Albert Ellis, the originator of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), created a system of ideas that helps people go beyond overcoming emotional disturbance. Since he wrote his first unpublished manuscript at age 19 on pursuing happiness, Ellis wanted to enable people to self-actualize and experience increased pleasure, satisfaction, meaning, and joy in life.
People seem to have an innate tendency to evolve and develop their talents and potentialities. REBT’s ideas and strategies can help you more fully self-actualize and experience greater life satisfaction and personal happiness. To do so, pursue achievement, approval, and comfort, but avoid demanding that you achieve these goals. Healthy attitudes facilitating self-actualizing include:
- I want to achieve specific goals and will work hard to do so. I may fail, and if I do, that merely proves that I did not have to succeed at my achievement goals at this time in my life. I will continue experimenting with new goals and strategies for achieving my goals. Try fail, try fail, try succeed.
- I want the love and approval of significant others, and I will try my best to get it. Unfortunately, I can only do so much, so I may fail. If I do not get the love and approval I desire, it only shows that I did not have to succeed in getting what I wanted at this time. I may not have the love and approval I desire right now, but things can change; I will continue to do what I can to achieve my goals with people in the future.
- I want to establish and maintain comfort. I will try to do what I can to do so. I may fail. If I fail, this would show that I did not have to establish and maintain my desired comfort. I could tolerate the discomfort I may encounter, and it would be worth doing, as I would have little choice other than to live with the discomfort I experience.
- There are alternate paths to happiness and fulfillment. If one path is closed to me, I will try another. I never have to disturb myself when I do not get what I want.
Empower Yourself With Healthy Attitudes
Empower yourself by cultivating a basic philosophy of unconditional self-acceptance with personal responsibility, tolerance of others with accountability, and unconditional tolerance of life with long-range hedonism, a term used in REBT to describe the pursuit of long-term happiness. Unconditional self-acceptance with responsibility for both your emotional disturbance and happiness will give you the confidence to pursue your goals without the burden of anxiety, shame, and depression that result from demanding success.
Avoid Either\Or Categorical Thinking
Avoid thinking in terms of either\or solutions, categories, and conditions. Either\or thinking will limit your problem-solving effectiveness and trap you in thoughts that do not match reality closely. Reality has multiple varieties of things and outcomes. Thinking in an and\both way that maps to reality more closely tends to lead to healthy emotional and behavioral reactions, creative problem-solving, and adaptation.
Adopt And\Both Non-Categorical Thinking
Adopt an and\both orientation to life. This orientation allows for improved accommodation to reality. For example, life involves both joy and pain; therefore, it has good and bad moments. Life is neither good nor bad but an ever-changing mix. You and others possess aliveness but are not good or bad. You have both desirable and undesirable traits and display both desirable and unwanted behavior. Perfection and utopias do not exist and are examples of either\or thinking. People, relationships, jobs, and circumstances tend to have both positive and negative components, examples of and\boththinking. Another example of and\both thinking is the observation that there is usually more than one way of doing things, each with different advantages and disadvantages. Along similar lines, Albert Ellis, the originator of REBT, emphasized:
To more fully self-actualize, engage in sensible non-conformity and individuality in sex, love, marital, vocational, recreational, and other important aspects of life (Ellis, 1996).
Acknowledge that there is no right way to live your life. There are multiple paths to take, so choose your path, not the one you “should” take as others prescribe.
Become a Student of REBT to Self-Actualize
Monitor your moment-to-moment functioning and strive to discipline your mind using Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy’s powerful ideas and strategies. Become a student of REBT. Although its ABC framework of emotion may appear simple, it is not simplistic. Even with REBT, you can not perfect yourself as you are born and will remain an imperfect human with the capacity to improve how you function and do things. Strive to do better and better. Cultivate your potential, and in so doing, you will achieve a sense of joy and meaning. Experiment with new goals while always willing to progress slowly (long-term hedonism) and possibly fail (tolerance). Begin self-actualization by cultivating unconditional self-acceptance. Allow yourself to do life imperfectly.
Reference
Ellis, A. (1996). Reason and emotion in psychotherapy. Citadel Press.