THE HAPPINESS BLOG: THE LINK BACK TO REBT

BEGINNING WITH "THE MADNESS OF UNCONDITIONAL POSITIVE REGARD"

Fairness

Last week I wrote about the importance of fairness and justice, and how counsellors and therapists need to be careful not to dismiss the client's ‘unfairness issues'.  We need to respect the rights of clients, and to recognize that they may be being victimized by others, and we need to be on their side in teaching them how to defend themselves in life, and how they can become assertive individuals. 

Of course, as I said, there will be some immoral actions (committed by others) which our clients cannot control, and once they have definitely established that they cannot control them, they need to let them be.  "When it's raining, we just let it rain!"  Why do we let it rain when it's raining?  Because a human individual, or a human group, cannot push the rain back up into the clouds.  And sometimes we cannot push an immoral action back into its source.  But we do not thereby excuse that action, or say it is unimportant that immoral acts occur in the world. 

We should be concerned citizens, and concerned individuals, and we should (morally) care about the suffering of others.  We should (morally) teach people to accept the (immoral) things they cannot control, and to control the (immoral) things they can control.

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Morality and the Individual:
This week I want to begin to write about another area of weakness in traditional REBT (Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy) theory, and that is the concept of "Unconditional Self and Other Acceptance".

This idea was a derivation-by-rejection of Carl Rogers' concept of ‘Unconditional Positive Regard', which is the crazy (Rogers') idea that, no matter how other people behave we should positively regard them!  Sheer madness: and a recipe for social breakdown and the end of civilization.  Civilization, in the form of individual socialization, necessarily involves learning the rules of our mothers and fathers, our neighbours and peers, our school teachers, and so on.  We cannot hope to live socially if we do not know what is allowed and what is not allowed.  (But as adults we need to have clarity about ‘why' something is moral, and ‘why' something else is immoral.  Not just rule following, but moral judgement).

Today I want to look at Rogers (and one of his supporters, Barry Stevens) on the subject of Unconditional Positive Regard (UPR), and next week I will move on to Albert Ellis's Unconditional Self Acceptance.

Back in February 2002, when I was studying for my Advanced Diploma in Counselling Psychology and Psychotherapy, I had to review the ideas of Carl Rogers (as part of my study of thirteen different systems of counselling and psychotherapy).  What follows below, in quotation marks, is an extract from that particular paper.  I had begun by defining what I mean by "my self"; how I am a product of my social experience and my physical existence:

‘Indeed, I would be incapable of functioning in a society of any kind unless I had learned to distinguish certain acceptable from certain unacceptable forms of behaviour.  For Rogers, as I read him, all of these socially prescribed behaviours and attitudes are probably seen as forms of avoidable, and undesirable, and possibly detestable "conditions of worth".  (In person centred counselling, ‘conditions of worth' refer to the idea that ‘I can be worthy, or okay, if I fulfil (this condition) or if I fail to fulfil (that condition)').

‘(See for example his (Rogers') reference to a mother who criticised her little boy for pulling his sister's hair, in Rogers and Stevens [1998][1], ..., above.  According to Rogers, the boy's "organismic valuing system" told him that the pulling of his sister's hair was nice, and good, but his mother distorted his organismic valuing system by scolding him for this act.  See also Stevens's [1998] highly emotive diatribe against a policeman who told her son off, when he was a first-year undergraduate, because he overloaded his car with passengers, and let several of his friends ride on the running boards of his car [i.e. to hang on to the outside of his car while he drove along the public highway!]   Again, this was seen as distorting his "organismic valuing system".  According to Stevens, her son needed no teaching or training, as his innate organismic valuing system could inform him of how to behave appropriately. [Perles, 1976, would probably see this as a good example of how misguided movements towards self-actualization can bring the individual into severe conflict with society, and thus to classification as a criminal, for "...arrogat{ing} to himself functions traditionally defined as the prerogatives of the state" {page 27}[2]].

