The Values Compass
How to use this: work through a few domains at a time, not all sixteen in one sitting. There’s no scoring system and no correct number of domains to have “high” importance in. The point is noticing where energy and attention actually want to go, and what’s currently standing between you and that.
Sixteen possible directions
Not a checklist to complete. A starting set, to notice which ones pull at you and which genuinely don’t.
Four questions
Importance
How much does this actually matter to me, separate from how much I think it should?
Presence
How present is this in my life right now, honestly?
What gets in the way
If there’s a gap between the two, what’s actually sitting in it?
One possible expression
Given everything true about my life right now, what’s one form this value could take?
“What gets in the way” is worth sorting further, because different barriers call for entirely different responses. An internal barrier — fear, a belief, an old rule — is genuine ACT territory: defusion, willingness, self-as-context. A physical barrier is a fact of the body to work around or grieve, not argue with. An environmental or systemic barrier — inaccessible transport, a benefits system, discrimination — is not a psychological flexibility problem at all, and treating it as one quietly blames the person for a world that hasn’t been built for them. An energy or access barrier sits in between: real, and sometimes partly addressable through pacing, equipment, or support.
Internal
A fear, a rule, a belief, an old story about what I deserve or am capable of.
Physical
A genuine, current fact of the body — pain, fatigue, impairment, a lost function.
Environmental or systemic
Inaccessible transport, buildings, services; discrimination; a benefits or care system working against me.
Energy or access
A limited daily or weekly budget of energy, money, or support hours to spend on this.
Domain: Adventure. Importance: high — always has been. Presence: almost none, currently. What gets in the way: the specific activities that used to carry this value, long solo hikes, are no longer physically possible. Barrier type: physical, mostly, with a layer of internal grief still unprocessed underneath it. One possible expression: a short, unfamiliar walk somewhere new each month, with no fitness goal attached — just the unfamiliarity, which turns out to be the part that actually mattered.
The value survived. The form changed. Naming both, separately, made room for grief and for a next step at the same time.
Where this tool can help
Getting a clearer, honest picture of which parts of life currently feel alive and which feel neglected, and separating internal barriers, genuinely ACT’s territory, from physical, environmental and systemic ones that call for something else entirely: grief work, advocacy, equipment, support.
Where interpretation should stop
When every low-presence domain gets treated as a psychological flexibility problem, regardless of whether the actual barrier is environmental or systemic; when a genuinely interrupted value is pushed toward a “new expression” before any grief has been allowed room.
Resist filling in the “one possible expression” column on the client’s behalf, even when an obvious-seeming alternative comes to mind quickly. The exercise’s value comes from the client generating their own answer, at their own pace, and sometimes leaving that column blank for a domain that isn’t ready to be resolved yet is the most honest response available.
This tool adapts ACT’s values-clarification work, which has a well-established place in the ACT literature, into a domain-based worksheet with an added disability-specific barrier-typing step. It is a clinical and reflective tool, not a validated psychometric instrument, and its value lies in the honesty of the reflection it prompts rather than any score it produces.
Which domain did I most want to skip — and what does that tell me?