Free interactive worksheet
The 80th Birthday Exercise
This exercise comes from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), where much of the work is helping someone name what they care about. Therapists have run versions of it for years under a few different names, and it reached a wider audience through Russ Harris, who writes about ACT for general readers.
In this exercise, you will imagine it's your 80th birthday. The people who matter to you are there, and one after another they come up to say something about how you lived. You'll think about and write what you'd most want them to say. The answers can help point you to your values and what you find most important in your life.
Below you'll pick who's speaking, write what you'd want to hear, then reflect on and note the qualities you'd like to see in yourself.
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The 80th Birthday Exercise
Who's speaking
Pick up to 3 people. Each one gets their own speech.
That's as many as anyone can hold in view. Uncheck one to swap it out.
What they'd say
Write what you'd most want to hear from each of them. If you're not sure where to start, consider these questions they might try to answer:
- What was it like to be around you on an ordinary day?
- What did you keep doing, year after year?
- How did you treat people when the pressure was on?
- What did you give someone that they still carry?
- What did you stand for, even when it cost you something?
Pick someone above and a box for their speech will appear here.
Someone in your family
A friend who's known you a long time
Someone you worked with
Someone you looked after
Someone from further out
How you were
Read back what you wrote. What qualities did the person in those speeches show? Write each one down in a word or two. For help in finding words to use, the list of 50+ personal values is one place to look.
Adapted from an exercise used in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). Versions of it appear throughout Russ Harris's work.
Other worksheets
- The Bull's Eye Check how closely your daily actions match your values across four areas of life
- Toward and Away Moves See what actions carry you towards your values, and what carries you away
- Sort Your Compass Values Sort through and identify your top personal values
- Passengers on the Bus Name the thoughts and feelings that pull you off course. Determine how you keep driving anyway.
- Values Alignment Map Rate eight areas of life for how much they matter and how consistently you act on them, then see where the two drift apart
These worksheets are self-reflection exercises, not therapy or treatment. If you are experiencing a medical or mental-health emergency, contact emergency services or a crisis hotline immediately.