed action, the goal of mindful breathing is simply to focus the mind away from stress and anxiety and toward the basic, physical act of the breathing body.
To practice mindful breathing, sit or lie down in a comfortable position with your eyes open or closed. (If you’re using mindful breathing to practice connection, keep your eyes open so that you can notice all of your five senses.) As you breathe,
Inhale deeply through your nose for three seconds.
Hold your breath for two seconds.
Exhale from your mouth for four seconds.
Most practitioners recommend practicing mindful breathing for five minutes at a time—or about 30 breaths.
At this point, we’ve discussed the first four principles of ACT: connecting with the observing self, defusion, expansion, and connection. These four principles form the foundation of the concept of “acceptance” in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Taken as a whole, they constitute a foundation that Harris calls mindfulness.
(Shortform note: Mindfulness is not unique to ACT. It can be found in many ancient Eastern traditions and religions, such as yoga, Buddhism, and meditation.)
Harris explains that in the context of ACT, mindfulness is a psychological state of openness and awareness attainable through consistent practice of mindfulness skills (such as defusion, expansion, and connection). In ACT, mindfulness has four specific traits:
In short, practicing the skills you’ve learned so far allows you to accept your thinking self’s thoughts and images, your physical feelings and urges, and the situations and circumstances of the external world.
But attaining this state is not an end unto itself—instead, ACT relies on the concept of practical application, or the extent to which any behavior helps you develop a valuable and enriching life. In other words, mindfulness is a practical skill (or set of skills) meant to enable you to take action to improve your life in the real world.
Buddhism’s Definition of Mindfulness
In contrast to ACT’s approach to mindfulness, the Buddhist conception of mindfulness relies on four foundations:
1. Mindfulness of body: The body is, itself, composed of bodies (like organs and cells). We should not identify with the whole body nor its components as “ours,” but rather see them merely as physical forms. This helps us accept that they are transient—they will age and undergo injury, illness, and death.
Harris only partially addresses mindfulness of the body when he brings up body awareness as a necessary component of expansion. Also, his treatment of body awareness is purely physical and does not have the spiritual element of acknowledging bodily transience.
2. Mindfulness of feelings: Feelings can be classified into pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral feelings. As with the body, none of our feelings are truly our own—they are merely sensations or emotions in the body. Because feelings are impermanent and unsatisfactory, they are not the proper basis for defining the self.
Like Buddhism, ACT regards feelings as sensations in the body that are unrelated to who we are as people. Feelings come and go, but the observing self remains.
3. Mindfulness of mind: The mind does not exist—only particular states of mind that respond to external or internal circumstances. Like feelings, thoughts come and go, but they do not form the basis of who we are.
Harris’s views align with this description of the mind. His conception of the thinking self versus the observing self relies on the idea that we are not our thinking selves, and our minds do not reflect reality absolutely.
4. Mindfulness of dhammas: Dhammas are “phenomena” or “teachings.” Buddha teaches that enlightenment can only be found by seeking dhammas from within—not through other people.
ACT doesn’t encompass this part of Buddhism. Instead of promoting the idea of enlightenment, ACT emphasizes mindfulness as a means to the end of taking committed action.
Connection, according to ACT, means using our observing self to shift our attention away from the past and future to fully engage in the present moment, or achieve mindfulness.
Describe a recurring experience in which you would like to be more mindful of or attentive to your environment—for instance, when your child comes to you to describe her school day.
What is typically the biggest barrier to you being mindful during these experiences? For example, you may still be thinking about your workday when you see your child after school.
What would you gain from being more mindful during these moments?
Which of Harris’s exercises could you practice right before or during the experience next time? For example, you could practice the “Five Things” exercise before picking your child up from school.
In the last chapter, you rounded out your mindfulness skill set by learning the skill of connection. By this point, you have learned the skills necessary to practice the “acceptance” portion of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.
In this chapter, we will explain how to use mindfulness skills to apply the fifth principle of ACT: clarifying your values. Values are the principles that govern how you want to act. Harris writes that, by clarifying your values, you set yourself up for the final step in the ACT process: committed action.
We’ll begin by discussing what values are and how they differ from goals. Then, we’ll look at a method for clarifying your values. Finally, we’ll explore common problems that emerge when trying to clarify values, and how you can resolve them.
Harris argues that we don’t necessarily choose our values. Instead, we develop them throughout our lifetime in response to the problems we face and how we choose to resolve them. Even though we may not be able to choose our values, we can identify them.
