Establish the desired attitude cognitively, emotionally, and behaviorally.
As
stated in the general idea above, there is a cognitive, an emotional, and a
behavioral component to every attitude, just as there are five parts to every
problem (chapter 2). Therefore, if you think you want to adopt a new, more
helpful attitude, you need to (1) be sure you really believe and accept the
attitude, (2) modify your feelings so they are 242d322c in keeping with the desired
attitude, and (3) start behaving in ways consistent with that attitude.
Examples: If you don't live your values, they aren't really your values. If you
think you want to be a people helper but don't eagerly seek out the needed
knowledge and don't feel positive about the hard work involved in acquiring
information about helping, your attitude towards people-helping isn't
consistent; you aren't wholeheartedly committed to being a people helper. In
short, cognitive attitudes or ideals must be scheduled and acted out routinely.
Moreover, the thoughts and actions must be associated with positive feelings.
Suppose
you have been a perfectionist and have decided to lower your expectations
because you have often been upset by failing to meet your impossibly high
goals. Let's say you have cognitively set lower goals and accepted the
reasoning for doing so. You can also change your behavior by becoming less
driven, less obsessed, and able to attend to other activities. But whenever you
fail to reach the very high, perfectionistic standards you have sought for many
years (but recently decided to change), you may still get anxious,
self-derogatory, and depressed. Thus, the emotional component is not yet in
line with the cognitive and behavioral aspect of the attitude. Perhaps you
could desensitize yourself to these "failures" (that are a part of
your new rationally set lower goals); you might even need to plan to have
several such "failures" in order to learn to tolerate the new
standards.
Another
example: Beginning students in psychology wanting, cognitively, to become
understanding and tolerant of all potential clients frequently continue to
respond with strong negative or fearful emotions to psychotics, criminals,
abusers, homosexuals, and so on. These are our clients. Every psychologist must
conquer these critical emotions. Therapists-in-training can use
desensitization, expose themselves so long to such clients that they are no
longer bothered, talk themselves out of having such emotional responses, and/or
become so knowledgeable about such people (and all other types) that they
"understand and accept" such clients. This is the mark of a learned
person; however, in no way should such an attitude imply approval of the awful
actions committed by the violent criminal.
Some
additional ideas about how to change your own attitudes: once you have decided
on what attitude will work best for you, mentally rehearse thinking, feeling
and acting that way until you can adopt that attitude in real life. If you
think your situation is awful, try to imagine a worse-case scenario, e.g.
suppose you haven't just lost a sale but lost your lover or your sight or your
child, or reframe the situation, e.g. rather than wanting to get drunk to escape
being upset, try to figure out how you could act more constructively. Remember
too that you can change your self-talk: "I-can-handle-it" talk is a
lot more productive than "I-don't-know-what-to-do" talk. Encouraging
sayings can help, such as "I will try for what I want; I will want what I
get," "every crisis presents an opportunity," "every
experience, even failure, teaches me something," "if what I'm doing
isn't working, I'll try something else," "positive thinking gets me
further than negative thinking," "everything passes," "the
situation bothered me but it's behind me now," "maybe something good
will come out of this mess," etc.
Time involved
Most
of the attitudes mentioned in this section would require considerable time to
learn, if you were starting with a negative attitude. One doesn't develop a new
philosophy of life or a broad belief in self-efficacy or an acceptance of
others quickly. But, fortunately, most people already have many positive,
helpful attitudes.
Common problems
Each
attitude would have its own problems, i.e. different obstacles to the adoption
of that attitude. For instance, many people are conditioned to have negative
reactions, even by age 18 or 20, to racial groups, to mental illness, to obese
and unattractive people, to old people, to violent criminals, etc. As a result,
the development of tolerant, understanding attitudes towards these people is
very difficult. The only solution I know of is to get a lot of experience with
the type of person you don't understand or don't like. Examples: If you feel
negatively towards welfare mothers, get to know several intimately and find how
they got in that situation. If homosexuality is disgusting to you, make friends
with many gays and lesbians; empathize with their needs for love.
Effectiveness, advantages and dangers
Very
little is known scientifically about how to change your own attitudes or about
the effects of doing so. There is a great deal of clinical and practical
knowledge about these matters, however. Love one another is an old idea (but we
can't do it yet). Quite a bit is known about persuading
others (see chapter 13), mostly sales. Most of the attitudes mentioned
above sound beneficial and have been advocated by outstanding philosophers,
therapists, and wise people. But, the ramifications of broad general attitudes,
such as "I'm in control of my life" or "tolerance of
others," are so vast that the precise measurement necessary for science
has not yet been done. The limited research findings (primarily about self-efficacy)
are theory-oriented, proving only that thinking you
are effective is associated with being effective. Research findings are not
very practical thus far in terms of actually showing us how to build
self-efficacy and gain control of our lives. The research will probably become
more personally useful in the next 10 to 20 years.
There
are no known dangers but some are conceivable: beliefs in self-efficacy may
exaggerate how much control you actually have and could lead to an unrealistic
sense of self-responsibility; a demanding philosophy of life may increase
stress and guilt; an accepting attitude based on determinism may reduce your
zeal to wipe out injustice and so on. These risks seem small relative to the
gains some of these attitudes might yield.
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