Read Online Choice Theory by M.D. William Glasser - Free Book Online

or experienced these things; and when we put these beliefs into action, they felt much better than did other people, things, or beliefs.
    Our quality worlds contain the knowledge that is most important to us. As much as we may try to deny the importance of this knowledge, we cannot. When we say,
I don’t care,
we are not telling the truth. If what we are talking about is in our quality worlds, we care deeply. All day long our minds drift back and forth to the images in our quality worlds; we can’t get them off our minds. Examples of these pictures are the new homes we are saving for; the new jobs we want so much; the good grades that are so important to our future; the men or women we plan to marry; and our sick children, who are recovering their health. For alcoholics, the image is the alcohol they crave so much; for gamblers, the run at the crap table that is always on their minds; for revolutionaries, a new political system to replace the one they hate so much; and for religious people, the picture of heaven or paradise in which they hope to spend eternity.
    For each of us, this world is our personal Shangri-la, the place where we would feel very good right now if we could move to it.Anytime we are able to succeed in satisfying a picture in this world, it is enjoyable; anytime we fail, it is always painful. If we knew it existed and understood the vital role this world plays in each of our lives, we would be able to get along much better with each other than most of us do now.
    For example, if Scarlett O’Hara knew that she was jeopardizing her place in Rhett Butler’s quality world, she might have been much more careful how she treated him. If she had, he might never have spoken his famous line, “Frankly, my dear, I have just removed you from my quality world.” (For skeptics, I admit that my copy of
Gone with the Wind *
may be the only one in which this quote appears.)
    It is a paradox that all of us know what’s in our quality worlds to the minutest detail, but few of us know that these worlds exist. I may know nothing about my quality world, but I do know that my daughter, an actress, is very important to me. When I go to a play she’s starring in, I perceive her as a great actress. If she has flaws, I don’t see them. I tell anyone who’ll listen how great she was, and I’m peeved if anyone disagrees with me. For me, her great performance is my reality no matter what others say. If the whole city raved about her acting, I’d be ecstatic because my reality would have been accepted as reality by a lot of people. So one way all of us tend to define reality, or the real world, is to base it on what a lot of people say it is as long as they agree with us. I see the one critic who tore her acting apart as crazy or detached from reality; that critic will never gain entrance to my quality world.
    If the one critic who panned her was the greatest critic in the city—greatest because he was in the quality worlds of the city’s theater lovers—what he said probably would be seen as reality by most people, especially in terms of her getting another part. It would hardly matter to the people reading his review that the lesser critics raved, since these critics are not in their quality worlds. Most peoplewould base their opinions on what this popular critic said and not go to the play. It’s hard to go against the beliefs of powerful people. Therefore, for each of us, as difficult as it may be to accept, reality has a lot to do with what a lot of us or some important or powerful people say it is.
    But ultimately, whether people agree with us or not, we define reality in the way it works best for us. That is, I may never be able to agree with you about what is going on in the real world if what we are arguing about is pictured differently in our quality worlds. I watch the president on television and say he was marvelous; you look at me as if I was crazy. The president was what he was, but we do not have the ability