What matters to you, and life areas
Some activities are worth doing because they’re enjoyable. Others matter because they connect to something you care about, like being a good friend, keeping your home in order, or learning something new.
A brief form of behavioral activation that many therapists use looks at five areas of life:
- Relationships
- Work, school, and volunteering
- Fun and interests
- Body, mind, and spirit
- Everyday responsibilities
For each, you write a sentence about what matters to you there, then choose small activities that fit.
Values aren’t goals you finish. You can’t complete being a caring parent, but you can sit with your kids at dinner tonight with your phone in another room. The activity goes on the schedule, not the value.
This part is optional. Some people find it helps them choose. Others start with what needs doing and what they used to enjoy. For a fuller look at your values, try Values Card Sort.
Where the five areas come from
The five areas come from the brief behavioral activation treatment by Carl Lejuez and his colleagues, first published in 2001 and revised in 2011. In the revised version, a person writes what they value in each area, lists activities that fit, rates each one for how enjoyable and how important it would be, and ranks them from 1, the easiest, to 15, the hardest. The weeks start at the easy end of the list and work up.
This app keeps the five areas and the idea of starting easy. In place of a ranking from 1 to 15, which is slow on a phone, it uses three levels, Easier, In between, and Harder, and puts the easier activities first.
Values, goals, and activities
It helps to tell values apart from goals. A value is a direction you care about, like being a good friend, and it never gets finished. A goal is a point along the way, like making it to your friend’s birthday dinner. What goes on the plan is smaller still, an activity you can do on a particular day, such as texting your friend tonight to ask how the week is going.
Writing what matters to you
There’s no right way to word it, but a few things tend to help.
Write it in your own words, the way you’d say it to someone you trust. “I want my kids to know I show up” will guide you better than a single word from a list.
Make it about how you want to act, not how you want to feel. “Be patient with my mom” is something you can do. Feeling less irritated isn’t something you can choose.
Check whose value it is. If it sounds like something you’ve been told you should care about, it may not help you choose much.
Skip areas that don’t fit right now. If work isn’t part of your life at the moment, leave that area blank, or write about whatever fills that space, like volunteering, caregiving, or learning.
A sentence or two per area is plenty. Here are a few written the way people might write them.
- Relationships. Stay close to my brother, even though he lives far away.
- Work, school, and volunteering. Do my job carefully, so people can count on me.
- Fun and interests. Make things with my hands again.
- Body, mind, and spirit. Treat my body like it’s worth looking after.
- Everyday responsibilities. Keep the apartment a place I’m not embarrassed to come home to.
From a value to this week
Once you have a sentence, ask what one small thing this week would fit it. Then ask for a smaller one.
Take “Stay close to my brother.” A big version is planning a visit. A medium one is a phone call on Sunday. A small one is sending him a photo of something that made you think of him. All three fit the value, and on a hard week the photo counts.
Over time, look at your list area by area. If every activity is a responsibility and nothing is about people or fun, that’s worth noticing, and it may be worth adding one small thing from another area.
When it’s hard
A few sticking points come up often, and therapists tend to handle them in similar ways.
“I don’t know what I care about anymore.” Low mood can make everything feel equally pointless, and that’s common. Start with what you used to enjoy, or with what you’d want for someone you love. “Need words for it?” in What matters to me has 83 value words to look through.
“Looking at my values makes me feel worse.” Seeing the distance between how you want to live and how things are right now can hurt. That gap is part of why the activities are kept small. You don’t need to close it this week, only to take one step in its direction.
“My values are all things I should do.” If a sentence feels heavy with should, ask why it matters to you. Sometimes there’s a value underneath that feels more like your own. Sometimes the should turns out to belong to someone else.
What the research says
Both main manuals use values, and a 2010 survey of behavioral activation research counted values and life goals among the method’s usual parts. They make the choice of activities personal. Whether they add to the effect is less clear. A 2021 meta-analysis that pooled many trials found no sign that a discussion of values made behavioral activation more effective for depression. That’s why values are optional here. They’re one way to choose activities that matter to you, not a step everyone needs.
The value words in “Need words for it?” come from the Personal Values Card Sort by William R. Miller and colleagues, which is in the public domain.
References
- Lejuez, C. W., Hopko, D. R., Acierno, R., Daughters, S. B., & Pagoto, S. L. (2011). Ten year revision of the brief behavioral activation treatment for depression: Revised treatment manual. Behavior Modification, 35(2), 111–161. doi.org/10.1177/0145445510390929
- Lejuez, C. W., Hopko, D. R., & Hopko, S. D. (2001). A brief behavioral activation treatment for depression: Treatment manual. Behavior Modification, 25(2), 255–286. doi.org/10.1177/0145445501252005
- Kanter, J. W., Manos, R. C., Bowe, W. M., Baruch, D. E., Busch, A. M., & Rusch, L. C. (2010). What is behavioral activation? A review of the empirical literature. Clinical Psychology Review, 30(6), 608–620. doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2010.04.001
- Martell, C. R., Dimidjian, S., & Herman-Dunn, R. (2021). Behavioral activation for depression: A clinician’s guide (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.
- Stein, A. T., Carl, E., Cuijpers, P., Karyotaki, E., & Smits, J. A. J. (2021). Looking beyond depression: A meta-analysis of the effect of behavioral activation on depression, anxiety, and activation. Psychological Medicine, 51(9), 1491–1504. doi.org/10.1017/S0033291720000239
- Miller, W. R., C’de Baca, J., Matthews, D. B., & Wilbourne, P. L. (2001). Personal values card sort. University of New Mexico.
Helpful links
Everyday Insight’s tools are for education and personal reflection. They are not therapy or medical care, and they are not for emergencies. In an emergency, call 911. If you are in crisis in the United States, call or text 988. Mental health resources