How to Stubbornly Refuse to Make Yourself Miserable About Anything Quotes

“If you prefer to perform well and want to be accepted by others, you are concerned that you will fail and be rejected. Your healthy concern encourages you to act competently and nicely. But if you devoutly believe that you absolutely, under all conditions, must perform well and that you have to be accepted by others, you will then tend to make yourself—yes, make yourself—panicked if you don’t perform as well as you supposedly must.”
― Albert Ellis, How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything – Yes, Anything!

“The expense of making yourself panicked, enraged, and self-pitying is enormous. In time and money lost. In needless effort spent. In uncalled-for mental anguish. In sabotaging others’ happiness. In foolishly frittering away potential joy during the one life—yes, the one life—you’ll probably ever have.”
― Albert Ellis, How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything – Yes, Anything!

“What luck! If the theories of Epictetus, Karen Horney (who first talked about the “tyranny of the shoulds”), Alfred Korzybski (the founder of general semantics), and REBT are correct, you almost always bring on your emotional problems by rigidly adopting one of the basic methods of crooked thinking—musturbation. Therefore, if you understand how you upset yourself by slipping into irrational shoulds, oughts, demands, and commands, unconsciously sneaking them into your thinking, you can just about always stop disturbing yourself about anything.”
― Albert Ellis, How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything – Yes, Anything!

“You and many outstanding inventors and writers have striven for the ideal and have thereby helped yourself do remarkably well. REBT, therefore, does not oppose competition or striving for outstanding achievement. It advocates task-perfection, not self-perfection.” “What does that mean?” “It means that you can try to be as good, or even as perfect, as you can—at any project or task. You can try to make it ideal. But you are not a good person if it is perfect. You are still a person who completed a perfect project, but never a good person for doing so.” “How, then, do I become an incompetent or bad person?” “You don’t! When you do incompetent or evil acts, you become a person who acted badly—never a bad person.”
― Albert Ellis, How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything – Yes, Anything!

“Unconditional Self-Acceptance (USA) instead of Conditional Self-Esteem (CSE). You rate and evaluate your thoughts, feelings, and actions in relation to your main Goals of remaining alive and reasonably happy to see whether they aid these Goals. When they aid them, you rate that as “good” or “effective,” and when they sabotage your Goals you rate that as “bad” or “ineffective.” But you always—yes, always—accept and respect yourself, your personhood, your being, whether or not you perform well and whether or not other people approve of you and your behaviors.”
― Albert Ellis, How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything – Yes, Anything!

“Assume that most times when you feel anxious, depressed, or angry you are not only strongly desiring but also commanding that something go well and that you get what you want. Cherchez le should, cherchez le must! Look for your should, look for your must! Don’t give up until you find it. If you have trouble finding it, seek the help of a friend, relative, or REBT therapist who will help you find it. Persist!”
― Albert Ellis, How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything – Yes, Anything!

“You mainly make yourself needlessly and neurotically miserable by strongly holding absolutist irrational Beliefs (iBs), especially by rigidly believing unconditional shoulds, oughts, and musts.”
― Albert Ellis, How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything – Yes, Anything!

“Because when you don’t perform remarkably well the next time, back to slobhood you will go! And even when you do perform well, you will be anxious about not doing so next time. So you had better like your fine performance—but not deify yourself for doing it.”
― Albert Ellis, How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything – Yes, Anything!

“Whenever you have strong negative feelings because unfortunate things are actually happening to you or you imagine that they might occur, see whether these feelings healthfully follow from your wishes and desires to have better things occur. Or are you creating them by going beyond your preferences and inventing powerful shoulds, oughts, musts, demands, commands, and necessities? If so, you are turning concern and caution into overconcern, severe anxiety, and panic. Observe the real difference in your feelings!”
― Albert Ellis, How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything – Yes, Anything!

“The concept of deservingness for one’s “sins” implies that certain acts are unquestionably under all conditions “sinful.” And this is impossible to prove.”
― Albert Ellis, How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything – Yes, Anything!

