People will live far better with themselves and others if they abandon the concept of self-esteem and adopt the concepts of Unconditional Self and Other Acceptance. People create their own emotional disturbance by evaluating both what they and others do and then conditionally accepting themselves and others if and only if they do well. This is self and other esteem. Unconditional self and other acceptance is rating what a person does, good or bad, but not rating the person good or bad. Self-esteem is invalid reasoning and emotionally handicapping while unconditional and other acceptance is valid reasoning and emotionally liberating. Unconditional Self-Acceptance frees one to take calculated risks to shamelessly pursue one’s goals and to acknowledge failure and misbehavior when it occurs without self or other condemnation. Unconditional Other-Acceptance prevents rage and anger when others misbehave or fall short of expectations. Neither form of acceptance excuses misbehavior.
Emotional Responsibility goes along with self and other acceptance and involves acknowledging that our self-defeating emotions are largely the consequence of the rigid and extreme beliefs we hold about our self, others and life. When we take emotional responsibility we stop blaming others and life for our self-defeating feelings of anger, shame and despair. By embracing emotional responsibility we gain leverage over life’s adversities by controlling our self-defeating emotional reactions to obstacles and persistently working to change what can be changed while not disturbing ourselves over what cannot be changed. Fallible humans are at their finest hour when they unconditionally accept themselves and others and remain responsible for their own self-defeating emotional responses when facing adversity. These ideas, 1. Unconditional Self and Other Acceptance and 2. Emotional Responsibility are well worth spreading.