A value involves continuous behavior. For instance, “I want to treat my family with respect” is a value, because the behavior associated with the value must be ongoing in order to satisfy the conditions of the value. It’s not sufficient to take one respectful action toward your family and call it quits. Rather, your treatment of your family must be consistently respectful in order to satisfy this value.
By contrast, Harris notes, a goal is an objective we set for ourselves that can be fully completed. For instance, “I want to get married” is a goal, not a value, because after we get married, that has been achieved.
Values vs. Beliefs
Besides making a distinction between values and goals, it’s also important to recognize that there’s a difference between values and beliefs (even though the two categories are related). In general, values concern your individual behavior, whereas beliefs are general statements of conviction that we accept as true. For instance, the statement “lying is bad” is a belief, whereas the statement “I want to be honest” is a value.
As you can see, values can often be derived from our beliefs. So, as you work on clarifying your values, keep your strongly held beliefs in mind. They may guide you to values that would otherwise go unnoticed.
Harris argues that Western societies are goal-oriented: We tend to pay a lot of attention to our status and achievements, particularly the concept of success. For instance, here are some typical goals in Western societies:
However, this goal-oriented lifestyle often pushes us to pursue goals that don’t align with our values. For instance, somebody who works 80-hour weeks with the goal of making a lot of money may not have put much thought into why they want money. If one of their values is to spend time with family, their heavy work schedule conflicts with that value. This makes them unhappy because they’re working hard to achieve a goal that doesn’t satisfy their values.
Furthermore, Harris notes that goals that don’t align with our values can escalate. For instance, let’s say that somebody has the goal of earning $100,000 a year. They achieve this goal, but very quickly learn to spend within their newfound means. Suddenly, their goal becomes to make $150,000 a year. Because the amount of money that the person wants to make isn’t tied to their values, there is no end to this pattern of escalation. When we believe that these goals will eliminate negative thoughts and feelings, we get caught in the happiness trap.
By contrast, ACT promotes a values-oriented approach to life. This doesn’t mean that we stop setting goals, but rather that we set our goals in accordance with our values. When we set our goals in accordance with our values, those goals become ends unto themselves, not merely stepping stones toward something else.
An Alternative Definition of Values
In Awaken the Giant Within, Tony Robbins describes a similar conflict using the terms “ends values” and “means values.” He writes that your ends values are the emotional states you want to experience, such as love and security, and the means values are the ways you expect to reach the ends. Like Harris, Robbins argues that if you don’t identify your ends values, you could waste your time pursuing means values without ever achieving their ends.
Although it seems like a simple difference in terms—that Harris would classify ends values as values and means values as goals—the distinction is more nuanced. Harris distinguishes between values and goals in terms of action: A goal requires an achievable action, while a value demands an ongoing behavior. By contrast, Robbins’s definition of an ends value is not something you do, but an emotional state you experience.
ACT argues that living according to your values is intrinsically satisfying. Values enable us to endure the typical suffering of human existence because they give us a point of connection to our lives, even when everything else seems hopeless. For instance, consider the example of someone living in extreme poverty. If they value treating others with kindness, that value guides their behavior—even when they’re in situations where unkindness might seem easier, or more convenient, than kindness.
Values also enable us to work hard when we feel we’re contributing to something we value. For example, consider our previous example of a person working 80 hours a week: They may burn out quickly if they’re not working toward a clear set of values, but they can take the work in stride if they know their work satisfies a value like providing a good life for their children.
Goal-Setting Basics
The topic of goal-setting is one that The Happiness Trap will return to in later chapters, but it’s worth discussing several goal-setting basics at this point. Goal-setting carries an emotional benefit—people who accomplish (or even just set) goals report better psychological well-being.
Furthermore, research shows that some goals bring greater happiness and success than others. For the greatest benefit, keep five factors in mind when setting goals:
Your goals should be important to you. While some mundane goals are necessary—like doing the dishes—goals that have personal significance lead to greater emotional outcomes.
Your goals should be difficult, but not too difficult. We make progress on our goals relative to how challenging those goals are. So if you set a challenging goal for yourself, you’re likely to get more done than if you set a super-easy goal. However, a goal that’s too difficult might be too intimidating to even attempt.
Don’t set goals to avoid things. Goals to stop smoking or lose weight focus your attention on what you’re trying to avoid. Instead, frame your goal in terms of what you’d like to do.
