C. G. Jung's insight "What you don't accept, you can't change" aptly describes the first step of ACT: With mindfulness and acceptance you turn to the present experience (feeling, quality of experience). Giving up resistance to difficult feelings and the willingness to be with them and to make this experience from a position of free choice changes their quality. This is because the original impulse to turn away from an unpleasant emotional experience stems from the belief that one could not bear it or would ultimately be overwhelmed by its intensity or negativity. Such notions are usually passed on within families and socially, they are so widespread that most of us have accepted them as "true". The decision to embrace and accept uncomfortable or even painful emotional experiences rather than giving in to the conditioned reaction of avoiding them has an immensely healing and strengthening effect. Fear, defensiveness and avoidance tendencies are transformed into courage and self-confidence. The liberating insight opens up that feelings are simply feelings: a certain kind of energy that floods through the physical and emotional system and ebbs away the faster the less resistance there is in the system. After the experience in question has faded away, you are still there. Discrimination and discernment increase: If the consciousness experiencing and observing the experience is always there - before, during and after the experience is completed - then the observer of the experience cannot be identical with the experience itself. With a little practice it becomes clearer and clearer that there is no need to fear difficult feelings and that there are effective tools to handle them.
The second focus of ACT is to work out what the preferred quality of experience or life in general is. To identify and acknowledge what motivates, inspires, makes you happy or simply suits you. To develop increasing awareness of what your individual needs, desires and values are. In the further therapeutic process, self-perception and self-care generally improve and the feeling of responsibility for one's own quality of life grows. It seems quite natural, as a creator of one's own reality, to make a commitment to oneself to act accordingly.