The ACT Daily Journal is an easy to follow book that will guide you to become more accepting of yourself and how to live more mindfully and positively. This is an easy to follow journal that provides opportunities to work on personal development skills and improve your life and your ability love yourself. This journal is chock full of important wisdom, important activities and life changing journal prompts to guide your self reflection. This book is a must have for anyone looking for self improvement and guidance in the areas of self improvement, compassion, mindfulness, improving self talk, and decreasing negative self talk. This journal has specific, daily steps to take so that embarking on your self improvement journey is not so daunting. I highly recommend this book. Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance review copy in exchange for my honest review.

How to Center Yourself Quickly

To be calm in amidst the chaos takes practice. So, to center yourself quickly you have to find your way to the center of your being every day. You have to be used to it.

Then, you’ll get when you’re sidetracked from your values and you’ll practice to unhook yourself from judgments-yours or others-and return to center quickly.

So let’s begin.

Sidetracked from your values

A difficult situation at work, school or home brings up stress, anxiety, sadness, or anger, for example.

Something or someone is pushing your buttons. Usually, you react the same way every time and feel awful afterward. Your reaction has become a habit.

Your can stick to your values and react in a way that you’ll feel at peace.

How come?

According to Hill and Sorensen, authors of Act daily journal, “even in hard times it’s possible to choose how to respond based on the person you’d most like to be.”

Take these 3 simple steps:

Pause. Notice your thoughts and emotions.

Ask yourself how you’d respond at your best.

Make that choice.

However, when you get it wrong, you’ll regurgitate the whole situation over and over.

Use these simple steps with a stressful situation that already happened. Pick a constructive response according to your values. It’s called mental rehearsal.

You have to practice to do better next time. Because you’ve make it a habit. The same situation could show up here and there until you break that unhelpful pattern.


Even though you see the whole situation as a circumstance, it revolves around thoughts and feelings-yours and others.

Unhook yourself from judgments

“Your point of view creates your reality. Reality does not create your point of view.” Dr. Dain Heer

It doesn’t matter if your beliefs are true or not, they will manifest. Your state of being defines your actions and creates your destiny.

These beliefs are called judgments. They can be positive or negative. The problem begins when your judgments are wrong because you don’t have enough information.

These judgments create limitations in your life. You choose your behaviors following a lie and treat them as facts.

So let’s get to work.

How do you center yourself?


To center yourself with ease requires practice. Also, don’t beat yourself up as you master how to keep your balance in difficult situations because you don’t get it perfect at once.

1.- Work on yourself and follow the 3 simple steps when you feel sidetracked from your values.

2.- Consider another helpful practice by Hill and Sorensen:

Write down positive and negative self-judgments as observations. For example:

Before:

I’m friendly and I’m too short.

After:

Sometimes I make time to chat and I’m five-foot three.

Be aware: What differences do you notice between self-judgments and observations?

3.- Meditation.

Work on being grounded with mindfulness meditation. With this practice:

- You’ll have breath awareness.
- You’ll realize how your discordant thoughts and feelings keep you stuck and out of balance.
- Get back to center.

One of my favorites is an oldie but goodie, Brain Weiss meditation. He has several meditations, but this is the one I like to return to center.


4.- Asking questions to get awareness. I wrote this article with eight questions that are the basics. If you feel stuck these 8 questions are great to regain balance and help you to move forward.


Wrapping Up

If you want to center yourself quickly, you have to work on that every day.

As you’ve read, there are several exercises you can practice every day to learn from your past mistakes and start anew.

To keep your balance through difficult times is a skill. There are not shortcuts. You have to do the work.

This is a great guide to personal development through journaling activities over a period of 8 weeks. There's much can be gained from it, especially if you are a fan of journalling.

The ACT (Acceptance and commitment therapy) Daily Journal is a welcome change to all the selfhelp journals on the market that I have seen and been disappointed in over the years. This journal introduced me to a whole new approach to take that makes sense and did not overwhelm me. It is an 8 week program with a daily reading, a guided writing assignment and suggested practices to try throughout the day that do not overshadow everything else. The readings drew me in with personal stories and examples. The writings were helpful in trying to make connections between what I read and my own life. The suggested practices for each day were often very doable. Week 1: Prepare the Ground, Week 2: Being Present- Live in the Now, Week 3: Cognitive Defusion – Greet the Monsters in your Head, Week 4: Acceptance- Courageous, Willing and Open, Week 5: Perspective Taking – Take in the View, Week 6: Values-Choose your Direction, Week 7: Committed Action – Fall on Purpose, Week 8: Flexible Integration – Hive Mind, Week 9: Cured. Not true. The authors point out right up front that life and this journal does not come with a promise of happiness. As I’ve always believed, life comes with pain. It can not be avoided. I’ve tried. The idea behind ACT is developing a psychological flexibility that allows us to make the best choices and move on. Reading through parts of the journal and trying some of the exercises I am beginning to see possibilities. The authors have a podcast, Psychologists Off the Clock, that is a great way to learn more about the type of things covered in this journal. Thanks to Netgalley for the opportunity to review this journal in a digital version for an honest review. I have now purchased my own copy to write in.

