The Mother’s Bull’s-Eye Values Survey

When you become a mother, your values don’t disappear, they simply get buried beneath an avalanche of laundry, daily logistics, nursery runs, and constant caregiving. Over time, it is easy to feel a quiet disconnection between what matters deeply to your heart and the frantic pace of your everyday routines.

Adapted from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), the Bull’s-Eye Values Survey is a gentle, spatial compass for your life. Instead of demanding perfection or measuring whether you have achieved a set of rigid goals, it invites you to look honestly at how closely your daily actions currently align with your authentic values. The closer your dart lands to the centre bull’s-eye, the more aligned you feel; the farther toward the outer rings, the more out of step life feels right now.

The Four Living Domains

In this maternal reflection, we examine four core territories of our lives:

• 1. Nourishment & Physical Vitality: How you tend to your own body, somatic rest, whole-food nourishment, and gentle movement in the fresh air.
• 2. Relationships & Belonging: The quality of presence, intimacy, and boundaries you cultivate with your partner, children, extended family, and friends.
• 3. Personal Growth & Inner Self: Honoring your intellectual curiosity, emotional self-awareness, creativity, and the parts of your identity outside of caring for others.
• 4. Rest, Joy & Simple Living: Creating unhurried space for play, screen-free solitude, hobbies, and simple grounding moments in your home.

How to Use:

1. Print or Sketch the Target: Click the print button below to print your worksheet, or quickly sketch four quadrants and concentric rings in your journal.
2. Define What Matters: In each of the four areas, write a brief sentence capturing what you value most (e.g., in Vitality, “treating my body with compassion and eating nourishing food”).
3. Place Your Darts: Make an “X” in each quadrant to represent where your daily life is landing right now:
   • The Center Bull’s-Eye: You are living fully in alignment with what matters to you in this area.
   • The Middle Rings: You are somewhat aligned, but everyday friction frequently pulls you off track.
   • The Outer Edge: You feel completely out of step with your values in this territory.
4. Identify Obstacles & Action: For any mark landing outside the center, identify the biggest barrier (such as sleep deprivation, mental load, or outside pressure) and pick one tiny, realistic step to gently shift closer to the middle.

Reflecting on Your Bull’s-Eye

Once you have placed your marks across the four quadrants, take a slow breath and consider:

• The Closest Mark: Which territory of your life currently feels closest to the center bull’s-eye? Acknowledge the care and attention that allows this domain to thrive.
• The Space of Separation: In the area sitting farthest from the centre, what internal obstacles are getting in the way, is it physical exhaustion, self-criticism, fear of judgment, or simply lack of outside support?
• One Gentle Dart: Values are lived in tiny, tangible behaviours. What is one microscopic action you could take this week in your lowest domain (for instance, sitting down to eat lunch without scrolling, or texting a friend to say “thinking of you”) to shift your dart one step closer to the centre?