"The important elements of personality growth are probably the achievement of enlightened self-interest, self-direction, tolerance, acceptance of ambiguity and uncertainty, flexibility, acceptance of reality, commitment, risk-taking, and self-acceptance.
People who are well-adjusted to themselves and to the social group with which they live are primarily devoted to being happy, gaining satisfaction, and avoiding truly noxious, painful, or depriving circumstances. At the same time, they are also devoted to seeing that their fellow humans also survive and are reasonably happy. While they are most interested in their own life and pleasure, they realize the importance of not needlessly stepping on others toes and unduly restricting their living space. Consequently, they try to be non-harming to practically everyone, and select a relatively few individuals (because their time is limited) to actively befriend and care for. They do not dishonestly pretend to be purely altruistic; but are authentically and realistically self-interested and socially interested, and therefore impose certain social restrictions on themselves.
People who have a mature and growing personality assume responsibility for their own thinking and living. They are able to work independently at most of their problems, and while at times wanting or preferring the cooperation and help of others, do not need their support to create an inner sense of worthiness.
Emotionally stable and growing people are highly tolerant of the desires and behaviors of other human beings, even though these may differ significantly from their own. Even when others behave in a manner they consider to be mistaken or unethical, they acknowledge that because of people's essential fallibility, others have a right to be wrong. While disliking or abhorring some of their partners' acts , tolerant people do not condemn them, as persons, for performing these unlikable acts. The tend to accept the fact that all humans are remarkably error-prone, do not unrealistically expect others to be perfect, and refrain from despising or punishing others even when they make mistakes.
People who allow themselves room for growth tend to accept the fact that we live in a world of probability and chance, with no absolute certainties. They demand no surefire predictions about the future and realize that it is not all horrible─indeed, it is in many ways fascinating and exciting─to live in a distinctly probabilistic, variable environment.
The opposite of intolerance and the need for certainty is flexibility. The emotionally growing individual consequently tends to be intellectually and emotionally labile, to be open to change, and to view without bigotry the infinitely varied people, ideas, and things that exist in the world. The disturbed person, on the other hand, tends to be exceptionally narrow, rigid, and overly constrained. Personality growth, in particular, would seem to be almost impossible to achieve if the individual is not open and flexible, for how can growing and remaining closed to change be compatible.
What is usually called emotional disturbance and interference with personality growth stems largely from an unscientific, magical way of thinking─thinking that is particularly involved with irrational, dogmatic, and absolutist hypotheses. If people would largely follow the scientific canons of reasoning in their personal lives, and would stop dogmatically musturbating, awfulizing, and whining about the many kinds of hassles and frustrations to which, as fallible humans, their are inevitably heir, they would not only rid themselves of much of their deep-seated feelings of anxiety, depression, guilt, and hostility, but give themselves leeway to discover, with lack of prejudice, what they really enjoy in life and how they can truly grow as human beings. Reason is indeed a limited faculty and may never quite solve all the mysteries of life. But for maximum emotional functioning, people had better be fairly flexible, open, and scientific, and be able to apply scientific thinking not only to external people and events but also to themselves and their interpersonal relationships.
Emotionally healthy individuals are usually committed to some large life plan or goal─such as work, building a family, art, science, or sports. When they have steady personality growth they tend to be vitally absorbed in some large goal outside of themselves, whether it be in the realm of people, things, or ideas. And they frequently have at least one major creative interest, as well as some outstanding human involvement, which is highly important to them and around which they structure a good portion of their lives.
Emotionally sound people are able to take risks: to ask themselves what they would really like to do in life, and then endeavor to do it, even though they risk defeat or failure. They try to be adventurous (though not necessarily foolhardy), are willing to chance almost anything once to see how they like it, and look forward to some breaks in their usual routines. It this connection, it is interesting to note, that even some of the most self-actualizing and creative individuals spend so much of their time in routine, unadventurous pursuits that it takes something drastic, such as near death from a heart attack, to jolt them into a new sense of vital living and a greater degree of risk-taking to savor their existence.
Above all else, emotionally healthy and sane people are glad to be alive, and to full accept themselves just because they are alive, because they exist, and because (as living humans) they almost invariably have some power to enjoy themselves. If they assess or rate themselves at all, they do so not on the basis of their extrinsic achievements or their popularity with others, but on the basis of their own existence─on their propensity to make an interesting, absorbing life for themselves."
- Albert Ellis,
The Albert Ellis Reader: A Guide to Well-Being Using Rational Emotive Behavior
Therapy
From the essay titled "Sex-Love Adventuring and
Personality Growth,' 1972. For more on his liberal views on sexual
psychology and behaviors, refer to "Sex
Without Guilt" (1956) or his many other forward thinking and very popular
books on the subject of sexuality.
How to Live a Good Life: Advice From Wise Persons