Your goals should be specific. The more specific a goal, the better. For instance, a goal to exercise more is vague and doesn’t define a finish line. On the other hand, a goal to run for 30 minutes every morning is specific—you either accomplish or you don’t.
Your goals should align with your values because living according to your values is intrinsically satisfying. This is something that ACT also emphasizes (this defines committed action, which is the goal of ACT).
Now that we have defined values, you need to determine your own values.
In this section, Harris shares an exercise derived from the work of psychologists Kelly Wilson and Tobias Lundgren to clarify values in four domains:
As you work through this exercise, remember that values are:
Don’t Just Identify Your Values—Choose Them
In Awaken the Giant Within, Tony Robbins asserts that most people adopt values unconsciously, based on their life experiences and conditioning from family, friends, and society. While many of these values are virtuous, some may conflict with your goals. He argues that being unaware of your values—which guide your behavior—often leads to disappointment and frustration as you pursue your goals.
To take control of your life, Robbins says you must consciously choose your values. He suggests you first take stock of the values you hold and how you prioritize them—for example, you may value success over passion, and that causes you to behave differently than if the opposite were true. Next, reflect on what type of person you want to be and what type of life you want to live. Finally, eliminate values that don’t serve that vision, adopt values that do, and prioritize them to align with your goals.
While Harris’s exercise focuses on identifying—rather than choosing—your values, it may still help to consider Robbins’s point that you could be unconsciously carrying values that need to be identified, reprioritized, or eliminated to allow you to achieve the life you want.
Reflect on the values that govern all of your relationships—with your family, your romantic partner, your friends, and your associates.
Harris suggests asking yourself the following questions:
Harris cautions not to focus on the qualities of the people you want to build relationships with, but rather on your desires and behavior. Instead of imagining an ideal spouse, think about how you would want to behave if you did find your dream spouse.
Another Strategy to Clarify Relationship Values
In Minimalism, Joshua Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus take a different approach to identifying your relationship values. In contrast to Harris’s method, Millburn and Nicodemus recommend developing a broad “vision” of the types of relationships you want to build, and then using that to zero in on your values.
To do this, ask yourself these three questions:
What do you want? Compile a list of the things you want in your primary relationships. Then ask yourself how you contribute to the things you want. For example, if you want honesty in your relationships, honesty is likely one of your values.
What are your deal-breakers? List the things you can’t (or won’t) tolerate in your relationships. Then, ask yourself how you can behave to avoid those deal-breakers. For example, identifying dishonesty as a deal-breaker is another way to recognize that honesty is one of your values.
How must you change to attract these kinds of people? We can’t choose all of our relationships, like parents and children, but we play a role in attracting our friends and romantic partners. Imagine the sorts of people you want to be around, then identify the values you’d like to exemplify in that company. For instance, if you want supportive friends, then being a supportive friend may be one of your core values.
Harris offers the following questions to identify values related to your personal career, professional relationships, and ongoing education (both formal and informal):
When answering these questions, remember the difference between goals and values. For instance, saying, “I want to be an architect” is a goal. Instead, focus on the qualities you’d like to bring to your career or school work—such as being attentive and diligent.
Another Strategy to Clarify Work and Education Values
While Harris’s questions focus on your aspirations, you use these four additional questions to clarify your work and education values based on your past experiences:
What is your proudest professional moment? Then, examine the reasons you felt proud. If you delivered a particularly difficult project, then challenging yourself might be one of your values.
Why did you choose your career or major in school? Figuring out your motivation is a good way to uncover your personal values. For example, some people become doctors because they want to help people, and others want to make enough money to provide for their families.
What is a moment when your perspective on your work changed, positively or negatively? For example, if your perspective shifted when your boss called you replaceable, you may value having a skill that few people can do.
Who has been one of your mentors, and how have they changed your life? Think back on the people who have influenced you and see if there are any values that they hold that you share.
In this domain, Harris focuses on the aspects of your life that contribute to your physical health, your emotional and mental welfare, and your personal development.
Ask yourself the following questions:
Extract Your Values From Personal Goals
Personal development and wellness are often the focus of New Year’s Resolutions. Although resolutions are typically viewed as goals, author and life coach Susanna Newsonen recommends three questions to help clarify the values that underlie these kinds of yearly commitments:
What are three enjoyable things that you’d like to do more of in your life? By identifying the things that we enjoy doing, we’re not only enriching our lives by filling them with more pleasurable things, but also clarifying our values: The principles that govern how we want to act.