“you have discovered some of your unscientific beliefs with which you are creating emotional problems and making yourself act against your own interests, use the scientific method to challenge and dispute them. Ask yourself: Is this belief realistic? Is it opposed to the facts of life? Is this belief logical? Is it contradictory to itself or to my other beliefs? Can I prove this belief? Can I falsify it? Does this belief prove that the universe has a law of deservingness or undeservingness? If I act well, do I completely deserve a good life, and if I act badly, do I totally deserve a bad existence? If I continue to strongly hold the belief (and to have the feelings and do the acts it often creates), will I perform well, get the results I want to get, and lead a happier life? Or will holding it tend to make me less happy?”
― Albert Ellis, How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything – Yes, Anything!

“Science is skeptical that the universe includes “deservingness” and “undeservingness” and that it deifies people (and things) for their “good” acts or damns them for their “bad” behavior. It does not have any absolute, universal standard of “good” and “bad” behavior and assumes that if any group sees certain deeds as “good” it will tend to (but doesn’t have to) reward those who act that way and will often (but not always) penalize those who act “badly.”
― Albert Ellis, How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything – Yes, Anything!

“You can figure out by sheer logic that if you were only—and I mean only—to stay with your desires and preferences, and if you were never—and I mean never—to stray into unrealistic demands that your desires have to be fulfilled, you could very rarely disturb, really disturb, yourself about anything. Why? Because your preferences start off with, “I would very much like or prefer to have success, approval, or comfort,” and then end with the conclusion, “But I don’t have to have it. I won’t die without it. And I could be happy (though not as happy) without it.”
― Albert Ellis, How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything – Yes, Anything!

“Science, as I pointed out in the previous chapter, is flexible and nondogmatic. It sticks to facts and to reality (which always can change) and to logical thinking (which does not contradict itself and hold two opposite views at the same time). But it also avoids rigid all-or-none and either/or thinking and sees that reality is often two sided and includes contradictory events and characteristics. Thus, in my relations with you, I am not a totally good person or a bad person but a person who sometimes treats you well and sometimes treats you badly. Instead of viewing world events in a rigid, absolute way, science assumes that such events, and especially human affairs, usually follow the laws of probability.”
― Albert Ellis, How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything – Yes, Anything!

“You are still a person who completed a perfect project, but never a good person for doing so.” “How, then, do I become an incompetent or bad person?” “You don’t! When you do incompetent or evil acts, you become a person who acted badly—never a bad person.”
― Albert Ellis, How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything – Yes, Anything!

“REBT, then, helps you not only to understand what you “are” but to change what you harmfully think, feel, and do. It accepts your desires, wishes, preferences, goals, and values, then tries to help you achieve them. But REBT shows you how to separate your preferences from your insistences—and thus keep from sabotaging your own goals. It gives you insight into what you are now doing rather than into what you (and your damned parents!) have done.”
― Albert Ellis, How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything – Yes, Anything!

“this belief realistic? Is it opposed to the facts of life? Is this belief logical? Is it contradictory to itself or to my other beliefs? Can I prove this belief? Can I falsify it? Does this belief prove that the universe has a law of deservingness or undeservingness? If I act well, do I completely deserve a good life, and if I act badly, do I totally deserve a bad existence? If I continue to strongly hold the belief (and to have the feelings and do the acts it often creates), will I perform well, get the results I want to get, and lead a happier life? Or will holding it tend to make me less happy?”
― Albert Ellis, How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything – Yes, Anything!

“Annabel, one of my clients who cherished her perfectionism because she felt that it made her a fine writer and an excellent mother, was having a hard time with some of David Burns’s teachings against perfectionism in his book, Feeling Good. Dr. Burns, she thought, told her to give up all ideal goals and stick only to realistic and average ones. Then she couldn’t be disappointed or depressed.”
― Albert Ellis, How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything – Yes, Anything!

“insight will help you very little.”
― Albert Ellis, How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything – Yes, Anything!

“More specifically, this book has the following goals—which I do not think you will find presented, all together, in any other book about acquiring mental health and happiness. • It encourages you to have and to express strong feelings when something goes wrong with your life. But it clearly distinguishes between your feeling healthily and helpfully concerned, sorry, sad, frustrated, or annoyed and your feeling unhealthy and destructively panicked, depressed, enraged, and self-pitying.”
― Albert Ellis, How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything – Yes, Anything!

