A Liberated Mind: The essential guide to ACT

Yet we become alone in our shame and self-judgment, not understanding that we’re all on a similar journey.

The key point is that values-based living makes goals meaningful,

Defusion helps us distance from this negative self-talk, “opening the drain.” Self skills remind us that we are not the roles we play, or the perceptions others have of us; we are the “I” deep within.

Shared or public commitments are more likely to be maintained,6 as long as we don’t shift the responsibility for our behavior to others.

We can be the ones overwhelming our own intrinsic motives. We can easily become entranced by the desire to impress, to be admired, or to please others quite apart from whether the accomplishments we’re undertaking are actually meaningful to us.

he famously argued that awakening sexual impulses might engender deep conflicts and fears, which then lead to pathological behavior as a way to avoid those conflicts and fears, which he called defense mechanisms.

our ability to step back from our thoughts grows stronger as we practice.

Disappearing into the now is not what we mean by mindfulness—rather it is attention to the now that is flexible, fluid, and voluntary. It allows us to consider the past, and the future also, but to keep bringing our attention back to the present.

The critical voice and its commands don’t go away, but we see them more as the products of our mental mechanisms, like the pronouncements of the contraption created by the Wizard of Oz.