There are a few ideas in Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy which I tend to talk about all day long with nearly all of my patients. We apply them to different problems but these are core principles that tend to be relevant regardless of the particular details. These principles are listed below for you to review:
1. You are not a victim of others. You disturb yourself about the things other people do. Assume responsibility for your emotional upset. Take responsibility for your life.
2. Allow yourself to feel healthy negative emotions when you do not get what you want. Keep your wants but give up your demands. When you do not get what you want feel disappointment, sorrow, displeasure, annoyance. These healthy negative feelings will motivate you to change what you can change and allow you to move on when you cannot change what fate has thrown your way.
3. Strive to tolerate discomfort in order to do what it takes to achieve your long term goals. Instead of avoiding discomfort face it head on, lean into it, and teach yourself discomfort is not unbearable. Push yourself. This is how you maximize pleasure in life.
4. Use the feeling of concern to motivate you to do what is best in the long run. Concern is motivational fuel for self-helping behavior. Anxiety is self-defeating and leads to avoidance. Avoidance does not help you change what you can change.
5. Choose to put yourself first and others a close second.
6. Never rate yourself as a person. All people have equal human worth. If we rate people we need to define a standard of human worth. We cannot validly rate people because all standards of human worth are arbitrary. There is no agreed upon gold standard of what constitutes a worthy human. It is better to rate what you do in the context of your goals. Acknowledge a poor performance and learn something from it. Under these circumstances you will be rating your behavior but do not rate your “self”, “essence”, or “personhood”. You may fail but you are not a failure. You are in a state of constant evolution and you may very well succeed tomorrow.
1. You are not a victim of others. You disturb yourself about the things other people do. Assume responsibility for your emotional upset. Take responsibility for your life.
2. Allow yourself to feel healthy negative emotions when you do not get what you want. Keep your wants but give up your demands. When you do not get what you want feel disappointment, sorrow, displeasure, annoyance. These healthy negative feelings will motivate you to change what you can change and allow you to move on when you cannot change what fate has thrown your way.
3. Strive to tolerate discomfort in order to do what it takes to achieve your long term goals. Instead of avoiding discomfort face it head on, lean into it, and teach yourself discomfort is not unbearable. Push yourself. This is how you maximize pleasure in life.
4. Use the feeling of concern to motivate you to do what is best in the long run. Concern is motivational fuel for self-helping behavior. Anxiety is self-defeating and leads to avoidance. Avoidance does not help you change what you can change.
5. Choose to put yourself first and others a close second.
6. Never rate yourself as a person. All people have equal human worth. If we rate people we need to define a standard of human worth. We cannot validly rate people because all standards of human worth are arbitrary. There is no agreed upon gold standard of what constitutes a worthy human. It is better to rate what you do in the context of your goals. Acknowledge a poor performance and learn something from it. Under these circumstances you will be rating your behavior but do not rate your “self”, “essence”, or “personhood”. You may fail but you are not a failure. You are in a state of constant evolution and you may very well succeed tomorrow.
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