Last April (04.2020) I had a new “revelation” about
the importance of attitudes in life, and I illustrated it with a couple of
examples from music, from high quality television shows, and I finally left the
readers with a bunch of rhetorical questions about their perspectives toward
the multiple facets of the fresh CORONA crises and its impact on our global village
(see here The value of attitudes). The
truth is that I have always enjoyed witnessing
life and its challenges as they unfold, infusing curiosity on my perspectives, and
stealing fresh looks from things and people when I wasn’t bored, depressed or
anxious. I see life as a tremendously complex show worth attending to, and I was
willing to pay a good price in order to have a premium perspective whenever I
could afford the associated costs. A bald-bold guy I "meet" through his books during
my early 20’s - Stephen Covey – persuaded me that attitudes matter, that having
an overall perspective is key in getting oriented in life, that personal and professional
evolution could be improved by chosen attitudes that are centered around principles
and values. Both psychology and my own Christian spiritual tradition stressed
the importance of adopting the “right vantage point”, so I wasn’t completely
new to the LIFE AS AN ATTITUDE approach. In fact I coded and recoded my first version
(i.e., version 1.0) for more than 20 years by now.
Although I was somehow familiar with the Acceptance
and Commitment Therapy (ACT) paradigm, I didn’t really grasp it’s gist from
just reading books or even from the in-depth intellectual exploration needed
for preparing scientific papers. Therefore, this spring I decided to immerse myself
in these waters by taking an online ACT course for psychologists. I thought it
would be cool to have another bald-bold guy - Steven Hayes this time - magically
appear on my big (almost life size) screen that dominates the space of my home
office. Several hundred dollars and a few clicks away I could spend some
quality time with him in the comfort of my Romanian home. One of the best parts
was the non-conflicting schedules between our busy calendars, as we could have longer
or shorter meetings whenever I was able to treat myself with a few ACT training
hours. His presence, genuineness, flexible and complex approach, sound
scientific base, playful attitudes and valued life perspective reached me with an
irresistible and seductive force. I was mesmerized, enchanted, uplifted, and
energized by the wealth of implications resulting from just our attitudes-perspectives.
How we relate to the universe - be it the internal universe of entangled emotions
and thoughts, or the external universe of people, objects, and planets – appeared
to me in a fresh new light. The infinite space of consciousness resulted from
playfully dancing between different attitudes pushed me in the liberated state
of following my values. I irreversibly felt in love with ACT, so much so that I
totally embrace it, I wanted to make it my own, to add it to my lifestyle menu so
that it will continue to enrich me in the future. Then I realized I was kind of
fused with these ideas, so I decided to look at them from different
perspectives, to take a break, to allow myself some reflection space. But the
post-reflection return was equally liberating, as I found myself in a space where
I could not only decide what kind of relationship I want to entertain with ACT,
but most importantly, what kind of relationship I want to cultivate with my
values, how I can be present in my life, and how I can engage with it guided by what
I deem to be important. I don’t know how things will unfold in the future, but
my ACT experience certainly enriched my lifestyle menu and upgraded my LIFE AS
AN ATTITUDE approach to its 2.0 brand new version. Although the basic
components have been successfully installed, there is a long way until they
will completely mature and until I will feel comfortable enough with them around
because they ended up being impregnated by my personal color palette. However, in
my reckless enthusiasm, I started imparting presence, diffusion, and acceptance
around; encouraging others in exploring their values, in transcending their conceptualized
self, and in engaging with what matters from their newfound and flexible dance
of multiple perspectives.
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