REBT has a few core ideas. The big three are:
1. The principle of Emotional Responsibility – You make yourself upset over the misbehavior of others. You make yourself angry, hurt, etc. Hurt is anger reserved for loved ones. Anger and hurt never make things better. Keep your preferences but give up your rigid beliefs as to how others act towards you. When they treat you as you dislike it is healthy to feel disappointment, annoyance, perhaps sorrow. These emotions will help you change what you can change and live well with what you cannot change.
2. Unconditional Self and Other Acceptance – It is recommended that you rate your own and other people’s deeds and characteristics but you do not rate the person. So if you perform poorly or misbehave acknowledge it but never put yourself down. See that people cannot be validly rated but what they do can be validly rated. People are people, neither subhuman or superhuman. People are just fallible humans. Some people do great things but that does not make them great people. Some people do bad things. That does not make them bad people. Unconditional self and other acceptance will help you live well with fallible humans. Self-Acceptance will free you up to live your life to enjoy yourself not to prove yourself.
3. High Frustration tolerance – See that you make yourself upset, impatient, angry when you encounter obstacles. Obstacles that exist should exist because they do exist. All the conditions are in place in this complex world for those obstacles to exist at the point in time you encounter them. You can think that they absolutely should not exist but that never removes those obstacles. This belief will render you unsane. You will whine and complain and get yourself all worked up about your obstacle and this will leave you less able to creatively devise ways to circumvent the obstacle. High frustration tolerance leads to unconditional life acceptance. Given the many problems all humans encounter in life high frustration tolerance and unconditional life acceptance come in quite handy. Again REBT teaches change what you can change and accept what you cannot change in order to live well with what cannot be changed.