Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy is a philosophy of acceptance. It encourages you to apply flexible and non-extreme thinking to the cultivation of unconditional self, other, and life acceptance. This full acceptance of life and other people have some applicability to virtually all of life’s many problems. From birth to death, loss, failure, and disappointment are part of the human experience, and REBT can help free you from unhealthy emotional reactions to change what you can change and accept what you cannot change. REBT frees the individual to cope with the great disappointments of life.
Many people feel self-limiting anxiety when the possibility of failure looms on the horizon. People who have achieved significant success in their lives have used failure as a learning opportunity. Some degree of failure is required to accomplish our goals and experience the subsequent joy this brings. Unfortunately, those who cannot tolerate failure miss out on the essential experiential learning and life lessons failure teaches us.
REBT helps you address the root causes of your fear of failure. By addressing the unhealthy emotional roots of your fear of failure, you can liberate yourself to take calculated risks, learn from your mistakes and failures, and move towards achieving those goals you hold dear to your heart.
Ego Disturbance
One fundamental human disturbance is what we in REBT call ego disturbance. Ego disturbance is the self-defeating fear and shame that results when a person fears a future failure or has already failed. In their thinking, they jump to the conclusion that a particular failed attempt defines them as a failure, that is, a failure as a person. This reasoning is what is known as the part-whole error or the fallacy of composition. A failed part does not represent the whole of a thing, just as a failure does not make a person a failure.
REBT theory postulates that what is at the core of ego disturbance is a demand to perform perfectly. When we have a strong desire to do something perfectly, the theory of REBT argues that the human mind quickly and easily transforms this desire into a demand to do it perfectly well. When we hold a rigid attitude and demand that we do perfectly well, we then jump again and define our essence or personhood as being lesser or completely bad and worthless. We turn life into an ego evaluation, a never-ending test of human worth. Fear precedes risk, and shame or depression follows when we fail. Our thinking and feelings lead to procrastination, avoidance of calculated risk-taking, playing life safe, staying in our ego comfort zone, and as a result we do not develop our potential as individuals. Fear and shame stunt growth and development. When we fail, we can learn; however, due to the fear of failure, the individual does not allow failure to occur and thereby does not derive learning from failing.
The antidote to ego disturbance is unconditional self-acceptance. One can choose to accept themselves as a person whether one does well or poorly. It is better to distinguish between the actor and the act, the doer and the deed. See that the person and the thing a person does are not the same. Free yourself by refusing to define yourself in terms of what you do or accomplish. Strive to do well but allow yourself to fail and learn. If you choose to accept yourself unconditionally, your ego can tolerate all sorts of mistakes, and you can thereby profit from the learning they will yield and, in the end, live shamelessly.
To have this type of ego tolerance, you need to hold the following healthy attitudes:
1. I want to do well and succeed but do not absolutely have to do so.
2. When I fail, it never proves I am a failure as a person, regardless of how many times I may do so. I will not define myself in this arbitrary and self-harming way. My failure merely proves I am fallible. It suggests I need more practice and perhaps another strategy to succeed. I can and will choose to unconditionally accept myself with this failure and allow myself to learn from the experience.
Non-Ego Disturbance
The other fundamental human disturbance is what has been referred to in REBT as non-ego disturbance. This disturbance is an extreme attitude of unbearability. In non-ego upset, we consider either a particular situation or the feelings we might experience before, during, or after facing a difficult situation as unbearable. Non-ego based anxiety rooted in an attitude of unbearability leads to avoidance. Avoidance prevents us from learning that we can bear adversity, withstand the uncomfortable feelings we may experience, and tolerate failure despite not wanting to fail. When we hold the attitude that we can, in fact, bear uncomfortable feelings and challenging situations, that we can bear uncertainty, we are free to learn just how strong we are. We are free to fail in the service of either succeeding or learning a little more about what is required to succeed. Again, being able to bear failure allows us to learn from the experience of trying to do something and failing at it.
To have this type of tolerance, you need to hold the following healthy attitude:
- It is uncomfortable to fail, not unbearable. I can stand failure, and it is worth tolerating as there is much to learn from the experience of attempting to do something.
- It is difficult to experience the disappointment of failing, but it is not unbearable. I can stand to experience disappointment and sadness when I fail. Disappointment and sadness are worth bearing because these feelings are the price I pay for the experiential learning I derive when I have a goal and attempt to achieve it.
- I would like to know in advance if my effort will succeed, but I do not have to know. I can exert effort without a guarantee of success. Uncertainty is uncomfortable, not unbearable. I can bear uncertainty and the feelings I have in response to it and choose to do so and take a calculated risk that my effort will pay off. It is worth taking this calculated risk because I may succeed, or I am likely to learn something important for success in the future. I am worth all this effort. I commit to acting without certainty of success and risking failure.
Rational Emotive Imagery\Negative Visualization
Albert Ellis was a firm believer in Rational Emotive Imagery. I also like to call this type of practice Negative Visualization. Although REBT promotes verbally practicing self-helping rational ideas, I suggest a double-barrelled approach and recommend doing imagery exercises. Below are the steps for doing imagery work related to failing:
- Imagine yourself failing at a specific activity you would like to do successfully.
- Allow yourself to feel anxious as you either imagine yourself facing possible future failure or experiencing depression or shame after you have failed.
- While keeping the future failure in mind, or the experience of failure that has occurred in mind, change your unhealthy anxiety, depression, or shame into healthy feelings of concern, sadness, or disappointment. It is important not to do this by imagining a successful outcome. Maintain in your imagination the future possible failure or failure once it has occurred.
- Keep trying to experience these healthy feelings of concern, sadness, or disappointment until you feel them and do not feel anxious, depressed, or ashamed while imagining failure.
- Do this every day for three to five minutes. By doing this for approximately a month, you will see that you free yourself of your fear of failure for the specific activity you have visualized.
Summary:
If you want to succeed, you will probably face failure as you pursue your chosen goals. Failure is not fatal if you do not put yourself down when you fail (ego disturbance). You will allow yourself to exert effort and learn if you observe the available data that you do not have to avoid failure and the accompanying feelings. You can bear failure and the disappointment and sadness that is healthy to experience after failing. You can withstand far more than you are aware of, and REBT frees you to fall short now to succeed later. Discipline your mind by using the flexible and non-extreme I have outlined above. Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead. I dare you to fail!