The Power of Making a List

I love lists.  I write them on paper, whiteboards, in my head as I'm going about my day. It's very satisfying to cross a thing off a list and often visual cues are great for self accountability.  There's a commitment to a thing that is written in black and white that isn't there if it is just floating around in your head as something you might do one day.  For example, if I write down clean the fridge, tidy the bookcase and clean out the pantry cupboard there's more chance of me actually doing those things.  If I'm just thinking I must do these things one day I find I rarely commit my time to doing these cleaning tasks. If it's written on the whiteboard I'm reminded every time I walk by the whiteboard that I want to get those things done and I haven't done them yet. It's a visual cue and prompts me.

The idea of writing lists for therapeutic reasons is featured in a few therapy types.  The lists that I am going to give you to write are from A.C.T. (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy). They come from the book "Get Out of your Mind and Get into your Life" which I have been referenced a few times in some of my other blogs.  This is a great book which is aimed at assisting people through the process of self awareness giving practical exercises and tips on how to change your thinking and behaviour. These exercises are designed to be done with or without a therapist.  This is why I've decided to use these particular exercises and they are list based which I think is an awesome idea. I highly recommend this book it's available as an ebook which is also terrific.

The first step is this; make a list using the following format I did this using word then insert table. Write as many or as few as you like.  I found it useful to write everything I could think of.  A long list.

Painful and difficult issues I experience

How long this has been the case

Rank

Second Step, copy and paste this table and put them in order of which is most important to you and which is least important. Keep the other list as it serves as a comparison.

Third step, draw lines to the problems that are connected to each other.  I did this by copying and pasting my list to a drawing program you could just print it up or find the drawing program on word which I couldn't do.

I don't know about you, I found this very interesting to see how my problems were related to each other.  It did look like a colourful mishmash of lines and I used different colours in the end to group the problems up into different categories.  You could do the same.  You could maybe have childhood, present day and future concerns.  Another way might be physical problems, emotional problems and social problems. You could give them Ugent, Immediate or Non-urgent as headings.

The last step for today's exercise will be imagining how different life were without one or two of these problems so the next exercise is going to be writing the following sentence using one of the problems from your list you can repeat this exercise as many times as you like.  However, a caution don't do too many you might do your head in and I want you to feel good not go crazy.

 If.............wasn't a problem for me, I would..............

I hope you have fun imagining your life without the things that might be holding you back next week I will be writing about how these problems might be tackled in order to make those sentences a reality not just a list.

References

Steven Hayes, PH.D. With Spencer Smith “Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life The New Acceptance & Commitment Therapy” (2005) New Harbinger Publications Inc.