What are three ways that you’d like to grow? We feel happy and satisfied when we’re growing—and identifying how we want to grow can highlight the underlying values that will fulfill us. This question applies directly to the concept of personal development in The Happiness Trap.
What are three things that you’d like to do less of? Remember that we consider our values from the viewpoint that anything is possible. Even if cutting down or eliminating cigarettes feels impossible, the desire to smoke less can help you recognize that you value smoking less to benefit your health.
This domain concerns what you do for fun, your hobbies and interests, and other ways you pursue leisure. (Shortform note: If you live in a culture that prioritizes work and productivity, it may seem strange to see leisure listed as a category of values. But rest and relaxation are important elements of an enriching life.)
Harris suggests asking yourself the following questions:
(Shortform note: Not only do some cultures emphasize leisure more than others, but the type of leisure they prioritize also varies. For example, in a study of 18 countries, the French spent the most time eating, drinking, and sleeping, and Turks spent the most time entertaining friends.)
Identify Your Universal Values
In general, values fall into one of three categories:
Personal—the kind of person you are, your personal desires, and how you think
Social—how you treat other people
Universal—how you interface with culture, spirituality, and the “big picture”
While Harris’s questionnaire focuses on your personal and social values, other questionnaires, such as the Life Values Inventory, can help you identify universal values. This inventory lists values and asks you to rank each on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 signifying that the value never guides your behavior and 5 signifying that it always does). Then, you add up your answers from specific questions to get an overall score for each universal value.
For instance, you may find that you value scientific understanding, which means that you generally believe that science and scientific principles are important to understand the world and solve problems within it. It would be difficult to reach this value using only the questionnaire Harris provides in The Happiness Trap, but understanding these types of values can still help you achieve the goal of ACT: to consistently act in a way that aligns with your values, without being deterred by difficult emotions.
No questionnaire will perfectly define your values (personal, social, or universal) because no single questionnaire can adequately address the complexity of life. Instead, you can pull from different inventories to get a fuller sense of your values.
As you worked to clarify your values in the last section, you may have encountered some difficulties. Harris identifies some common problems you might have faced, and he offers some solutions:
1. I don’t know what values to choose.
Keep in mind that we don’t necessarily choose our values; we identify them. But if you’re struggling to identify your values, try imagining a fictional character who embodies all of the best values a person can have. The values you choose for this fictional character are the values that are important to you.
(Shortform note: Alternatively, think about the people you admire in the world, whether in your personal life or in the broader culture. What values do you imagine they hold? You admire these people for a reason—if you identify a value that you think they hold, it’s probably important to you, too.)
2. I’ve assembled a list of values, but I’m not sure I actually believe in them.
Imagine a world where you had the unconditional support of every person in your life. How would you behave? What sorts of things would be important to you? This thought experiment removes the component of other people’s reactions and judgments from the equation and allows you to see if your values are actually your own.
(Shortform note: Alternatively, envision someone who holds your stated values. Do you admire them? Do you wish they were different in some way? If so, how so? If you admire this person, the values you’ve identified are likely your own. If you think they should be different, your list of values may not be entirely accurate.)
3. I feel like I’m setting myself up for failure.
It’s understandable to worry that you won’t be able to live up to your values. However, these worries are just thoughts—practice your defusion skills on these thoughts and keep moving forward.
(Shortform note: Harris doesn’t explicitly mention this here, but it’s worth remembering that, in ACT, living according to your values is intrinsically satisfying. You may worry that your values translate into unrealistic goals, but striving to live by those values can still be enriching and meaningful.)
4. Some of my values contradict each other.
It’s natural that our values will conflict occasionally. For instance, you may value both going above and beyond in the workplace and being a kind and present spouse. In practice, there may be times when going above and beyond at work means that you can’t be with your spouse as much as you’d like.
To minimize these conflicts, go back through your values and assess:
Then, when conflicts arise, you know where you stand.
However, at other times, the best solution may be a productive compromise. For example, decide that you can go above and beyond at work within ordinary working hours so that you still have time to go home and be a kind and present spouse.
Prioritize Your Values
In Awaken the Giant Within, Tony Robbins similarly acknowledges that values can conflict, and he suggests a method for prioritizing your values:
Think of the values you would need in order to be the best person you could be and live the best life you could. Consider where your values sit in a hierarchy.