ACT Daily Journal: Get Unstuck and Live Fully with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy by Dr. Diana Hill and Dr. Debbie Sorensen is yet another great resource from New Harbinger. In this journal, the basic core processes of ACT are explained, and guided journaling exercises are provided to help incorporate ACT into daily life. Highly recommended. #ACTDailyJournal #NetGalley

This amazing journal designed by Debbie Sorensen and Diana Hill is sure to leave you having more compassion for yourself, make you aware of your negative self-talk and enjoying your life intentionally instead of skimming through life like most of us do.
I really enjoyed the perspective these ladies brought into the book and the journal prompts at the end sure to leave you digging deeper and really getting to the root of the problem. I would totally totally recommend this book for anyone looking to better themselves

I tried to get into this book multiple times and just could not make myself keep going with it. It will be a good fit for people who really like journaling. I used to and still like some journaling books, but this one felt like the dullest sort of homework. Readers may want to use the look inside feature on sites like Amazon to see if it's going to be a good fit for them. I have no doubt that it will be a very useful book for some.

3.5 stars. This is the first time I've heard of ACT and the daily journal is a helpful tool to grow as a person. I'm an advocate of journaling and this focuses the act (literally) on self-improvement.

Thank you for the arc of the ACT jounal!

This was excellent—an easy but effective way to incorporate ACT into your daily life. I can only speak from the experience of someone with OCD but would recommend it for those dealing with anxiety/depression.

Very straightforward and digestible journaling prompts and activities to deepen ACT practices in your life. Covers wide range of helpful topics and practices. A book that you could easily go through more than once or spend more than one day with each journal activity and ACT practice.

As someone who is on a life mission to get in touch with her true self, I got this book hoping to learn the basics of journaling. However, that is not what I got.

What I did get was so much more. The book does have journaling assignments but it is more about acceptance and commitment therapy. The book flows nicely and the stories are great teachers. OVerall not a bad book just not what I was personally expecting.

Was not my favorite. I explored a good deal of it before not finishing it. Just wasn’t my thing. May be good for someone else.

This book really helps you dig deep into an approach I hadn’t known about until now called acceptance and commitment therapy. Daily readings, activities, writing prompts and themes that superpower personal development written by two psychologists who obviously know their stuff. Those who love to journal, who want to bring more thought and journaling into their personal development practice, or those who are struggling with any issues can benefit from this book.

Using techniques from ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) this workbook gives a good overview of how to improve mood and mental health. The daily format of this means that one needs to commit to this journal, which is good--it gives motivation to keep using it.

This would be helpful for some but just isn’t for me. I tried journaling but that isn’t for me at all. I get bored with it.

I might recommend

Debbie Sorensen and Diana Hill’s “ACT Daily Journal” is an incredibly powerful journal experience through the lens of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. The content is superb. The exercises are practical and life changing. As a therapist, I highly recommend this book!

ACT Daily Journal by Debbie Sorensen, Diana Hill Explains the basic core processes of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). The guided journaling assignments included are insightful and meaningful for incorporating ACT into everyday use. A useful and astute self help journal.

Thank you to the publisher, author, and NetGalley for the opportunity to preview the book.

WOW! I am so freaking grateful that I got the opportunity to read this book. What a powerful journal with such powerful questions.

Some of my initial thoughts: I really appreciated that the authors made the book accessible while also providing must-know concepts from the literature. I enjoyed that the references were drawn from places as diverse as Tibetan spirituality to recent podcast episodes. I feel connected to the source material and that I have places to turn to learn more about ACT.

The pacing of the book and the structure was brilliant! I loved that the concepts built on each other and that every chapter ended with a strong list of questions and activities to engage with.

Additionally, I REALLY appreciated the authors' understanding and sensitivity to systematic oppression and other external influences that often impact mental health. They even mention the pandemic and acknowledge how tough the time has been while offering ways to show acceptance and gratitude.

This book has personally enriched my life and I will definitely be grabbing a physical copy for my own self work!

The ACT Daily Journal breaks down the basics of ACT for use in our daily lives. The journaling assignments are interesting and relevant. This would be a good addition to the shelves of counselors and therapists, but could also be used as self help.