‘(Such naive, juvenile rebelliousness [in Rogers and Stevens] is difficult to comprehend.  I certainly was not expecting such anti-social views when I began reading for this assignment!  [What was so unacceptable to Stevens was the cop's suggestion, to her son, that her son was "behaving irresponsibly"!  She seems to be implying that her son could not be realistically expected to put up with such an "outrageous assault" on his "integrity"; such a dent in his "self-esteem"; such an "invalidation" of his "organismic valuing system"?  And Stevens' general reaction to the accusation of "behaving irresponsibility" is quite extreme.  When the words are applied to any of her behaviours, she feels it is like "a dagger being twisted in my chest".[3]  Rogers and Stevens et al {1998}, page 32].  More generally, Stevens engages in awfulizing and demandingness (on pages 30-31) about her son and also about her poor treatment by a nurse in hospital.  She characterizes that unsupportive nurse as being "like Eichman" [a Nazi!] for not acting as directed [or indicated] by Stevens [the patient!] and her "organismic valuing system", which knew better than any nurse what was required!   Furthermore, Stevens speaks approvingly of the fact that, many years after her son's breach of the highway code, he still hates cops! Page 30, Rogers and Stevens [1998].  [Not much space for the cop to self-actualize there!]  [Also, Perles, 1976, would not consider Stevens' son as a "well-integrated man", because of his unwillingness, or inability, to "recognize the contact boundary between himself and his society", and because he fails to "render unto Caesar {or society} the things which are Caesar's and to retain for himself those things that are his own". Page 26].

‘For me, these rebellious attitudes of Rogers and Stevens are just resistance to what is so: awfulizing about the unavoidable and inevitable fact that children are not capitulated to by their parents when the child demands that s/he must get what s/he wants, when s/he wants it, right now, yesterday!  And the equally unavoidable fact that children are forced [yes, forced!] into the Procrustean bed of whichever society they happen to be born into! (As Alan Watts says, in the Way of Zen, this is the unavoidable price we pay for the undeniable benefits of civilization.  However, as Freud points out, we then need some kind of corrective later in life, to help us to recover from any damage done in the processes of our socialization. Nevertheless, socialized we must be; and we have to learn to be moral citizens in order to enjoy the benefits of our society and community, and to avoid harming others).

‘(Rogers also believed that decisions made by one individual, based on their internal locus of evaluation, would not only be valid for that individual, but also for others. [Nelson-Jones, 2001, page 95].  The underlying assumption here is that each person carries a "universal morality", and would know from their "body sense" what is 'right' and 'wrong' in any given situation. [McLeod, 1998, page 95: as in Footnote 41 below.  McLeod's view can be confirmed by reading pages 26-27 of Rogers and Stevens, 1998].  I think most anthropologists, criminologists and psychologists would hotly contest Rogers' implicit concept of a "universal morality".  [Stevens is even more explicit on this point, on pages 44-45, after she has described "taking freedom" for herself.  "When I am within this freedom", she continues, "it is silly to think of 'learning' ethics.  Ethics course through me with my blood, without my thinking.  What we call ethics simply is - a part of mankind, existing as a free response to life and to all living.  How can I wish to hurt you, when my feeling is that you are me and I am you?  How can I feel grateful that you give to me when I am you?  There is only happiness in the giving that is receiving too - happiness without responsibility or obligation".  This, however, is not normal human consciousness!  Stevens sounds like a person who has achieved "enlightenment", as defined in Zen and Sufism, which is quite an achievement; and I am happy for her liberation.  However, the problem with her analysis is this: Stevens had to learn how to think and feel this way - it did not come naturally.  It was not inborn!  This system of ethics which she describes took her years to establish, through enormous struggle and emotional turbulence!  (And it normally arrives without warning and lasts only momentarily!  And it cannot be conjured up again at will!  Though some of the gains can be retained in long term memory for some time after the enlightenment state departs).   If systems of ethics came naturally to all humans, then they would be shared by all humans, and society would not have fractured into antagonistic classes, races and nations; and frequently mutually antagonistic genders.  If ethical systems were inborn, then it would not have been necessary for religions to emerge, and to invent ethical systems to impose upon individuals.  And it does not support Stevens' argument to say that religious ethics were invented to support political usurpers, because, how could corrupt political usurpers ever emerge among beings that have an inborn ethical system?])".

That is the end of my brief introduction to the madness of Unconditional Positive Regard (UPR).  Next week I will take a look at the ways in which Unconditional Self and Other Acceptance (USA/UOA), developed by Dr Albert Ellis, improved on this lamentable ‘philosophy'; and also the weaknesses that exist within USA/UOA.

PS: To think your way to happiness right now, remember the Five Windows model (from earlier posts), and apply the first two or three windows to your biggest current preoccupation, which is reducing your happiness.  Test it for yourself.  You will quickly find that happiness returns when you get your preoccupations in a more realistic ‘frame'.

