I'm trying to run through this exercise right now. Is it bad to have too many adverbs at one time? Whatabout adverbs that might contradict? Or is it fine to just get a few, no matter the contradictions and not overthink it?
The version of the exercise I gave was extremely abbreviated - it's a web forum, after all! - so it's necessarily stripped of a lot of detail and context. In a real engagement with a patient, I'd have addressed questions like yours right out of the gate. So apologies. (I hope you see this!).
The short answer to all of them is: it's just fine! The purpose here isn't to get a highly formal, systematic, rigid "code of action" that you live by strictly like some kind of Roman philosopher (though that stuff is incredibly interesting, and ACT has debts to much of it). Instead, the purpose of the values thing is to assist in being able to respond flexibly to pain and suffering while committing to some of the things you find most meaningful - things that are larger than yourself that you can serve.
Is it bad to have too many adverbs? Heavens, no. This is an iterative process, so if the first thing that comes out of your head is a tsunami of possible values, that's terrific. What I might recommend next is to quickly rank-order them based on a simple gut feeling of which ones really interest you right now, these days.
Contradictory adverbs: I don't want to sound glib, but I'll say it anyway: you're human! Of course you'll have contradictory values. That's okay. Since the entire point of ACT is to "act" (heh) in the world, to live these values in some way, however modestly, the contradictions don't necessarily matter so much if, in picking one in one instance and trying to act on it somehow, you walk away from the situation with a feeling of "I'm uncomfortable because this clashes a bit with other things I find important, but I know that I didn't act purposelessly back there" - if that makes any sense.
So basically your suspicions in your last question are correct: just get a few, don't overthink it, go out there and try to live them or instantiate them in some way (doesn't matter how small!), and then return to reflect on how that went. It might be that, in acting on some value, you find that actually you don't believe in it that deeply, or it's not really truly you, or whatever, and you can drop it and try the next one out. Like I said, this is an iterative, lifelong process, and it's mutable and it'll change and grow and go in different, surprising directions. The point isn't to do this exercise once -- it's to begin doing it on and off for the rest of your life, in the same way that a navigator keeps looking up at the night sky and keeping an eye on Polaris every now and then.
I hope this was somewhat helpful to you. I'll keep an eye on this thread if you have any more questions.
