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Practice · one small step toward what matters
You'll choose a direction you care about and turn it into one small thing you can do this week: the day, the time, the place, what exactly. Then you'll plan for what might get in the way. Nothing is graded, whether you do it or not.
Stuck at any step? Tap the top-right corner and ask ForestSage.Committed action is part of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), developed by psychologists Steven Hayes, Kirk Strosahl, Kelly Wilson and colleagues. Its focus isn't getting rid of hard feelings first, but taking them along while you keep moving in the direction you care about.
"Commitment" here isn't a vow. It's promising yourself one specific, small thing: the day, the time, the place, what exactly. On the day your head will probably still say "too tired, next time", so the exercise has you decide in advance what you'll do when it does; if you're not sure you'll do it, you make the step smaller until you are. Afterwards you come back to note whether you did it and how it felt, not whether it was good enough.
Where does the direction come from? If you've done the values compass, you can pick one of the directions you wrote there; if not, you can choose one inside the exercise. The WHO's self-help guide Doing What Matters in Times of Stress (2020) includes acting on what matters as one of its stress-management skills, and researchers have reviewed self-guided online ACT done without a therapist (Klimczak et al., 2023).
It's close to behavioural activation, which also starts from small actions. Behavioural activation is often used when mood is low, to bring back things that give pleasure or a sense of achievement; committed action starts from your values and asks: does this step bring you a little closer to the person you want to be?
This exercise isn't therapy and doesn't replace professional support. If lots of things have felt hard to start for a while now, working with a counsellor can make it lighter.
Committed action is a core part of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT; Hayes, Strosahl & Wilson). Turning what you care about into small, specific actions is also one of the skills in the WHO's self-help guide Doing What Matters in Times of Stress. The wording and steps here are our own.