Best wishes,

Jim

Dr Jim Byrne
ABC Coaching and Counselling Services

jim.byrne@abc-counselling.com

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[3] Is it any wonder that we are facing such a decline in moral standards when we consider that we have been imbibing this kind of nonsense, as free-floating ‘memes' since the 1970/80s?

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DEALING WITH UNFAIRNESS ISSUES IN THERAPY AND POLITICS

We humans cannot be truly happy unless we learn how to think about our lives, and live our lives as thoughtful people.  ‘The unexamined life is not worth living", as Plato said.

Thinking is a process of asking and answering questions; of posing and solving problems.  One of the unavoidable problems for humans is that we must each learn what to think - social rules and moral codes - before we ever get a chance to learn how to think.  Some people seem to be able to shed those social rules and moral codes and to become quite immoral, and they also seem not to think.  They operate at the level of appetite led animals:  Greedy, angry and aggressive.

I was raised as a moral person - a ‘good Catholic' - and that moral education has largely stayed with me throughout my sixty-odd years of life.  Over the decades I have migrated from Catholicism, via Marxism, to Buddhism.  When I was 22 years old, I became a Marxist revolutionary for the very simple moral reason that it is not okay for governments to promote inequality between citizens.  We are all born equal and deserve equal treatment; but inequalities have crept into our social groupings, over a period of centuries, and produced very different, stratified social classes.  While Marx thought that his philosophy was not moral, but historical/evolutionary, I was always motivated by the importance of the moral principle of fairness.

When I got involved in studying Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT), in 1992 onwards, I was enrolled into a whole new set of beliefs, which, broadly, I found liberating.  For example, I learned to eliminate inappropriate and oppressive ‘shoulds' about practical matters.

However, for a good number of years, I failed to notice that REBT was strongly advocating that people ignore social norms regarding moral judgements.  For example, Dr Ellis's repeated references to the claim that "Hitler was not a bad man!"  And "Why must life be fair when it's obviously unfair?"  These seemed to be 'harmless therapeutic tools', but the time would come when they would be applied socially as guides to action or non-action.  I was finally awoken to this danger by the way in which Dr Ellis was treated in the final years of his life by some of his former colleagues.  

In the final years of Albert Ellis's life, certain things were said about him, and certain things were done towards him, which we, the ‘Friends of Ellis' and the ‘Justice for Albert Ellis Campaign', wished to oppose.  However, we were unable to develop a ‘moral discourse' on the ‘unfairness of removing Ellis from office', because we had voluntarily given up all the moral injunction words - should, must, have to, ought to, got to, need to - and we had hear Ellis during some of his public demonstrations of REBT, with members of the public in the ‘client chair', ‘whipping them' out of their attachment to ‘unfairness issues'.  It often sounded like he was implying that no client should ever have any feelings of having been treated unfairly.  The only justification for this belief of his was this: ‘Why must your life be fair, when it's obviously unfair?'

Albert Ellis's original motivation for getting rid of the word ‘should' was a noble one.  But it was also short-sighted.  Who could have known that he would end his life invoking moral shoulds about fairness in the New York Supreme Court, while denying that there are any valid ‘shoulds' about fairness in newspaper interviews with journalists.  He ended his life in a paradox: "There are no shoulds; but those people should not have removed me from office!"  "Why must life be fair?  Because it is now my life we are talking about!"  The bell cracked!

My own views on fairness now - in this post-Ellis world - are as follows:

1. Fairness is the core of the Golden Rule, which is the cornerstone of duty ethics (or deontology).  We must treat others as we would wish them to treat us, for it would be offensive to both our intuitive sense of right and wrong, and to our formal logic, to argue otherwise.  The literature on this topic begins with Kant's Critique of Practical Reason, and continues up to Rawl's Ethic of Justice. 

2. Unfairness is the basis of inequality of treatment, and inequality of opportunity, in our mad, neo-liberal world.  And that practical inequality is driving huge increases in human misery all over the globe, including in the heartland of global capitalism, the US/UK, where levels of human degradation are reaching critical breakdown point.

3. Neither can unfairness be justified by utilitarianism, in that the greatest good of the smallest number is consistent with present approaches to neo-liberal promotion of greater inequality; while utilitarian reasoning calls for the greatest good of the greatest number.

3b. There are no moral philosophies, or moral principles, that can be invoked to justify unfairness!

4. If you are a therapist and you want to discuss fairness with a therapy client, then this is the way to proceed:

(a) Marcus Aurelius, in his Meditations, argued that freedom and happiness consists of understanding one principle: There are certain things we can control and certain things we cannot control.  It is only after we have learned to distinguish between what we can and cannot control that inner harmony and outer effectiveness become possible.

