How to Do Hard Things

To do this exercise, first take a moment to reflect on what you might want your tombstone to say at the end of your life—maybe something like “was a loving parent” or “helped a lot of people”—and write it down.

Moving toward values is about reconnecting our day-to-day activities to the things that matter most to us. It's about clarifying for ourselves what a life well-lived would look like, and then intentionally bringing those qualities into our life and work in the present.

Lack of Direction → Clear Values 

Fusion → Defusion

Rigid stories about others often come up in interpersonal conflict. When we get stuck in judgments that another person is "irrational" or "misinformed," we lose touch with who they are as whole, complex human beings.

When we find ourselves stuck in the past or future, the step toward flexibility is to gently yet intentionally bring our attention back to the present moment. This can be hard to do when we're really stuck, but is also a skill that can be developed over time through formal and informal mindfulness practices.

Inaction → Committed  Action Committed action is about finding places in our lives where we might shift our behavior to be more aligned with our values. It's about using the skills above to work with whatever thoughts and feelings are sustaining unhelpful behaviors, and then taking small steps in new directions.

Moving toward a flexible sense of self and others is about recognizing that any story we tell, good or bad, is not the whole truth about a person, and is only true within a given context.

Past/Future Preoccupation → Present Moment Contact Past/Future preoccupation is a type of fusion that describes what happens when we get lost in our thoughts about the past or future, and we lose contact with what is happening right now, in the present.