Ummikhaira Sofea Binti Ja’afar | 22030396 | Position Paper 6 | Q1

According to Glasser, all behaviour is purposeful. It is our best attempt at the time, given our
current knowledge and skills, to meet one or more of our basic human needs. These needs are
love and belonging; power, or inner control; freedom, or independence; and fun, or
enjoyment which are the general motivation for everything we do. Each of us has all five
needs, but they vary in strength. Choice theory explains that all we ever do from birth to
death is behave, and, with some exceptions, everything we do is chosen or at least generated
from within ourselves. Every total behaviour is our best attempt to get what we want to
satisfy our needs. Total behaviour teaches that all behaviour is made up of four inseparable
but distinct components – acting, thinking, feeling, and physiology – that necessarily
accompany all of our actions, thoughts, and feeling. The primary emphasis is on what the
client is doing and how the doing component influences the other aspects of total behaviour.
Behaviour is purposeful because it is designed to close the gap between what we want and
what we perceive we are getting. Specific behaviours are always generated from this
discrepancy. Our behaviours come from the inside, and thus we choose our destiny.

One of the 10 axioms of Choice Theory is “What happened in the past has everything
to do with what we are today, but we can only satisfy our basic needs right now and plan to
continue satisfying them in the future.” I agree to this statement because past is in the past.
We have no control of our past but we can only learn our lessons through past. In my opinion,
it is our today’s choice that moves us whoever we are tomorrow. All the daydreaming in the
world will not grant you the opportunity to go back and say that thing you should have said,
and it cannot take back that thing you shouldn’t have said.

Responsibility, a concept basic to Reality Therapy, is defined as the ability to fulfil

one’s needs, and to do so in a way that does not deprive others of the ability to fulfil their
needs. Our behaviour is our effort, adequate and realistic as it may be, to fulfil our needs. For
me, responsibility is simply accepting the consequences of any choice you make and dealing
with the reparations wherever they can be made. If it is a wrong choice, we should come up
with another choice. The reason responsibility is so hard to take on is because it is such a
heavy weight to carry. It’s an uphill struggle and it yields very little result. However, you will
gain wisdom in these acts. You’ll become smarter and stronger the more you accept, and aim
to fix, the consequences of your actions. That is why I understand why CTRT emphasizes on
‘what’….. rather than ‘why’, actions rather than symptoms, and present rather than past.