Ask yourself which values you can eliminate from your priority list. If you already achieved a value like love or security, Robbins says that you can remove it from your hierarchy. (This conflicts with Harris’s definition of values as ongoing behaviors rather than achievable goals.)
Look at each value on your list and assess its benefits and drawbacks. What do you gain by putting one value over another? What do you lose?
Based on your analysis, reassess the priority order of your values.
Psychologists Kelly Wilson and Tobias Lundgren identified four domains in which we should know our values: relationships, education and work, personal development and wellness, and leisure.
In which of the four domains are you least clear on your values? Why do you think that’s the case? For instance, you may not have clear values around leisure because your family prioritized work or success over personal enjoyment.
To clarify your values in this domain, walk through Harris’s values clarification questions. Which values have you identified?
Which values in this domain might warrant changing and why?
What actions can you take that align with your new understanding of your values?
In the last chapter, you learned about values, the deep-seated principles that govern how we act.
In this chapter, you will learn about the final principle of ACT: committed action. Harris explains that committed action happens when we consistently take actions that align with our values—even when we fail. This final principle will give you all the tools you need to achieve psychological flexibility, enabling you to adapt to difficult situations and take effective action to build a rich and meaningful life.
This chapter begins by demonstrating how to translate our values into action via goal-setting and action plans. Then, we’ll discuss the two components of committed action: fortitude and commitment. Finally, we’ll tie together everything we’ve learned throughout this guide and present the ultimate choice of the ACT practitioner.
Harris argues that knowing our values isn’t sufficient for us to live fulfilled lives—we also have to take effective action, or action aligned with our values. In order to take effective action, we have to translate our values into achievable goals.
In the last chapter, you came up with a list of values in four domains. In order to translate these values into goals, we’ll divide them into 11 more specific areas:
(Shortform note: These categories aren’t iron-clad. If you feel that one of the domains isn’t applicable to you, feel free to eliminate it from the list. Likewise, if you find that you have a significant cluster of values related to a domain that isn’t listed, create a new domain and focus your efforts there.)
Now, take a look at each category and determine the one where you feel least in touch with your values. If you’ve identified more than one domain, determine which of the domains has the most urgent or pressing need for your attention. Harris emphasizes that you pick only one domain—focusing on more than one is likely to be overwhelming and lead to decreased morale (or even abandonment of the process).
1. Now that you’ve selected a domain, write a summary of the values you’re interested in focusing on. For instance, if you selected friendship, you may want to work on the values of being an attentive, kind, and honest friend.
2. Set a goal related to one of these values that you can accomplish today. The easier this goal, the better. Starting small is a good way to ensure that you actually follow through with effective action.
When setting a goal, list what, where, and when. The “what” should be specific—for example, instead of saying, “I’m going to be nice,” say, “I’m going to say one nice thing to my friend.” Specifying the “where” and “when” make the goal more well-defined and achievable, which helps you avoid procrastinating or abandoning the goal.
Additionally, avoid setting prohibitive goals, or goals focused on not doing something. To avoid this, consider what you would like to do instead of doing the thing you don’t want to do. Then, set a goal to do that alternative.
3. Set some goals that you can achieve within the next week. Remember to specify the “what,” the “where,” and the “when.” For instance, if your value in the marriage domain is to be more affectionate with your spouse, you might say, “I’m going to cook a nice, intimate dinner for my spouse at the house this Friday.”
4. Set some goals that you can achieve within the next few weeks or months. Again, specify the “what,” the “where,” and the “when.”
5. Set some goals that you can achieve with years’ worth of effort. This is an opportunity to be ambitious with your goal-setting. It doesn’t matter how realistic you think these goals are in the present moment—if it occurs to you, write it down. For example, if your value in the domain of employment is doing something that truly benefits other people, you might write, “I’ll go back to school in order to change careers from data entry to biomedical engineering.”
Set Purpose-Driven Goals
In First Things First, Stephen R. Covey has a slightly different take on how to set meaningful goals. He suggests three strategies:
1. Set recurring goals. In Covey’s formulation, your goals should follow a “mission,” a “vision,” and “principles”—rather than just the values that Harris has you define. Whereas Harris’s approach involves setting goals that you can accomplish within one week and then moving onto the next step, Covey recommends recurring goals that you consistently accomplish week after week. For instance, instead of setting a goal to cook dinner for your spouse on Friday this week, you would set a goal to cook dinner for your spouse every Friday.
