[Dusty]

On another thread, I posted a link to a book by Albert Ellis called A Guide to Rational Living, and a few folks thanked me for bringing it to their attention, and asked for more info on Ellis and his methods. So I created this thread. I thought it might be interesting to do a book study on A Guide to Rational Living. If you’re interested, buy the book and jump on board. It’s not a game book, it’s a psychology book, but we can figure out how to apply it to game here.

There has also been some discussion of stoicisicm on RVF recently and Ellis was heavily influenced by stoicism as well.

I’ll post a chapter analysis every several days. The book can be found at Barnes & Noble or online. If you don’t have the book immediately, you can catch up quickly to my analysis as the first few chapters are short.

Here's the Amazon link:

http://www.amazon.com/Guide-Rational-Liv...0879800429

Here is some background on Ellis and his methods.

In 1955, Ellis developed REBT (Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy), the first cognitive therapy. With REBT, you learn how to use logic and evidence to manage your emotions better. When I’m talking emotions, I am talking about things like: anxiety, anger, depression, self-esteem, etc.

REBT is not bro-science, nor new age, nor Dr Phil, nor the power of positive thinking bull crap. Ellis is ranked as one of the most influential psychologist of all time (ahead of Sigmund Freud). REBT and its derivatives are practiced and studied in universities and medical schools. It’s been subjected to many empirical medical studies (with control groups and the whole nine yards) and found to be effective.

I am writing a book myself on approach anxiety that applies Dr Ellis’ REBT theory. I’m not a psychologist, however, I do have a good analytical problem-solving mind. I heard about REBT many years ago and had a vague understanding of it, then a few years ago I learned it really well to manage some stress related issues from a job that was kicking my ass, and more recently began to figure out how to apply REBT to game as well. I think the applications to inner game are really strong.

For those who are hearing about REBT and Ellis for the first time, here is a review of the book below. If this resonates with you, then buy the book and jump on the book study.

Quote:

A Guide To Rational Living is one of the most enduring books in the self-help/popular psychology literature, selling over a million copies. Since it was published over 40 years ago thousands of 'inspirational' titles have come and gone, but it continues to change people's lives. Why?

The book brought to public attention a new form of psychology, 'rational emotive behavioral therapy' (REBT), that went against decades of orthodox Freudian psychoanalysis and sparked a revolution in psychology.

REBT says that emotions do not arise as a result of repressed desires and needs, as Freud insisted, but directly from our thoughts, ideas, attitudes and beliefs. It is not the mysterious unconscious that matters most to our psychological health, but the most humdrum statements that we say to ourselves on a daily basis. Added up together, these represent our philosophy of life, one which can quite easily be altered if we are willing to change what we habitually say to ourselves.

Albert Ellis began his career working in the Freudian psychoanalytical tradition, but came to the conclusion that going deeper into a person's history and troubles did not actually have much positive benefit. His focus only on 'what worked' led him to the counterintuitive view that thoughts generate emotions, not the other way around. Reasoning your way out of emotional tangles seems doubtful, but Ellis's pioneering ideas, and four decades of cognitive psychology, have shown that it does indeed work.

Watching your internal sentences

Human beings, the authors note, are language-creating animals. We tend to formulate our emotions and our ideas in terms of words and sentences. They effectively become our thoughts and emotions. Therefore, if we are basically the things that we tell ourselves, any type of personal change requires us to first look at our internal conversations. Do they serve us, or undermine us?

Talk therapy aims to reveal the 'errors in logic' that people believe to be true. If, for instance, you are having terrible feelings of anxiety or fear, you are asked to track back to the original thought in the sequence of thoughts that led to your current anxiety. You will invariably find that you are saying things to yourself such as 'Wouldn't it be terrible if...' or 'Isn't it horrible that I am...' It is at this point that you have to intervene and ask yourself why exactly it would be so terrible if such and such happened, or whether your current situation is really as bad as you say. And ven if it is, will it last forever?

This sort of self-questioning at first seems naïve, but by doing it you begin to see just how much your internal sentences shape your life. After all, if you label some event a 'catastrophe', it surely will become so. You can only live up to your internal statements, whether they make something good, bad or neutral.

Nearly always a choice

Ellis and Harper challenge the reader to accept that it is not people or things themselves that cause us upset and anguish, but what we tell ourselves about those people or things. They cite the Roman philosopher Epictetus, who said: “Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of them.” Also quoted is the famous line from Shakespeare's Hamlet: “There's nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”

People think they are unhappy because of a marriage, or a job, or an illness – but it is always our perception of these things that matters most. The book notes that it is “virtually impossible to sustain an emotional outburst without bolstering it by repeated ideas”. Something will remain 'bad' in your mind only as long as you tell yourself it is. If you do not keep creating the bad feeling, how could it possibly endure? Granted, if you are experiencing physical pain, you cannot simply ignore the pain, but once it is over there is no automatic link between stimulus and feeling. Even with the death of a loved one, you cannot continue to experience depression over the death unless you keep reminding yourself 'How terrible it is that this person is now gone!'.

If you can't accept this, consider the pleasant feelings you have. After you have enjoyed a symphony or seen a play, you cannot keep feeling the positive emotions they sparked without going back in your mind to certain passages or scenes. Emotions need to be generated in order to be felt. Sustained emotion of any type requires thinking, and it is usually thinking of an evaluative type, that is, your judgment about a situation or person.

People make the mistake of thinking that emotion 'just happens' in response to something, but in fact this is rare. Some types of anger are a direct response to a situation which relate to our inbuilt survival mechanisms. These are biologically rooted reactions. Generally though, it is thoughts you generate that determine the quality of your emotional life.