ACT, Part Five: Knowing North Isn't Walking North

Committed Action, and Taking the Next Step

The compass can point north, but to go north you have to move your feet.

Part Four left us with a compass.

Values help us recognize north—not a destination we'll someday reach, but a direction we can keep choosing. That's enormously useful, but a compass has one fairly significant limitation.

It doesn't walk.

You can stand in the woods all afternoon holding a perfectly functioning compass, know exactly which direction is north, and remain precisely where you are. At some point, you have to move his feet.

This is where Acceptance and Commitment Therapy becomes unmistakably behavioral. ACT calls it committed action. Knowing what matters is important, and so is learning to make room for the thoughts and feelings that get in the way, but eventually what matters has to become something we actually do.

Most of us already have a few things in mind. The conversation we need to have. The appointment we haven't made. The apology sitting somewhere behind our teeth. The friend we've been meaning to call, the boundary we need to set, the application we haven't submitted, or the person sitting across from us who needs us to put down the phone and listen.

The problem is often not insight.

We know north.

We just haven't started walking.

Waiting to Feel Ready

One of the great myths about change is that motivation comes first. We imagine we'll understand what needs to happen, become sufficiently motivated, acquire some confidence, and then act.

It would be nice if human beings worked that way.

Sometimes we do. More often, the conversation we've been avoiding still feels uncomfortable when we finally have it, the application still feels intimidating when we press submit, and the apology still catches somewhere in the throat.

We wait for confidence because we assume confidence makes action possible. Quite often confidence comes afterward, when we discover we can act while uncertain, anxious, embarrassed, or afraid.

Courage works this way too. I don't necessarily become less afraid and then do something courageous. Sometimes I discover courage because I did something while I was still afraid.

If readiness is the admission price for action, some of us are going to spend a very long time in the parking lot.

Committed action asks something more practical:

What's the next thing I can actually do?

The Place Where the Trail Forks

ACT therapist and author Russ Harris uses a wonderfully simple idea called the Choice Point. When difficult thoughts and feelings show up, our behavior can move us toward the life we want to build or away from it.

I think of the Choice Point through the compass we've already been carrying. I don't need to ask whether I've finally arrived at north. I haven't.

The more useful question is whether my next step takes me in that direction.

Suppose my wife says something that feels critical. My mind immediately supplies material: That's unfair. She doesn't understand what I meant. Why does she always do this?

My body joins in. Defensiveness arrives.

Now there's a Choice Point.

I can explain myself for the seventh time, become sarcastic, withdraw, or counterattack. Or I can notice what's happening and say, “I'm getting defensive. Let me try to hear what you're saying.”

Neither choice guarantees a pleasant conversation.

But they lead in different directions.

Choice Points are rarely dramatic crossroads with wooden signs and two clearly marked paths. More often they're small moments in ordinary lives when we have enough awareness to ask:

What direction do I want my next step to take me?

Procrastination May Be Pointing at Something

Consider something you've been putting off. We tend to reach for familiar explanations: I'm lazy. I'm terrible about procrastinating. I have no self-discipline. Occasionally those explanations may contain some truth, but they aren't especially interesting.

Suppose you've postponed a phone call for two weeks. The problem probably isn't the physical difficulty of operating a telephone.

It's what might happen after somebody answers.

Maybe you expect conflict. Perhaps you need to ask for something, admit something, explain something, or hear an answer you don't want. The ten-digit phone number isn't the problem. Embarrassment, uncertainty, vulnerability, anger, disappointment, or rejection might be.

Now procrastination looks different.

You may not be avoiding the call. You may be avoiding what the call could make you feel.

Suddenly we're back in Part Three. Sometimes inaction is experiential avoidance wearing ordinary clothes.

Calling yourself lazy won't solve that problem. Becoming willing to experience what the next step might require just might.

Values Are Large. Behavior Has to Fit Through the Door.

There's another reason we don't act. Sometimes what we're trying to do doesn't actually describe a behavior.

Fix my marriage. Admirable goal. Unfortunately, you can't do fix my marriage at 7:15 tonight.

Neither can you get healthy, become financially responsible, repair your relationship with your son, or become a more loving person before dinner.

Human beings can only act in particulars.

You can put the phone down while your wife is talking. Walk for twenty minutes. Transfer some money into savings. Make the appointment. Tell the truth. Ask the question you've been avoiding. Call your daughter and listen without trying to fix anything.

These actions can seem embarrassingly small beside the lives we hope to change.

But lives are made out of embarrassingly small things.

A marriage isn't repaired in a single act. It changes through hundreds of moments of listening, honesty, affection, restraint, repair, humor, attention, and occasionally deciding that being right isn't worth the cost of proving it.

Values can be enormous.

Behavior has to fit through the door.

We Are Always Practicing Something

We usually think of practice as intentional. A pianist practices scales. An athlete practices a swing. A fly fisherman practices casting a line exactly where he wants it despite the inconvenient involvement of wind, trees, current, and occasionally his own hat.

But we practice things unintentionally too.

Every time I avoid a conversation because I'm anxious, I'm getting a little more practiced at avoidance. Every time I become defensive when criticized, defensiveness gets another repetition. Every time I reach for my phone when a moment becomes boring, I'm practicing leaving the moment.

Repetition teaches whether or not we intended to enroll in the class.

Which gives us a more interesting question than What am I doing?

What am I getting better at doing?

