Each takes a minute or two and can be done anywhere. If you don’t know which skill to start with, Flex sorts 36 cards and tells you where you have the most room to move. These are the same exercises a therapist would hand you; doing one once teaches you nothing, doing one for a week teaches you a lot.
ACT exercises
Twelve short exercises from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, two for each of the six skills, in plain words.
Making room
Letting difficult feelings be there without fighting them.
Make room, sixty seconds
Next time the feeling shows up, don’t argue with it. Find where it lives in your body. Breathe into that spot as if you’re making space around it. You don’t have to like it; you’re letting it be there. Sixty seconds, then carry on with what you were doing.
The willingness dial
Picture a dial from zero to ten for how willing you are to have this feeling right now. Read the number. Turn it up one notch, no more. Notice what changes in your body when you stop pushing.
Unhooking
Seeing thoughts as thoughts, not orders.
I’m having the thought that…
Take the thought that hooks you most (“I’m going to fail”). Say it once as it is. Then say: “I’m having the thought that I’m going to fail.” Then: “I notice I’m having the thought that I’m going to fail.” Same words. Watch the distance open up.
Thank your mind
When your mind hands you the old story, answer it out loud or silently: “Thanks, mind.” Not sarcastic; it’s doing its job, trying to keep you safe. Then do the next thing anyway.
Being here
Attention on what is happening now instead of autopilot.
Five, four, three, two, one
Wherever you are: five things you can see, four you can hear, three you can feel against your skin, two you can smell, one you can taste. Thirty seconds. You have just arrived in the room.
Dropping anchor
When a storm starts inside, press your feet into the floor. Notice the room around you. Name three things you can see. Notice that you are here, and the storm is here too, and you can hold both.
The watcher
The part of you that notices, bigger than any story about you.
The sky and the weather
Your thoughts and feelings are weather. You are the sky. The weather can be violent; the sky holds it and is never damaged by it. When a storm comes, say: here is weather. Then look for the sky.
The one who has always been there
Remember yourself at ten. At twenty. Last year. Different bodies, different opinions, different problems. Something was there the whole time, noticing. That’s the part that can watch today’s story without being the story.
Knowing what matters
Clarity about what you want your life to stand for.
The eightieth birthday
Imagine the speech someone who loves you gives at your eightieth. Not the résumé; the character. Write the three sentences you’d most want to be true. Those are values. Now look at this week.
Sort the cards
If you haven’t done What Matters yet, that is the exercise: twenty-five cards, three passes, and a written report on the gap between what matters most and what your life is delivering.
Doing what matters
Acting on what matters even when it is hard.
The five-minute version
Take the thing that matters and that keeps sliding. Make a version of it that fits in five minutes. Do only that version today. Tomorrow, the five-minute version again. Motivation follows action; it does not lead it.
Throw your darts
Bull’s Eye turns one value into one move for the week, asks you in seven days whether you did it, and lets you throw again. It’s the committed-action loop, kept honest by a calendar.
Putting them together
Bull’s Eye turns knowing what matters into one move a week, with a check-in. The Matrix maps what you do to get away from what you feel and what it costs. The ideas behind all of it.
Reviewed by Michael RoBards, LCSW · September 2026