Yes I agree with this…I’m finding it much easier and progressive to pose the question “Why do I want to entertain feeling bad in such n such situations ?”
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Well, considering that you report it be very different now to when you first came across Actualism, it does give me pause to consider that basis being mistaken.
I am again, not bothered by it. Though I am glad to have been challenged to realise I am more talking about “free will” rather than the experience of choice. That is a distinction worth having.
Because it’s not useful to try and trace every possible cause back to one’s child hood and beyond to find the reason a “choice” was made.
In fact, it becomes absurd quickly. Did I choose to be born in the circumstances I was born into?
Which makes me wonder if resentment itself is the key to the experience of “choosing how one feels”, the less resentment, the more of a choice things become.
I know this year has been a big one for various resentments and things surfacing.
The challenge to look again at directly choosing my feelings is a good one.
I am partial to using light switches rather than building a power station.
Right and the situation is that probably most people coming into actualism are to begin with deeply and persistently habituated towards being sorrowful and malicious. Then instead of observing this within themselves so that a different path becomes available they instead try to force ‘feeling good’ on top of this habituated sorrow and malice, and of course the method does not work then…
I want to build this new habit of feeling good so I need to become aware of the fact that I am currently habituated towards feeling bad, to actually see this happen in real time. I see this within me all the time, there is some sort of triggger/stimulus and bam - sorrow and malice, this is just what ‘I’ do. But catching myself each time means that I see that this is a silly path to travel down. And so I am habituating away from this path of sorrow and malice and habituating towards the path of enjoyment and appreciation.
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Now I have more time to write.
That is why I asked you not to respond in my journal 
So, reading you all, I can only say that having spent enough time over the years thinking/wondering (wandering also) about wanting to feel good in the context of AF and its connection to
- being able to feel good
- choice
- agency
- free will
…I became more and more serious about adopting the attitude that @Andrew has quoted: not subjecting Richard’s words to “scrutiny for scholarly style and form and content and so on”.
But in spite of that, and perhaps due to my former inclination for philosophy and my background in cognitive psychology (especially in the field of judgments and decision making) is that when writing the first version of the article about wanting/not wanting to feel good, I was drawn into considering also will vs willpower, what can or cannot be considered a choice in that topic, etc. (as I said there in the comments to @rick, when I was getting into the boundaries of agency and free will, I fortunately woke up -or more literally, I came to my senses- 
).
Such more comprehensive reflections had to do, as many times before, with an inclination to arrive at absolute and general statements supported by “firm” theoretical foundations (taken from AF or even from other sources). It’s part of what gives rise to many of the forum discussions, but with myself. And, similar to how in the forum we then tend to defend those adopted positions in the face of “attacks”, “I” tended to gather more and more encompassing elements/evidence to face the “attacks” from the imaginary forum -what will be said/thought from potential readers- to try to make “my” position more convincing/correct/true or even bullet-proof 
.
Well, I have tried to move further and further away from that historical attitude/inclination to seek absolute, coherent and generalisable theoretical certainties/assurances that would explain/support my experiences, the body/whole of Richard’s assertions, and also defend “me” as much as possible from potential or actual opinions/attacks.
Such historical attitude/inclination was part of what led me to various forms of paralysis, to a lot of wasted time musing/rambling, to limits on feeling good that I couldn’t overcome, to not participating in any discussion groups until recently, etc.
So, @rick, what was presented by you here and the discussion it triggered seem to me interesting (and even very interesting!), but at a certain point I want/need to put all that aside and focus on continuing to apply what I know works in my case to feel good/better more consistently.
I don’t mean to say that such discussions/analyses/questionings cannot lead to insights/understandings that precisely allow for a better application of the AF method. Of course they have that potential. But I know that getting too deep/involved into such discussions (with others or with myself) is one of the many ways to make myself (Miguel) feel worse/less good.
I am not saying that this “counter-inclination” is ideal (for example, it can sometimes lead me to prejudge, without giving time/space for another to adequately express what he/she thinks, as sometimes happens to me in life or even here (for example with @JonnyPitt in Andrew - #50 by Miguel). But I also did not want that this “counter-inclination” prevented me from sharing (in writing) certain understandings/experiences that could help others to feel good/better (and myself, since writing clarifies us). Hence, I have preferred to avoid a lot of lucubrations in the article (focusing instead on practicalities) and also here.
That doesn’t mean avoiding dealing with the topics and tribulations raised here and elsewhere about choice, agency, free will, etc., that I was tempted to write about. But I think the best way is eventually to do so in another article 
.
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Sensible.