People often tell you to accept what you cannot change. In doing so, others prescribe acceptance and assume you can heed their wisdom, concluding that this is the process. Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) can teach acceptance as a life skill necessary for coping with life’s most significant challenges and losses. However, although people may be able to make a choice and accept themselves, others, and life unconditionally, what seems to occur more often is that REBT prepares you to learn how to accept what you cannot change. REBT shows you how to remove what gets in the way of learning to accept what you cannot change in the course of living. You learn to accept what you cannot change through the experience life gives to you and the emotions you suffer when you fail to possess a flexible mindset in the face of adversity. We suffer greatly when we do not accommodate unfulfilled desires and ill fortune by insisting that circumstances conform to our wishes. REBT prepares you to make emotional accommodations and respond to life’s challenges when your wishes go unfulfilled.
The Emotionally Harder Path
You can attempt to avoid learning the lesson of acceptance. Making this choice is the hard way of living life. Said another way, not using REBT or not adopting the attitudes taught by REBT makes your path the harder one to go down. Ultimately, the gods of fate are indifferent to your choice and will demand that you learn the lesson of acceptance either way. Sooner or later, life will test your skill at accepting what you cannot change. In the end, it is the experience of life’s misfortunes that genuinely teaches us acceptance. The rigid and extreme attitudes that REBT targets will prevent you from learning the lesson of acceptance that life experience will sooner or later teach you. Stubbornly holding the rigid attitudes REBT targets for change will make you a slow learner in the game of life. While resisting life’s attempt to teach you to accept what you cannot change with your rigid mindset, you will suffer emotional disturbance.
The Somewhat Easier Emotional Path
If you wish to take the somewhat easier path of accepting what you cannot change, then you will need to refute three main ideas that will undermine your learning life’s lessons in acceptance. These include:
- I must possess specific, highly desirable characteristics I covet and do exceptionally well in significant endeavors.
- Other people must treat me as I wish and give me what I want. I cannot bear it when they do not.
- Life must be easy and not challenge me in ways I deem too much to bear.
See that the above three attitudes do not work in this world. They render you disturbed. They are unrealistic. Hopefully, you would not teach them to a child. Instead, you would lovingly point out to a child that life is considerably more challenging when you hold them. Consider the following healthier attitudes:
- I acknowledge there are desirable characteristics that I cannot possess for one reason or another. I also recognize that I will fall short regardless of how badly I want to do well in specific significant endeavors. When I fail, I will allow life to teach me to accept myself unconditionally. I will acknowledge that my flaws and failed performances prove I am flawed, a fallible human, not a lesser human. Holding flexible attitudes towards my characteristics and performances will open my mind to unconditional self-acceptance.
- It is unrealistic to believe others must treat me as I wish and give me what I desire. Even if others were always motivated to do so, a dubious assumption, other people would still be unable to do it consistently because they, too, are fallible humans. When others fall short of how I hope they treat me, I will allow life to teach me to accept them unconditionally as imperfect humans. I will still speak to them and request that they treat me as I wish, but I will learn life’s lesson: that humans will often do as they want and not as I want. Going further, when they treat me in undesirable ways, I will acknowledge that although I may experience a range of uncomfortable negative emotions, I can tolerate them and do so better by being open to unconditionally accepting others as fallible humans, just like me. Going even further, I will admit that it is well worth accepting others unconditionally as it helps me to bear the times they fail to treat me nicely. Holding these attitudes will open my mind to learning to accept others unconditionally and allow me to experience improved interpersonal relationships and have a better chance of working out our conflicts.
- I wish I did not have to face the inevitable flow of difficulties, disappointments, losses, hardships, and injustices that life sooner or later will throw my way. Still, my wishes will not prevent this from happening to me. Sooner or later, all humans face these tests. When these challenges and hardships occur, I will be open to the lesson life teaches me in unconditional acceptance. This openness will occur by reminding myself that things do not have to be as I want them to be and that although I may experience pain when they are not to my liking, I can withstand this pain and not add to it by insisting that life must be as I want it to be. Going further, I will not demand that hardships must not occur and that I must always be comfortable. I will acknowledge that I can withstand discomfort, uncertainty, frustration, loss, and misfortune. It is worth doing so because discomfort, pain, and adversity are part of the human experience. By cultivating these attitudes, I will allow life experiences to teach me to accept what I cannot change.
The Philosophical Medicine of REBT is a Struggle
Cultivating REBT’s flexible and non-extreme attitudes is often very challenging. The struggle to adopt REBT’s flexible and non-extreme attitudes does not reflect a weakness of REBT; it reflects the nature of life and the human experience. The philosophical medicine of REBT does not taste good because life will inevitably have moments of great pain. Furthermore, it is human nature to be slow learners in accommodating what we cannot change. Nonetheless, heed the message of REBT to expedite learning and reduce your personal suffering. Strive to adopt flexible attitudes and then experience what life teaches you about unconditionally accepting yourself, others, and life.