Joe Oliver - ACTivate Your Life. Using Acceptance and Mindfulness to Build a Life that Is Rich, Fulfilling and Fun

ACTivate Your Life with this fantastic new self-help book. Based on the revolutionary new therapy Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) this comprehensive workbook will help you to effortlessly navigate your way through the challenges in your life and transform it for the better. Whether you simply feel a little stuck or are chronically depressed, the three simple steps (Open, Aware and Active), case studies and worksheets will support you on your journey to enjoying life again.

Dr Guy Meadows, author of The Sleep Book

All the latest research and a wealth of clinical experience have gone into this book. Clear, friendly language, fun illustrations and easy to use worksheets cut through the tangle of difficult thoughts and feelings so many people struggle with and allow themselves to be held back by. A state of the art, logical and supportive book that reassures you that you are not a freak for struggling in the first place, helps you identify the unhelpful strategies that drive and maintain your difficulties, builds your resilience and unlocks your potential.

Suzy Dittmar, ACT therapist, London

ACT helps me when Im struggling or having a tough day, and it helps clients I work with too. This book uses new metaphors, reframes classic ACT images and presents realistic examples to explain the concepts in a way that makes them understandable and worth trying. I will recommend this to clients and friends.

Dr Ben Sedley, Clinical Psychologist and author of Stuff That Sucks

Psychological suffering is inevitably interwoven into human life and this book addresses that simple truth. Although it is only natural to not want to suffer, desperate attempts to blow out the flame of emotional suffering often make it even bigger. ACTivate Your Life proposes how to deal with our vulnerabilities, weaknesses and imperfections without struggle, and teaches us how to meet them with gentleness and self-compassion. The book can be used by everyone as a guide to navigating a wide range of common psychological problems and challenges, such as depression, anxiety, anger and low self-esteem.

Stanislaw Malicki, Senior Licensed Clinical Psychologist and peer-reviewed ACT trainer, Akershus University Hospital, Norway

This outstanding new book allows you to use the ACT approach to bring a greater sense of meaning, purpose, and vitality into your own life right now. This is an excellent resource for anyone struggling with anxiety, worry, depression, lack of self-esteem, loss of life direction, or anger issues. However, I want to be bold here and suggest that everyone should read this book. Why? Because it shows how modern psychology views the human condition, and illustrates how to relate skilfully to the strange internal world of thought and emotion that we all experience.

Dr Paul Flaxman, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, City University London and author of The Mindful and Effective Employee

Destined to become an ACT self-help classic, ACTivate Your Life provides a witty and charming delivery of ACT concepts that brings the reader along in a compassionate and gentle style. The examples are easy to identify with and the exercises well-timed. A great way to be introduced to the ACT model and an excellent contribution from creative and influential authors in the ACT field.

Dr Louise McHugh, Lecturer in the School of Psychology, University College Dublin and author of The Self and Perspective Taking

This book is not a magic wand that will effortlessly free you from all of your problems: it invites you to actively participate in what could be hard personal work. Written with great wisdom and expertise, but also from a place of compassion and full of our common humanity, Oliver, Hill and Morris have placed in your hands a supremely practical resource for changing how you approach your life, and building a more meaningful and fully-lived existence.

Dr David Gillanders, Academic Director, Doctoral Programme in Clinical Psychology, University of Edinburgh

ACTivate Your Life

Joe Oliver, Jon Hill and Eric Morris

Joe For Shalyn. Thank you for your laughter and love

Jon For Sally and Frances. I love you both with all my heart

Eric To my family, Liz, Tilly and Miles: companions on a beautiful, scary adventure

ROBINSON

First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Robinson

Text copyright Joe Oliver, Jon Hill and Eric Morris, 2015

Illustrations copyright Bernard Yan, 2015

The moral right of the authors has been asserted.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-1-47211-191-3 (paperback)

ISBN: 978-1-47211-396-2 (ebook)

Robinson
is an imprint of
Constable & Robinson Ltd

100 Victoria Embankment

London EC4Y 0DY

An Hachette UK Company

www.hachette.co.uk

If youve picked up this book then two things are likely to be true:

There is something in your life that you would like to change.

You are not sure what to do to change it.

Perhaps you find yourself spending more time than youd like in your head worrying about the future, dwelling on the past so that it seems as if life is passing you by. Maybe you notice yourself feeling hopeless and unhappy and yet you feel unsure of how to move forward. Perhaps you notice yourself feeling angry and irritable, as if you are being controlled by your fluctuating moods. Possibly you just feel stuck as if everyone else is living their lives and you are on the sidelines looking in. This is an uncomfortable, unpleasant, and often painful place to be, and the temptation in this kind of situation can be to look outside of ourselves in the hope that someone somewhere has the elusive magic formula, the set of rules that will make life feel effortless. Maybe you have even found a set of rules that has worked for you in the past, which has allowed you to make changes and get more of what you want out of life for a while. But now here you are again, reading these words and still wishing for something to change.

The truth is that life is messy. Its chaotic, unpredictable and change is just about the only thing that remains constant. Just when you think youve got it all figured out, life changes and you need a new set of rules! Even the most robust and well-intentioned set of rules for life will come up short at some point.

So, what if there was no magic answer, no set of rules? What if the messiness and chaos of life wasnt actually the problem? What if it were possible to live a rich, meaningful and rewarding life despite all the storms and uncertainty, the fears and the setbacks?

As humans, we are pre-programmed with the skills necessary to negotiate even the most challenging of life situations, and we use these skills every day without even noticing. Have you ever been in a situation where you took action even when every thought in your head and every atom in your being was telling you to hide? Think hard try to think of an example, just one. Maybe you had an important job interview and your mind started showing you lots of scary images of yourself getting tongue-tied and not knowing what to say, but you went ahead and did the interview anyway? Maybe you arranged a dinner date with someone you really liked and felt your stomach tying itself up in knots as you approached the restaurant, but you were able to go inside, sit down and enjoy the evening anyway? Maybe you just woke up one morning and felt like staying in bed, but you got up, had a shower and went to work all the same?