In 1956 Albert Ellis gave an important address at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association. In this seminal address, he outlined twelve ideas that cause emotional disturbance and human misery. Until this time, Freud’s approach, and variants of orthodox Freudian theory, dominated psychotherapy. Ellis introduced a new paradigm that was to usher in what we now know as cognitive behavior therapy (CBT). This lecture was a game-changing address.
This email is the eleventh of twelve successive Intermittent Reinforcement email messages. In each of these messages, I will quote the twelve ideas identified by Ellis in his 1956 address, one at a time, and show how they are still relevant today and further discuss them. If these ideas are corrected, you are likely to experience a healthier emotional life.
Idea #11 – The idea that human happiness can be achieved by inertia and inaction—instead of the idea that humans tend to be happiest when they are actively and vitally adsorbed in creative pursuits, or when they are devoting themselves to people or projects outside of themselves.
REBT philosophy advocates that you go beyond using it to avoid misery and emotional disturbance as you face adversity throughout life. I recommend that you also use the philosophy to help you remove blocks that interfere with you actively striving to self-actualize and maximize your personal happiness. Although there is no way of knowing for sure, in REBT, we assume that in all probability, this is the one life you are ever likely to experience. Even if this assumption is not accurate, there still is no reason not to maximize your pleasure and meaning through self-actualization in this life. The challenge is how to go about this pursuit of self-actualization and personal happiness?
First, it is essential to understand that inertia and inaction undermine personal happiness. Like most things in life, there are start-up costs. Life involves effort and making an effort usually consists of a degree of discomfort in some form or another. Accept these start-up costs and the associated discomfort. Accept that you have better chances if you actively seek happiness rather than waiting for it to find you. As Thoreau said, “Man is the artificer of his own happiness.” In REBT, we value self-determination and self-direction. Waiting for happiness and life satisfaction to find you are less likely to produce the desired outcome than if you actively take control of your happiness and try to help things along. Look for and challenge rigid or extreme ideas about the pursuit of happiness that may undermine your effort, such as:
1. I should not have to pursue personal happiness. It should find me. That is, real happiness should naturally occur.
2. It is too hard to think about what I may like and then experiment with new activities to see if I may find them pleasing to do.
3. I need a guarantee that my investment of time, energy, or money for an experimental pursuit will lead to real personal happiness. It would be awful to waste my time, energy, and money on goals that do not pay off in the ways I hoped they would.
4. By now, I absolutely should have found what turns me on in life. I am tired of searching. I quit.
5. What used to turn me on should continue to turn me on. I should not have to discover new avenues to personal happiness as I age.
6. I am not worthy of happiness. I am deficient as a person.
7. The happiness of other people in my life is more important than my own happiness.
These seven attitudes are personal happiness killers. If you hold any of them, you need to acknowledge them and, most importantly, challenge them to become aware of how we often unwittingly have attitudes that are untrue and lead to self-defeating behavior. This essay’s space limitations do not allow me to explore these questions for each irrational attitude shown above. Still, you could do this on a separate piece of paper as a homework assignment after reading this essay through to the end. After this period of reflective challenging of your unspoken attitudes with my two questions, take the next step and generate new attitudes to steadily replace self-defeating ones that now undermine your efforts to pursue and achieve greater personal happiness. Throughout this process, keep in mind that a great deal is at stake in your search for personal happiness. Do you want to reach the end of your life and come to realize you did not take full advantage of what life had to offer? Do you wish to mislive?
Use these two disputing questions of REBT to challenge your rigid and extreme self-defeating attitudes:
1. Where is the evidence this attitude is true? If it is false, why is it so?
2. Does this attitude help me pursue personal happiness or block me in that pursuit?
Below you will find rational attitudes that correspond to each of the above six personal happiness killing attitudes. Examine these attitudes and make them your own by reflecting on, rehearsing, and most importantly, acting on them:
1. I wish I did not have to pursue personal happiness actively, but it does not logically follow that I should not have to pursue personal happiness and meaning, and instead of that, it must find me. It would be lovely sit back and passively wait on happiness to find me as the common cold finds me, but unfortunately, happiness does not have to naturally and passively occur. I can and will commit to pursuing personal happiness to increase the chances of finding it through trial and error. This effort is worth making because I want to derive maximum pleasure and meaning from the one life I will, in all probability, ever have to enjoy. I would rather fail seeking personal happiness than waiting for the muse to strike me.