(b) Get the client to draw two columns on a sheet of A4 (letter) paper - or a ‘legal pad' - and write these headings on the top of the two columns, respectively:

(1) What I can control:

(2) What I cannot control.

(c) Teach them to begin by putting all of their unfairness issues in the first column - what they can control; and get them to add an ‘if/unless' clause at the end of each of them.  In other words:

(1) I can control being reinstated to my job, ‘if I do X, Y, or Z' (Then add all those actions that they can control, and commit to take them)

(2) I can control being reinstated to my job, ‘unless A, B or C happens...' (Then add all those eventualities which would make it impossible to be reinstated)

(d) Teach them to transfer individual unfairness issues to the right-hand column when, and only when, their ‘if/unless' clauses indicate that there is now no longer any possibility of controlling this issue.

And if you are a counsellor/therapist, and a client comes to you with an unfairness issue, and you feel the urge to parrot Dr Albert Ellis - "Why must the world be fair, when it is obviously unfair?" - remind yourself that this is not a helpful question to ask, because:

1. Sometimes life is fair.

2. We have an individual and a social responsibility - according to the Golden Rule - to champion fairness, and to oppose unfairness, up to, but not including that point at which we have done all the research and demonstrated beyond all reasonable doubt that this particular unfairness issue cannot be controlled.  At that point you can tell your client:

3. "Why don't you give up trying to control this particular unfairness issue?  But keep insisting that the world be fair, and fairer, and hold public officials to account on this".  If politicians and business people insist upon promoting more and more unfairness in this world of ours, then they can be sure, just like Albert Ellis, that the day will come when they will be pleading for fairness from their degraded and abused opponents.  Remember the Russian Revolution!  Think it couldn't happen again?  Grow up!

If you want to be happy and free, always focus on what you can and cannot control, and commit to control those things that seem to be controllable, whether they are about fairness/unfairness or any other subject under the sun.

Here's a shocking image for you to contemplate:


This collage is a metaphor for the integration of the therapeutic ideas of Dr Albert Ellis, Dr Sigmund Freud, and Dr Eric Berne.
 

Reviewing REBT, Positive Psychology and Sigmund Freud

The great strength of Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT) is that it teaches a philosophy of life.  In a nutshell, this is it:

"If you will just give up ‘awfulizing', ‘demandingness', ‘low frustration tolerance', and ‘condemning and damning yourself, others and the world', then your life will become calmer and happier".

Let us now look at what is involved in implementing such a philosophy in your own life.

To give up awfulizing you have to develop a way of accurately rating the degree of badness of those noxious events and situations by which you are beset.  The best system for this kind of accurate rating, that I have seen, is that developed by Dr Tom Miller.  In Self Discipline and Emotional Control (which is available online as an audio or video programme), he developed something called The Johnny Carson Scale which helps us to put a realistic, numerical degree of badness on any adversity with which we are faced.  By becoming more realistic, be also become less disturbed.

To give up demandingness is a more complex problem.  In moderate forms of REBT, giving up demandingness means giving up extreme forms of demands, such as: "I must be loved and approved by all significant others, all of the time, and if I'm not, then this is awful, and I am no good".  This is clearly illogical, and for this reason we say it is irrational.  In extreme forms of REBT, on the other hand, all forms of usage of the words "should", "must", "have to", "ought to", "got to", "need to" are outlawed, proscribed and prohibited to ourselves - except for their use to describe "reality".  For example, I would be able to say: "My life should be the way it is, because it is!"  Unfortunately, this means we cannot make any moral prescriptions, or realistic demands upon ourselves, others and the world.  (Although Tom Miller is very good on teaching how to get rid of awfulizing, he is an extremist when it comes to eliminating demandingness!)  My own view is this: We should give up all unrealistic and unreasonable demands on ourselves, others and the world; but keep our moral prescriptions and our reasonable demands about our own behaviour, the behaviour of others, and the nature of the social world.  (To learn my form of giving up demandingness, see in particular my pamphlet: Overcoming Fear and Anxiety).

To give up low frustration tolerance we need to develop persistence, a commitment to work steadily towards our goals, and a system of rewards and penalties to keep our show on the road.  And we need to maintain our lives in reasonable balance.  In particular, we need to focus on the costs of quitting under pressure, and the benefits of soldiering on despite all setbacks, frustrations and difficulties. (See my Overcoming Procrastination programme).

