by William Taboas, M.A.
Albert Ellis would emphasize that there is a pronounced difference between “doing what you feel like doing” and “doing what you want to do”. That is, the prior is emotion driven, where the latter is goal driven. And this is often the case that we are presented with many times. We “feel” like sleeping in, grabbing a second serving of food, indulging in another episode on Netflix, having one more drink, or putting things off for one more day. Being emotion-driven has its costs, as you can imagine; not only can you be late to work or end up procrastinating tasks, but you might also end up feeling guilty or ashamed about behaving as a result of your. Emotion-driven behavior also has emotional consequences!
REBT makes clear distinction between unhealthy negative emotions and healthy negative ones. Unhealthy or dysfunctional negative emotions tend to impede us from our goals, whereas healthy or functional negative emotions allow us to approach goal completion. A common thread among emotion-driven behavior is avoidance of change, and experiential discomfort for change. It’s much easier to listen to our emotions when the thoughts that drive them are telling us that change will be unbearable, making sticking to the status-quo much more desirable. And challenging our irrational thinking that leads to dysfunctional negative emotions is a habit that does not develop immediately. It takes time. So many of us revert back to being emotionally driven and do what we “feel” like doing, thus reinforcing the habit that we should always follow our emotions, even when they impede us from our goals.
An alternative position is to follow our healthy and functional positive and negative emotions that tie us to our goals. Sometimes those functional emotions are the consequences of working against our initial dysfunctional negative emotions by taking the opposite action of what we “feel” like doing initially. Now, let’s put that thought experiment into action: let’s suppose that you have a goal that you “want” to accomplish. Let’s say you “want” to wake up 20 minutes earlier tomorrow or go jogging for 20 minutes. What do you think you will “feel” like doing? And what do you really “want” to do (goal)? What would be your goal-avoiding self-talk, associated with what you “feel” like doing and what would be your goal-approaching self-talk to get you to do the opposite? Put it into practice, bit-by-bit, in different areas of your life, and I’m sure that you will be pleased with the results…you may actually do what you want to do!