That question can be uncomfortable, but it also contains considerable hope. If behavior is practice, every act in another direction is practice too.

Listening is practice. Tolerating uncertainty is practice. Saying no can be practice. Staying when I usually withdraw is practice. Trying again after I fail is certainly practice.

We are always rehearsing something.

Committed action asks whether what we're rehearsing is taking us north.

The Couch Isn't the Enemy

Committed action can sound exhausting if we misunderstand it. The thing that matters often pays slowly, while the thing that matters less may pay immediately. The bed pays now. Exercise sends its benefits by slower mail. Avoiding a difficult email can improve the next twenty minutes considerably.

But none of this makes immediate gratification morally inferior.

Sometimes the couch is exactly where you belong. Sometimes the value-consistent choice is resting because your body needs rest, cancelling something because you've taken on too much, eating dessert because it's wonderful, or watching or playing sports for no particular reason other than recreation.

The better question isn't Is sitting on the couch good or bad?

It's: What is this behavior doing in my life?

Am I restoring myself or hiding?

Same couch.

Different direction.

Discomfort Doesn't Get Veto Power

Suppose an opportunity appears professionally. You want it, but your mind begins offering commentary: You're not qualified. Somebody else will be better. You'll embarrass yourself.

Then your body joins the meeting. Your stomach tightens, and before you've filled out the application you've imagined several versions of the interview ending badly.

This is where the different parts of ACT stop being separate concepts.

My mind is predicting failure. I don't have to defeat the thought before moving: There's my “I'm not good enough” story.

Anxiety is here too. I don't have to remove it: Of course I'm anxious. This matters to me.

And underneath the noise is the compass.

Growth matters.

Now I'm standing at a Choice Point.

The question isn't whether I can produce confidence, calm, certainty, and a positive attitude before continuing. it's much more practical:

Can I submit the application while all of this is still happening?

Perhaps I can.

Thoughts and feelings are allowed to have a voice without automatically receiving a vote.

Insight Can Become a Very Comfortable Chair

Therapy places considerable value on understanding ourselves, and it should. Our histories matter. Patterns have origins, and there are reasons we react the way we do. I've spent much of my professional life helping people understand precisely those things.

There's a subtle trap, though.

We can become remarkably sophisticated about why we do something and continue doing it. We can understand our avoidance beautifully, trace our fear of conflict through three generations, identify our attachment style, recognize our triggers, know our diagnosis, explain our childhood adaptations, and describe exactly why vulnerability activates us.

And still not make the phone call.

Insight matters, but eventually insight has to leave the chair.

We enter the room. Say what needs to be said. Tolerate the silence afterward. Do something differently enough times that another way of living begins becoming possible.

Psychology can help us understand the trail.

Eventually we still have to walk it.

When the Compass Says West

Committed action is another good psychological idea that human beings can turn into a weapon. We make a commitment, miss a day, lose our temper, avoid the conversation, fall back into an old pattern, and immediately our minds announce the verdict:

Here we go again. Nothing ever changes. I knew I couldn't do this.

That confuses commitment with perfection.

Committed action doesn't mean never wandering from our values. It means becoming better at noticing and returning. Suppose I intended to travel north and eventually discover I've been heading west. I can spend an hour criticizing myself for the last five miles, but none of that moves me one degree closer to north.

The compass isn't interested in shame.

It tells me where I'm facing now.

Maybe I was impatient with someone I love. I withdrew when I wanted to remain present. I avoided something important or repeated a pattern I understand perfectly well and had sworn I wouldn't repeat.

I'm west of where I intended to be.

What now?

Not What does this prove about me?

Not Why am I still like this?

There may be something to understand, something to repair, and something to learn.

Then comes another Choice Point.

Which direction is the next step?

The Next Right-Sized Thing

When change feels overwhelming, we tend to stare at the entire distance—the marriage that needs repair, career that needs changing, body that needs caring for, strained relationship, or years we've spent avoiding things.

No wonder we freeze.

We're looking at the whole road while standing on one square foot of it.

Committed action brings us back to something smaller:

What is the next right-sized thing?

Right-sized doesn't mean ridiculously easy. Some next steps are difficult. It means something I can actually do from where I'm standing.

Make the call. Ask the question. Take the walk. Write the first paragraph. Tell the truth. Listen instead of defending. Apologize. Begin again. Show up.

Then there will be another piece of road.

We don't have to walk the entire journey this afternoon.

We do have to decide what to do with the ground underneath our feet.

What to Carry Forward

Part Five adds three things to our journey. Values have to become behavior. Choice Points help us notice whether our next step moves toward or away from what matters. And committed action doesn't require our thoughts and feelings to cooperate before we move.

Part Four gave us the compass.

Part Five puts boots on the trail.

Defusion helps when the mind insists we can't go there. Acceptance makes room for the discomfort that comes along for the hike. Values point north. Committed action is where the boot finally meets the trail.

Sometimes we'll discover we've drifted east or west. Occasionally we'll realize we've been walking south for longer than we care to admit.

We don't have to erase the miles already traveled.

We turn.

Then we take the next step north.

But to recognize a Choice Point, we have to actually be present for it. We can walk through entire days while our minds are somewhere in yesterday or already halfway into tomorrow.

Part Six asks us to notice where our feet already are: Be Where Your Feet Are.

© 2026 Thomas Kurtz. All rights reserved.

Published by Thomas Kurtz Counseling, LLC.