To give up condemning and damning of ourselves, others and the world, we need to develop our sense that "I'm okay, and you're okay" - in the sense that you and I are totally acceptable to me exactly as we are, even though we might want to change our own or each others behaviours.  And we need to learn to manage our emotional reactions to the world.  (See my Supreme Self-Confidence book).

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Positive Psychology

Positive psychology is a relatively new field of development.  One of its key players is Dr Martin Seligman who began his research career in the distasteful and morally questionable experiments which involved electrocution of dogs to explore ideas of ‘learned helplessness'.  However, he may have redeemed himself by his work on positive psychology and the promotion of human happiness.  In his book - Authentic Happiness: Using the new positive psychology to realize your potential for lasting fulfilment - he emphasizes the importance of focusing on our strengths and playing to our strengths in life, instead of focusing on our weaknesses and deficiencies.  This could be seen as an updating of Albert Ellis's "forget the god-awful past" to "forget your god-awful deficiencies and focus on your strengths".  However, my take is this:

Our weaknesses are a manifestation of our Bad Wolf side; and our strengths are a manifestation of our Good Wolf side.  We morally must starve our Bad Wolf and feed our Good Wolf.  We cannot do that by "forgetting" anything.  We need to be maximally conscious about where we are in the world, how we got there, and where we want to get to now and in the future.  This requires that we develop our Good Wolf, which includes both Talents and Virtues.  Where does our talent lie?  We must find out and then utilize our talents to the full.  If we want to be happy, then we must not waste our lives merely existing, or merely chasing material rewards.  We must use the talents we were born with, which we were given socially, and which we have partially developed through our life's experience.  We must also live our lives from a set of explicit virtues, or moral guidelines. 

The Buddhist Eightfold Path (available online) is a good starting place, which we must learn to interpret and apply for ourselves.  Seligman - in his Authentic Happiness book - lists six virtues that he recommends:

"Wisdom and knowledge

Courage

Love and humanity

Justice

Temperance

Spirituality and transcendence"

Some, like Mihály Csíkszentmihályi (pronounced Chick-sent-me-hi) emphasize the Christian virtues of :

"Faith,

hope

and charity (or loving-kindness)".

We could also add:

Commitment

Integrity

Honesty.

And several others.

What are your strengths?  What virtues guide your life?  Are you growing your Good Wolf and starving your Bad Wolf?

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Freud and Ellis compared

In Albert Ellis's book - Reason and Emotion in Psychotherapy, 1962, pages 25-27 - Dr Ellis is working with a client, and trying to persuade her that "...(your) ‘feeling', as you call it, is only your belief - do you see that?"  He then went on to argue that the client starts with an axiom or hypothesis about how they should be or behave, checks for the evidence, finds they are not functioning like that and therefore concludes: "Therefore I am no good - in fact I am rotten and worthless".  (Page 26).  But, says Ellis, we are actually forming tautological syllogisms, or self-fulfilling prophecies.  "But the only real or at least unbiased ‘facts' in this ‘logical' chain we are thereby constructing are our own starting premises - the sentences we tell ourselves to begin with".  

The system of therapy that arises out of this analysis works like this.  Look for the client's false conclusions.  Present them with their conclusion, and ask them: What are the premises (or evidential bases) that support this conclusion?  Write down their answers and try to organize them into a formal syllogistic argument, following critical thinking principles - (e.g. Bowell and Kemp, Critical Thinking: a concise guide).  Test the argument to see if the conclusion follows logically from the premises.  In the process, the client learns to think more logically and reasonably (and thus rationally) about their premises and conclusions.  If this process is done repeatedly with the client, the client gets an education in how to think more effectively - especially if this education also teaches about ‘awfulizing' and ‘low frustration tolerance', and a more realistic use of demands and commands.

In Freud (1962) - Two Short Accounts of psycho-Analysis - Dr Sigmund Freud describes Dr Breuer's work with one of his first therapy patients:

"It was observed that, while the patient was in her states of ‘absence' (altered personality accompanied by confusion), she was in the habit of muttering a few words to herself which seemed as though they arose from some train of thought that was occupying her mind": (page 35).  Breuer would take those words, hypnotize the patient, present her with those words as a starting point, and encourage her to talk forwards from that point.  In the process he found out that, while the patient was experiencing her ‘absences' she was actually engaging in "profoundly melancholy fantasies" or "daydreams". 

"When she had related a number of these phantasies, she was as if set free, and she was brought back to normal mental life".

