I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it. – Pablo Picasso
REBT teaches healthy attitudes toward yourself, others, and life to minimize pain and maximize pleasure. REBT promotes long-term hedonism. From the REBT perspective, life has no inherent meaning. We give life meaning by doing things we enjoy and avoiding pain. People maximize enjoyment by living for both today and tomorrow in their decisions and what they do. To do this, they had better not tread on the rights of others as we live in a world where others are also attempting to maximize their pleasure and will not welcome disregard for their rights. Most people may not realize they practice the philosophy of hedonism and then do not deliberately take steps to maximize their pleasure and avoid pain. By living without awareness, people sometimes live more for the short-term pleasures of life or feel guilty about seeking pleasure and trying to maximize it. Others live to prove their human worth rather than enjoy themselves. Short-term hedonism or the goal of living life to prove yourself both have significant downsides from the REBT perspective and are not reasonable paths to take in life.
To assist you in your pleasure-seeking, pain-minimizing strivings, REBT encourages you to discipline your mind and adopt healthy attitudes. Healthy attitudes involve constructing self-statements that accurately reflect what you and others are doing and what is happening in the world around you. Healthy attitudes, sometimes referred to as rational attitudes, work well in the world you live in. When you have an unhealthy attitude towards yourself, you will likely suffer self-defeating emotional consequences, including the generation of unhealthy conclusions about yourself, others, and the world. One result is that you may impose limitations on what you attempt to do in life because of your self-limiting conclusions. The sad thing about self-imposed limitations is that you will hold yourself back from trying to do things you may enjoy and become proficient in if you practice. We learn by doing; if we believe we cannot do something because we conclude we do not have what it takes to succeed, we fail to try and practice. With each activity we try, we learn from doing, which increases the chances we will succeed in the future and experience pleasure. Practice makes you better at anything you practice, but you have to allow yourself to try and do it repeatedly.
REBT places a great emphasis on language. Language is a tool, a human ability that sets humans apart from animals. Language allows us to think, which is communicating with ourselves. The language we use to decide what to do with our precious time can create self-imposed limitations on our actions and pleasure.
The verb to be is a ubiquitous language structure we use to think with, but it limits human possibility and pleasure. We use this language structure to communicate to ourselves and what we believe we can do. When an individual thinks, “I am bad at math,” they make a statement that may lead them to stop practicing math because their thinking suggests they lack the necessary ingredients to do math. A better, more precise way to communicate with themself would be any of these:
- I find math problems challenging.
- I experience difficulty with math homework.
- I do not find math easy to do, and I avoid practicing it.
Thinking about math in the way shown above produces a psychological mindset conducive to trying math, even if a person finds it challenging. By doing math problems, they will improve, and doing something better leads to feelings of pleasure. If they think, “I am bad at math,” they will avoid doing math and not get better at it, thereby sealing their fate.
I often observe patients with emotional problems hold themselves back by telling themselves, “I am disabled.” Usually, when a person receives disability financial support, the government limits how much they can earn from part-time employment. This rule only reinforces the notion that they “are disabled.” The reinforcement system does not incentivize individuals to see themselves as able. I often tell these patients not to internalize or become their diagnosis or disability. I would prefer that the individual acknowledge their emotional problems but also see that the medication and REBT therapy they receive have led to significant functional improvement. They can do many things to a greater or lesser extent. If the individual does not try to work part-time because they think, “I am disabled,” they lose out on the pleasure and structure part-time employment will bring them. They often lead inactive lives, staying home most days doing little, earning little, and enjoying little. Humans function well when we are busy doing things. Doing little because of the incentives in place or because of how we think leads to depression. One evidence-based treatment for depression is known as activity scheduling. In this treatment for depression, people are encouraged to schedule their day hour by hour with a mix of tasks to maintain their lives (e.g., doing laundry) and other tasks they enjoy doing, like watching a movie or reading a book. People who schedule their activities and do more tend to rate their moods more highly at the end of the day than those who lead unstructured days and do little hour to hour. Doing things throughout the day leads to improved moods, but some people stop themselves from doing things throughout the day.
My REBT advice applies equally well to students and the rest of us. When we think “I am” or “I am not,” we will hold ourselves back from studying something we find difficult, trying something we do not do particularly well, and more or less seal our fate. Discipline your mind to spot your “I am” or “I am not” statements and restate things without the verb to be. For example:
Verb to be: I am bad.
REBT alternative: I did a bad thing. I also do good things.
Verb to be: I am not smart enough to succeed in school.
REBT alternative: I will study the subjects in school and do my best. Time studying matters a great deal in success at school.
Verb to be: I am not good at foreign languages.
REBT alternative: Learning to speak a foreign language takes practice. It is not so much about innate talent as about practice. I can learn to speak a foreign language if I work at it. I may not become fluent, but I can still learn a foreign language by doing it and working at it.
Verb to be: I am fat.
REBT alternative: I weigh more than I would prefer to. I could eat different foods, eat smaller quantities, and move more, which will likely lead me to weigh less. I may not be able to approximate an ideal weight, but I can do better if I work at it.
Verb to be: I am afraid to go out of my house. I am a fearful person.
REBT alternative: When I go out, I feel fear, but I am not a fearful person. I will leave my house despite my fear and learn to tolerate it. I don’t want to be a prisoner of my home. Going out and facing my fear will help me learn to be outside my house.
Verb to be: I am a failure.
REBT alternative: I do things that succeed and things that fail. I am neither a success nor a failure; I do things that succeed and fail. If I want to achieve more often, I have better keep practicing doing what I find challenging to do.
Verb to be: I am a worthless person.
REBT alternative: I possess aliveness and define myself as worthless. I could define myself as worthwhile. I am neither worthless nor worthwhile. I do things—some I do well and some less well. If I want to do things better, I will do them repeatedly to learn to do them better!
Summary
REBT teaches people how to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. REBT posits that life lacks meaning. We create meaning by doing things we like or by doing things that will help us avoid pain. REBT encourages people to avoid defining themselves with “I am” or “I am not” statements. People possess aliveness and have goals related to their instinct to seek pleasure and avoid pain. People can discipline their minds to spot their self-limiting attitudes framed as “I am” or “I am not” statements. We learn by doing. Converting these self-definitional “I am” statements into “I do” or “do not do” statements will help you focus your attention on doing so and will free you from holding yourself back. Practice makes you better, so if you wish to experience the pleasure of doing something well, allow yourself to do it poorly and keep doing it until you do it better.