This recurring framework aligns with ACT because, as discussed, values involve consistent and repeated behavior. It’s not enough to do something once and then consider the value fulfilled.
2. Set “context” goals. Covey recommends that you set mid- to long-term goals that your weekly goals build toward. In defining context goals, Covey suggests considering the “what” (the goal itself), “why” (the reason for the goal; in ACT, the “why” will also be the underlying value), and “how” (the means by which you will reach the goal).
For example, if your weekly goal is eating one serving of vegetables with every meal, your longer-term goal may be to switch to a vegetarian diet (the “what”). You set this goal because you want to eat healthier (the “why,” or value), and you’re going to achieve this by setting mid-term goals to replace two servings of meat per week with legumes.
3. Make a “perhaps” list. A “perhaps” list is filled with goals that you’re not fully committing to but would like to record as possibilities. This is a break from the relatively rigid structure that accompanies goal-setting, and it may help you formulate more ambitious goals in the future. Harris includes this kind of thinking when he recommends setting goals that aren’t necessarily realistic in the long-term goals category.
Now that you’ve set some goals, it’s time to make an action plan. Harris explains that an action plan breaks down each goal into manageable steps so that you don’t get overwhelmed.
An action plan has three parts. Ask:
Once you’ve answered these questions, you have an action plan.
An Alternative Approach to Action Plans
In The Psychology of Selling, Brian Tracy presents another way to turn your goals into actions. Tracy’s method reorders and combines Harris’s steps, but most significantly, Tracy also adds a step: prioritizing the to-dos in your action plan. Considering Harris states that action plans are meant to make goals more manageable, this step makes the action plan even more manageable.
This is Tracy’s approach:
Write your goal down. This makes your goal real. If you’ve been following Harris’s exercises, you’ve already done this step.
Set a deadline. Tracy argues that by defining the “when” of your goal first, you set your subconscious mind working on the other steps necessary to achieve your goal. This reverses the order Harris suggests, which specifies the “when” in the final step.
Make a list of everything you can do to achieve your goal. This is similar to steps 1 and 2 of Harris’s method, combining the manageable steps you’ll need to take to achieve your goal with the added complexity of the materials you’ll need to achieve it.
Organize this list. Prioritize the actions to figure out which steps need to be completed first and which can wait until later.
Take action.
By this point, we’ve set some goals and made an action plan. Harris clarifies that these are the necessary components of effective action, but not committed action. As we’ve discussed, committed action is effective action coupled with fortitude and commitment.
Harris defines fortitude as accepting that effective action comes with unwanted side effects, such as negative thoughts, feelings, and urges. Fortitude doesn’t necessarily imply that we enjoy or welcome these side effects—uncomfortable thoughts and feelings are difficult, maybe impossible, to enjoy. However, fortitude does mean being fully present in our lives even when we don’t enjoy the thoughts and feelings we’re experiencing.
We all must practice fortitude to engage with society. For instance, when we buy food, spending money is an undesired side effect—but it’s one that we’re willing to accept.
Fortitude is also necessary to live a meaningful life. When we confront an obstacle, we either practice fortitude to deal with it or we don’t. If we don’t practice fortitude, then we close ourselves off to the possibilities of life. If we practice fortitude, we can overcome that obstacle even if it causes us pain.
The 4 C’s of Mental Toughness
The idea of mental fortitude, or toughness, is a loaded term in American culture. You can find hundreds of people trying to sell their own particular brand of mental toughening online—and almost none of these align with what Harris proposes in The Happiness Trap. One of the most common models for mental fortitude is called the 4 C’s of mental toughness:
Control your emotions and your life circumstances. By contrast, Harris’s model emphasizes that our emotions are entirely outside of our control, and that all we can do is to manage them.
Commitment is the ability to set and achieve goals consistently. While goal-setting is also part of Harris’s model, ACT emphasizes that these goals must align with your values.
Challenge means seeking the highest possible challenges for yourself and adapting quickly to adversity. While ACT doesn’t specifically advocate seeking challenges, it does hold that challenges are opportunities for growth.
Confidence is your belief in yourself and your ability to influence others. ACT doesn’t promote self-esteem, which stems from your thinking self judging you to be worthy, but rather self-acceptance, which grows from connection with your observing self. .
