Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy is unique in that it does not want you merely to feel better but it encourages you to ensure long term well-being by making a profound philosophical shift. This is a lofty goal but worthy of effort. To make such a profound philosophical shift do the following:
1. Accept the idea that events and people are not solely responsible for your emotional upset. Accept responsibility for largely contributing to your emotional upset by holding a rigid and demanding philosophy that you, others and life itself be a particular way. This is the principal of emotional responsibility.
2. Accept human fallibility and then elect to rate the parts of a person or their behavior but not summing these parts and scoring the person as a person. This is the principal of unconditional self-acceptance and unconditional other-acceptance.
3. Accept that the worst-case scenario may happen (death of a loved one, personal loss, big mistakes) and that although these are very, very bad see that life goes on and that one can still have some degree of happiness despite the occurrence of the worst-case scenario. This is the concept of unconditional life-acceptance.
4. See that people who do bad things are fallible humans who are doing bad things but are not bad people. Those people who are misbehaving are responsible for their bad actions but damning them is philosophically illegitimate and leads to self-defeating anger and rage. This is the principal of unconditional other acceptance.
5. Accept that we live in a world of probability where absolute certainty does not exist. This is part of the philosophy of unconditional life acceptance. We may wish for certainty but we will be far better off, and without anxiety, if we learn to tolerate the uncertainty of life. With such tolerance for uncertainty the feeling of concern will motivate us to take prudent steps to prevent what is preventable.
Making a profound philosophical shift takes a tremendous amount of work and practice. However, in striving for such a profound philosophical shift you get better value for your therapeutic dollar. Getting better is fine but staying better is better still!