2. Thinking actively about what I may like and then experimenting with new activities to see if I may find them rewarding requires some effort, but it is certainly not too hard to make that effort. I can bear the discomfort of taking an experimental approach to this critical search. It is worth doing as I likely have only one life to derive this happiness, and my time is limited. I commit to experimenting with new pleasurable pursuits until I become deeply interested and engaged by one or more of them. I will know I have found what I am looking for when I see it. Keep at it. As the Scottish novelist Margaret Oliphant pointed out, “What happiness is there that is not purchased with more or less pain?”
3. I wish I had a guarantee that my investment of time, energy, or money in an experimental pursuit will increase personal happiness. Still, sadly that is not how life works, and I do not need a guarantee. The one thing I can be relatively sure of is that inertia and inaction in life are highly unlikely to lead to zestful engagement with life.
4. By now, I wish I had found what turns me on in life, but unfortunately, I have not found what excites me, and it does not follow that my discovery has to occur on my timetable. If I quit striving to discover what turns me on, I will seal my fate and not derive the personal happiness I may very well be capable of deriving in life. Do I want to seal my fate and close this door to happiness?
5. I wish that what used to turn me on in life would continue to turn me on, but it does not seem to be that way, and it does not have to be that way. It would better if I did not have to exert time, energy, or money to discover new avenues to personal happiness as I age, but this vision of how life should unfold does not have to match reality. Life is flux, and humans change as time goes on. Therefore, what turns me on may also change as my life unfolds. I want more pleasure, so I commit to adapting to life rather than closing myself off to growth and discoveries of happiness in my life as time goes on.
6. Although I am an imperfect human with my unique strengths and weakness, it does not mean I am a person who is not worthy of happiness. I have a perfect right to enjoy my life simply because I am alive. There is no good reason that I am not worthy of a satisfying and meaningful life. I accept myself with my strengths and weakness, good and bad behaviors, and will do the best I can to enjoy my life despite my human limitations and specific fallibilities.
7. I have a right to put my happiness first and others’ happiness a close second. I can do this guiltlessly and shamelessly by choosing to accept myself unconditionally.
Ellis (1982), in his A Guide to Personal Happiness, lists several good questions that can help you find your way to greater life satisfaction. You are unique, and what leads to your happiness may or may not be what excites most other people. As long as what turns you on is not harmful to you or other people, that it is not antisocial or illegal in any way, it then is fair game for you to pursue regardless of how idiosyncratic the pursuit may be. Seek, and you shall find. Below is Ellis’s list, which you could use to help you find your way to zestful living and personal happiness:
1. What might I like?
2. In addition to what I already like, what else might I like?
3. What do other people enjoy?
4. What will I probably like later in my life?
5. What are the costs of some of my pleasures?
6. What are the obvious and hidden costs of time, energy, and money for different pursuits I may enjoy?
7. Are these costs worth it?
8. How can I experiment with these possible pleasures?
9. How long should I persist in my pleasure-hunting experiments?
And here are a few questions I would add to this list:
1. What is stopping me from experimenting with these pursuits?
2. What attitude holds me back from trying new avenues to pleasure and meaning in life?
3. What attitude will enable me to try new avenues to pleasure and meaning in life?
4. Will I later regret not taking calculated risks to increase my personal happiness and meaning in life?
Summary
REBT is a philosophy that aims to minimize pain and maximize pleasure. Ellis argued that life is an opportunity to enjoy yourself rather than to prove your human worth. The path to happiness is through personal responsibility, self-direction, unconditional self-acceptance, flexible and non-extreme attitudes, and active experimentation to discover what leads to pleasure, meaning, and life satisfaction.Inertia and inaction will decrease your happiness, while calculated risk-taking and experimentation will increase the chances of your happiness and life satisfaction. The choice is yours. Now go and paint your masterpiece.
Bottom line: If you wish to experience personal happiness, experiment to find one or more creative pursuits that greatly interest you and immerse yourself in them. Alternatively, devote yourself to people or projects which add meaning to your life. Seek, and you shall find.
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