Although she would then slip back after a few hours, and needed further treatment the following day, she eventually experienced a total cure of her condition.  This became known as the ‘talking cure' or ‘chimney sweeping'. (Page 35). 

It seems her symptoms began as a result of ‘emotional experiences' (C's - or Consequent emotions, in REBT-speak) which she did not process, but pushed aside, or repressed.  Bringing them to conscious awareness, and processing and digesting them, seemed to clear them up.  ("Whatever you resist persists!")

"Almost all the symptoms had arisen in this way as residues - ‘precipitates' they might be called - of emotional experiences.  To these experiences, therefore, we later gave the name of ‘psychical traumas', while the particular nature of the symptoms was explained by their relation to the traumatic scenes which were their cause.  They were, to use a technical term, ‘determined' by the scenes of whose recollection they represented residues..." (Page 37). 

Are these two views of the origins of emotional distress totally incompatible?  Ellis (1962) refers to false assumptions, false logic and unsupportable arguments.  Freud (1962) refers to emotional experiences and mental traumas.  Ellis is emphasizing the B, or our beliefs about what happens to us, and Freud is emphasizing the A, or what actually happens (which in these examples are ‘emotional experiences', which we normally think of as Cs!).  Don't we know already that A x B = C?  Aren't Freud and Ellis presenting two sides of the same argument?  Or at least compatible arguments?

Don't we also know of cases where it was only necessary to straighten the client's logic out and they were cured?  And yet others where we had to help the client to find the original trauma that lay at the root of their present problem, and help them to "complete there experience" of it, by talking it through, and learning to file it away using their Adult ego state functioning?

Are Freud and Ellis so totally incompatible as some believe?  And how can we integrate the best of both traditions?  I have been working on this challenge for several months, and writing up my thoughts over Christmas; and I have almost finished my CENT Paper No.9, which deals with the relationship of the "individual" to his/her social origins.  This includes an integration of Freud, Klein and Berne; informed by other theorists as appropriate.  Ellis's role will come later when we look at the ‘belief content' of the ego states.  Paper No.9 will be published in the next couple of days, here: The Institute for CENT Studies.

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HAPPY NEW YEAR

If you live in that part of the world which is currently celebrating the New Year - which excludes China, the Chinese Diaspora, and some other cultural groups - then I wish you a very happy New Year for 2010. But how are you going to try to increase your happiness?

The psychology of happiness indicates that material assets are not prime factors in promoting happiness, once subsistence level has been reached. The more important factors include:

(1) Being involved in engrossing activities that are meaningful for you;

(2) Having a purpose in life that is much bigger than yourself;

(3) Having at least one major relationship involving trust and intimacy;

(4) Working intelligently towards your own goals;

(5) Learning to distinguish between what you can and cannot control; and "when it rains, just letting it rain!"

(6) Learning to practice gratitude for what you have in your life, instead of always focusing on what you do not have!

One of my main definition of 'happiness' would be this: 'To experience peace of mind; to be calm; to be contented; regardless of external circumstances'. This is closer to the Buddhist concept of 'detachment from desire'; or the Greek (Aristotelian) concept of 'Eudaimonia', which flows from living a virtuous life, rather than receiving anything from outside yourself.

Since you cannot always get what you want; and life can be very difficult, frustrating and sometimes downright painful, I strongly advise my clients to seek the second type of 'happiness' - namely 'contentment; detachment; eudaimonia; serenity; acceptance of your lot'. With this approach, you stay with the difficulties in your life; complete your experience of them; embrace them; and feel the sadness, irritation, concern, and so on that these situations evoke in us. What we find with this approach is that, after a certain amount of healthy negative emotion, such as sadness, the sun comes out, and happiness returns, without any need to receive anything (much) from outside of ourselves.

Thus the psychology of success, for me, becomes the psychology of acceptance of what is so; detachment from excessive desiring of the unattainable; the living of a virtuous life, with and for others; and so on. In this way we can be 'happy' even when the rain pours in through our leaking roof, or the money runs out of our bank accounts too quickly!

Daily meditation and physical exercise can help to generate a longterm sense of happiness and contentment. Also eating the right diet.

And remember to use the Five Windows Model to reframe all of your problem situations, as described in earlier blog posts.

Happy New Year, and thanks for your interest in this blog through 2009.

Best wishes,

Jim

Dr Jim Byrne
ABC Coaching and Counselling Services

jim.byrne@abc-counselling.com

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