“When you have discovered some of your unscientific beliefs with which you are creating emotional problems and making yourself act against your own interests, use the scientific method to challenge and dispute them. Ask yourself: Is this belief realistic? Is it opposed to the facts of life? Is this belief logical? Is it contradictory to itself or to my other beliefs? Can I prove this belief? Can I falsify it? Does this belief prove that the universe has a law of deservingness or undeservingness? If I act well, do I completely deserve a good life, and if I act badly, do I totally deserve a bad existence? If I continue to strongly hold the belief (and to have the feelings and do the acts it often creates), will I perform well, get the results I want to get, and lead a happier life? Or will holding it tend to make me less happy? Persist at using the scientific method of questioning and challenging your irrational Beliefs until you begin to give them up, increase your effectiveness, and enjoy yourself more.”
― Albert Ellis, How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything – Yes, Anything!

“REBT’s Insight No. 1 holds that you have both healthy and unhealthy emotions”
― Albert Ellis, How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything – Yes, Anything!

“Science, as I pointed out in the previous chapter, is flexible and nondogmatic. It sticks to facts and to reality (which always can change) and to logical thinking (which does not contradict itself and hold two opposite views at the same time). But it also avoids rigid all-or-none and either/or thinking and sees that reality is often two sided and includes contradictory”
― Albert Ellis, How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything – Yes, Anything!

“No matter how badly you act, no matter how unfairly others treat you, no matter how crummy are the conditions you live under—you virtually always ( yes, A-L-W-A-Y-S) have the ability and the power to change your intense feelings of anxiety, despair, and hostility. Not only can you decrease them, you can practically annihilate and remove them.”
― Albert Ellis, How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything – Yes, Anything!

“We do largely create our own feelings, and we do so by learning (from our parents and others) and by inventing (in our own heads) our own sane and foolish thoughts.”
― Albert Ellis, How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything – Yes, Anything!

“When you make yourself severely anxious or depressed, you clearly are acting against you and are being unfair and unjust to yourself. Your disturbance also badly affects your social group. It helps to upset your relatives and friends and, to some extent, your whole community. The expense of making yourself panicked, enraged, and self-pitying is enormous. In time and money lost. In needless effort spent. In uncalled-for mental anguish. In sabotaging others’ happiness. In foolishly frittering away potential joy during the one life—yes, the one life—you’ll probably ever have.”
― Albert Ellis, How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything – Yes, Anything!

“This book presents the ABCs of REBT (and of other forms of cognitive and cognitive behavioral therapy) in a simple, understandable way, and it shows how stimuli or Activating Events (A) in your life do not mainly or directly cause your emotional consequences (C). Instead, your Belief System (B) largely upsets you, and you therefore have the ability to Dispute (D) your dysfunctional and irrational Beliefs (iBs) and to change them. It especially shows you many thinking, many emotive, and many behavioral methods of disputing and surrendering your irrational Beliefs (iBs) and thereby arriving at an Effective New Philosophy (E) of life.”
― Albert Ellis, How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything – Yes, Anything!

“It efficiently shows you how you are now still creating your present emotional and behavioral problems, and it doesn’t encourage you to waste endless time and energy foolishly trying to understand and explain your past history. It demonstrates how you still needlessly upset yourself and what you can do today to refuse to keep doing so.”
― Albert Ellis, How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything – Yes, Anything!

“What luck! If the theories of Epictetus, Karen Horney (who first talked about the “tyranny of the shoulds”), Alfred Korzybski (the founder of general semantics), and REBT are correct, you almost always bring on your emotional problems by rigidly adopting one of the basic methods of crooked thinking—musturbation. Therefore, if you understand how you upset yourself by slipping into irrational shoulds, oughts, demands, and commands, unconsciously sneaking them into your thinking, you can just about always stop disturbing yourself about anything”
― Albert Ellis, How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything – Yes, Anything!

“you do feel like a noble, superhuman, holier-than-thou person, you are then, according to REBT, experiencing an unhealthy positive feeling.”
― Albert Ellis, How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything – Yes, Anything!