Make powerful choices and take control of your life when you ACT

Do you have trouble making decisions? Are you stuck in a situation that is causing you stress and don’t know how to fix it?

The ACT methodology is a tool that you can use to help you sort out your options and arrive at a decision. At the heart of each issue, challenge, or decision are three choices. You can choose to Accept, Change, or Terminate the situation. At each step you consider the energetic and logical consequences of your actions until you reach the best outcome.

It’s better to make a wrong decision and learn from your mistakes than to endlessly weigh up pros and cons. Successful people are decisive. The ability to make decisions will set you apart from others. If you’re not taking action or put off making decisions then you won’t feel as good about yourself as you will if you are taking control of your life and achieving your goals and dreams. With practice decision making will become easier!

The basis of the ACT methodology is the three steps Act, Change and Terminate. Let’s take a look at each in turn:

Accept

Psychologist Carl Rogers suggested that it is impossible to change yourself or your life until you first accept yourself and your situation in its entirety. At a spiritual level no decision or change is possible until you have accepted your starting position.

A major benefit of acceptance is that once you accept the situation, the next step becomes clear. It’s also important to understand that you don’t have to agree with something to accept it. You may have heard the expression “Let’s agree to disagree”. When this happens you are asserting your right to have a different opinion, without being upset that others don’t agree with you. When you belong to teams or committees - or even in your own family - there may be conflicting views, but you can remain composed if you have accepted that there will be differences.

Other times in accepting a situation you may realise that changing it is beyond your control. At the most extreme end of the spectrum is death. You can not bring someone back from the dead, so in grieving and reaching acceptance you arrive at the best solution for your own emotional well-being.

A common annoyance many of us face is driving during peak hour. It can be both frustrating and time consuming. After investigating your options, you may decide that you will still travel during the busiest time of the day, despite the fact it is slower. Because you have made a conscious decision to accept the situation you can travel without feeling irritated by other drivers, red lights or slow travelling times. You take it all in your stride. Acceptance isn’t always passive - to help you cope with the stress of peak hour travelling, you may introduce other tools, such as playing your favourite music to make the journey more pleasant. The key to acceptance is in your mindset and the inner peace that comes when you cease to struggle against something you can not change.

Change

If you’ve decided the situation is unacceptable then you need to canvass ways to improve, challenge or change it. The circumstances may seem to be out of your control, or you may struggle to see an alternative but there are usually steps you can take to arrive at a decision you are happy with.

When you feel stuck and you don’t see any options opening up grab a piece of paper and start writing. If you are a left-brained “list” person, then brainstorm 20 possible solutions, no matter how crazy or impossible they may seem. If you are right-brained then write a story for a minimum of 20 minutes about how you could creatively solve the problem.

Now ask yourself whether any of the solutions seem workable. Often the best decisions combine facts with intuition. Consider the logical impact of each option in tandem with your own intuition or energy. Do you feel your energy moving toward or away from the option being considered? If your energy feels strong and positive then this is a clue that your intuition is guiding you.

Let’s say your mother phones you ever night and it is interfering with your life. You aren’t prepared to let the situation continue but you do want to keep in touch with your mother. Your options might be to:

•  install caller ID on the telephone and only answer calls from your mother when it is convenient for you
•  set a schedule of times or days when your mother can call
•  sit down with your mother to identify the reasons for her calls and find other ways for her to resolve problems without calling you
•  find other family members or friends that will telephone your mother
•  a weekly family dinner to keep in touch
•  a combination of the above

In a situation like this you it may be difficult for you to learn to say ‘no’ to your mother but by doing something different you can minimise or eliminate the phone calls and free yourself to do other things. You need to be willing to change the things that you know are causing you stress - often the fear is worse than taking action – and with the ACT methodology you know that you always have other options.

Terminate

Terminating or ending a situation can sometimes be the best outcome, especially when the situation is untenable or when all other useful options have been dismissed.

There are times when a situation is so intolerable that it is best to end it. An example is when persevering with the situation may do you more harm than good. If your job is harming your health, or destroying your spirit, leaving may be your best option.

One way to check that terminating the situation is the right approach is to use the energy test again. Sit quietly and think about the situation, issue or decision and consider how it might feel to end it or to walk away. How does it feel to let go and move on from the situation? Does it fill you with a sense of calmness or an inner knowing that this is the right approach?

If you find it impossible to live with the situation then you may need to walk away. If you hate your job, and can’t accept it as it is or make changes, then find yourself a new job. If the person you love is never going to make a commitment to you, or agree to have children, and these are burning desires for you, then act. You can’t change other people, so find someone whose goals match yours.

It isn’t easy to walk away from something, but there are times when it is the only remaining solution.

Extract from The Art of Calm: Freedom from Stress & Worry by Talia Mana