If you have begun to accept yourself unconditionally despite your poor behavior (but dislike the poor behavior) you are ahead of the game. You are better off than (but not a better person than) most people. What else helps you change? Next, learn and practice the three insights of Rational-Emotive Therapy (RET). They can give you the power to change yourself in the here-and-now, not just “some day.”

RET’s Three Insights

Insight No. 1: Your current feelings and actions have causes. The most important causes of your addictions are your thoughts, attitudes, images, memories, and other cognitions. This is what RET calls B, your Belief System, especially your stinking thinking or irrational Beliefs (iBs).

Insight No. 2: Wherever your Belief Systems originated (parents, family, society, traumas, biology, self-inventions), you carry them on now and actively believe and follow them. You steadily reindoctrinate yourself in them today and sometimes actively fight off others’ attempts to get you to change them.

Insight No. 3: You require hard, persistent work to change your Beliefs, actions, and feelings, to practice new ones, and to avoid returning to old ones. Further, your human condition tends to give new problems and stresses. So insight is not the main watchword. Eternal vigilance plus much work and practice is.