If thoughts can corrupt language, language can corrupt thoughts.
George Orwell
ABCDE model was propounded by Albert Ellis in 1950s. He used it in Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy.
ABCDE Model
- A- Activating Event
- B- Belief System
- C- Consequences
- D- Disputing Irrational thoughts and Beliefs
- E- Energizing
A- Activating Event refers to an event or a situation that triggered a certain behaviour.
B- Belief System refers to Thoughts and Ideas has given meaning to the world we live it. It is our experiences and exposure we have accumulated over a period of time.
C- Consequences refer to our behaviour led by the event.
D- Disputing Irrational thoughts and Beliefs
Once we a clear about the behaviour
E- Energizing
Let’s take for example a situation and analyse your response.
You have joined a Marketing firm as Digital marketing executive position. A new product launch is about to happen in the next 3 months. Your Team lead calls for a team meeting and asks your team to come up with ideas for the launch. You are very excited about the new assignment and decide to come up with a strategy. You work tirelessly for the next 2 weeks and come with the strategy for the same and want to present your report to the team.
You approach your Team lead with your project report with the ideas. Your Team lead doesn’t listen to any of your ideas for the new product launch to happen. Instead, he asks you to do some tasks that are rather unimportant like getting printouts, organizing the conference room and arranging snacks for the meeting.
You are in a fix. You feel your talent is being wasted in doing menial things in the office. This is something you haven’t signed up for and decide to resign the job in less than two months in the role.
Let’s dissect the situation and get a better understanding of the same using the ABCDE Model.
- Activating Event (A) – You feel your time is being wasted in doing Menial jobs and decide to resign.
- Belief System (B) – You have an MBA from a reputed college and doing these menial tasks is a waste of your talent.
- Consequences (C) – You have decided to quit the job.
- Disputing Irrational thoughts and Beliefs (D) – You have decided to quit the job not because you have been assigned menial task. You are quitting the job because you feel are for more superior than the task assigned to you. Your belief system is in conflict. Activating event didn’t lead to Consequence, but your Irrational belief led to the Consequence of you quitting the job.
- Energizing (E) – Now, that you have understood your belief system better. You can change your behaviour. You can continue to work at the job for 6 more months and understand your roles and responsibility better and then take a call before you quit the job.
Conclusion, we are beings made of a lot of Thoughts, perceptions, and emotions. We basis our decisions on these underlying framework that gives meaning to our lives. We have a lot of beliefs that are latent and can rise at any point in our life. We need to more rational towards our approach in Life. We can form new constructive patterns only when we let off the older ones.