While fortitude is accepting the undesirable side effects of effective action, commitment is accepting that failure is inevitable, while also knowing that no failure is final.
For example, most people have been speaking since they were toddlers, and yet no one speaks so perfectly that they do not occasionally stumble over a word in a sentence. Without commitment, we would take that failure as final: an unavoidable sign that our efforts to speak without mistakes are doomed, and so we might as well stop speaking.
In the context of ACT, Harris says that commitment means continuing to pursue effective action even if you sometimes fail to meet your goals. The emphasis on commitment is important because we can’t know whether we’ll ever actually accomplish any specific goal we set for ourselves. Only by pursuing effective action regardless of whether we succeed or fail can we continue to act effectively.
Every time we fail to meet a goal, we have the opportunity to practice commitment. ACT emphasizes that you can treat any problem as an opportunity for personal growth. The alternative is to fall back into the happiness trap: When we struggle to come to terms with our failures, we generate more negative thoughts and emotions.
Harris explains that practicing commitment is a three-step process:
Sometimes commitment alone isn’t enough, and you must recognize that the actions that you’re taking aren’t having a meaningful impact on a situation. For instance, if you’re trying to hammer a nail with a piece of rope, the problem isn’t your commitment—you need the awareness to grab a hammer when you need one. In order to have this kind of awareness, rely on your mindfulness skills to connect to the situation.
Commitment Requires Grit
Grit is a similar concept to what Harris calls commitment. In Grit, Angela Duckworth emphasizes that grit is a combination of passion and perseverance, and she defines perseverance as Harris defines commitment: having the resilience to overcome setbacks and work hard to finish.
Here are five ways to embody grit:
Shift your perspective. Failure is an inevitable part of life, and it doesn’t have to be negative—instead, it’s an opportunity to try again, or try something different.
Don’t bother trying to be perfect. One reason failure can be so difficult to stomach is that it challenges the idea that we can be flawless. Instead, let go of that ideal, develop humility, and try again.
Get used to living outside of your comfort zone. Failures lead us to circumstances that feel foreign or uncertain. When you accept this discomfort, you’ll find even more opportunities to learn from your mistakes.
Don’t be afraid to seek support. While Harris emphasizes an individualistic approach to escaping the happiness trap, you don’t have to face failure alone. Lean on your support system—they may even offer unexpected lessons.
Focus on your goals. Failure doesn’t mean that you have to abandon your goals. You may simply need to try again—or try a new strategy.
Now you’re familiar with each of the six principles of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: Connecting with the observing self, defusion, expansion, connection, clarifying values, and committed action.
Harris writes that these principles are not intended as a mandatory set of rules—rather, they’re intended to be applied practically. Use a technique when you think it will prove useful. In cases where you think another approach is more appropriate, do that instead.
That said, the principles of ACT are simple to apply to your life. Whenever you encounter a problem, you have two options in ACT:
This choice probably seems simplistic, but it takes the two elements that are directly under your control (your observing self and your actions) and harnesses them to deal with any problem you encounter. According to Harris, with this skill set, you can effectively move past the happiness trap.
A Third Option for Dealing With Problems
In The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle identifies something similar to Harris’s two-option structure. While Harris argues that you must be present in order to accept a problem (option 1), Tolle asserts that you must be present in order to acknowledge the problem and pursue any options. In Tolle’s version of problem-solving, you have three options:
Change the situation (if you can). In other words, take effective action.
Leave the situation (if you can). In other words, take effective action. (This assumes that leaving the situation would be in alignment with your values.)
Accept the situation as it is. If you can’t change or leave the situation, you may be forced to accept it forever, or at least until things change and you can take another action.
Although two of Tolle’s options could be considered effective actions—essentially making the list identical to Harris’s—there is value in distinguishing between the option of changing and leaving the situation. It can be easy to get so caught up in a problem that it feels that the only actions we can take must be within the context of that situation, but Tolle reminds us that leaving is often a viable option, too.
Harris writes that commitment in the face of failure requires three steps: Recognize and fully accept your situation, determine what action you can take now that’s in sync with your values, and take the action.
Apply Harris’s three commitment steps to a current problem or goal you failed to meet. Accept the situation using one of the mindfulness techniques: defusion, expansion, or connection. How has this affected your view of the situation?
Identify an action you can take that aligns with your values. Specifically, which values does the action address and how?
Determine when you’ll take the action, and identify any necessary steps.