Introducing Committed Action

Introducing Committed Action– a recording of Julian McNally (2:52 min) 

_{(“Introducing Committed Action“ by RMIT Counselling and Psychological Services, Six ACT* Conversations, RMIT University is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)} 

Welcome to Conversation 6 of Six ACT Conversations – a program from RMIT University designed to help you live a balanced and fulfilling life while completing your program of study.

The program uses concepts from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy – or ACT for short. But it is not meant to take the place of counselling, psychotherapy or mental health treatment. Although you can use the program in any sequence you wish, you should read the about this resource section before starting.

In this final conversation, Committed Action, I’m going to ask you, finally, to stop listening and take action.

While you can use this program in any sequence you wish, my recommendation is that if you’ve come to this section of Six ACT Conversations first, you complete Conversation 2: Action & Experience versus Thought & Emotion and Conversation 5: Values & Direction – the exercises and material in them will be very relevant to what we discuss and do in this section. However, if all you’re looking for from this program is tips on goal-setting and action-planning, I hope this is helpful with that.

Unlike the other conversations that make up Six ACT Conversations, this one requires you to do a considerable amount of thinking and writing using the worksheets. These worksheets are designed to develop your goal-setting and action-planning skills. For you to increase your skills in these areas, you may need to practise them many times. Like anything else, the more you practise, the more skillful you become and the more these practises become ingrained habits that you don’t need to think about.

In Conversation 5: Values & Direction we determined that there is a link between your achievements and habits on the one hand, and your values on the other. We did this by examining your past. Now it’s time to work on your future. Also in Conversation 5, we said that goals are not your purpose in life, but rather they are like mileposts on your journey – and like mileposts, they tell you 2 essential things:

1. How far you’ve travelled, and
2. Even more importantly, they remind you that you are headed in the right direction.

Think about that – it doesn’t matter if you’re 200 kilometres from where you started, if you’re heading the wrong way!

In this analogy, the direction of your journey – that is your life – is your value or values. The reason you set goals is to get feedback from the environment – the world you live in – that you’re acting consistently with your values. Just like marking a physical journey by mileposts.