Albert Ellis

You therefore realistically accept the undesirable things when they occur, refuse to whine and scream about them, do your best to change them, and if change is impossible, gracefully live with them.

Insisting that things *ought* to go smoothly, that mishap *must* not occur, and that the important people in our lives *should* behave as we have told them so many times we *need* them to behave... is fundamentally irrational. Yet, as a species, we naturally tend to think in these distorted and self-defeating ways.

As Albert Bandura and other psychologists have shown, modeling yourself after other people who are not anxious in situations that inspire panic in you is a good method of controlling your anxiety.

Your present behavior largely stems from your thinking. So by determined rethinking and practice, you can regulate and control your activities of today—and also prepare for an improved future.

Both your emotional reactions and your behavioral reactions to Adversity, I repeat, largely follow from your Beliefs about this Adversity and not merely from the Adversity itself. This, we repeat, is very lucky. Most of the time you have a great deal of control over what you believe and what you disbelieve, and can feel and act accordingly.

Positive thinking... allows you to create rational coping self-statements and images that aid your goals and enhance your life. However, it is limited, and sometimes even dangerous, b/c you can easily use it unrealistically and polyannaishly. Thus, you can positively tell yourself, “I can accomplish anything I want!” But, of course you can’t. You can enthusiastically think, “Everything will happen for the best.” But, alas, it won’t. Positive thinking, moreover, often covers up and doesn’t really remove your underlying negative thinking.

Difficult, however, does not mean impossible.

Instead of saying, ‘I don’t like myself for having this behavior or trait,’ I will say, ‘I don’t like having this behavior or trait. What can I do to improve it?’

As Reinhold Niebuhr said, I’d better have the courage to change what I can change, the serenity to accept what I cannot change, and the wisdom to know the difference.

We achieve few outstanding gratifications without risk taking.

Difficult, however, does not mean impossible.

But want doesn’t mean desperately need. Not at all. Not needing success or approval, while still distinctly desiring them, will remove much of your need for certainty, for guarantees, for absolutely proving your worth as a person to yourself or to others. Try it and see!

The trouble with most anxiety-provoking situations is that you can somehow manage to escape them ... Whenever you avoid alarming situations, however, you almost always increase your anxiety about them.

Neurosis is just a high-class word for whining. The trouble with most therapy is that it helps you to feel better. But you don’t get better. You have to back it up with action, action, action.

There are three musts that hold us back: I must do well. You must treat me well. And the world must be easy.

Can we really change such well-practiced mental attitudes? Definitely. Will it be easy? No—but those who diligently work with the cognitive, emotive, and behavioral “tools” of REBT have an excellent chance of success.

I better not have a Pollyannaish philosophy and be absolutely certain that everything will happen for the best and life will be an ecstatic ball. Such an unrealistic outlook will relieve my anxiety temporarily, but will probably lead me to panic and depression when things turn out badly.

Most people spend so much time and energy trying to do the impossible—namely, to change and control the actions of others—that they wrongly believe that they cannot achieve a quite possible goal—to change their *own* thoughts and acts.

Sensible thinking, we contend, usually leads to healthy emoting.

Anger is mainly the grandiose demand that people absolutely should not, must not treat you in the vile way that they are supposedly doing. If you will truly give up this demand, you will not only minimize your anger at present injustices, but you will prepare yourself to be much less prone to outbursts of rage in the future.

Emotional disturbance often consists of taking a healthy *wish* for approval and turning it into an unhealthy *demand.* Then refusing to do much to win it.

The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the economy, or the president. You realize that you can control your own destiny.

A bad act, no matter how stupid or vile, never makes you a bad person.

Moreover, where frustration, sorrow, and unhappiness are frequently healthy feelings—assuming that you greatly desire something and are deprived of it—depression, despair, shame, and self-downing are practically never healthy and had best be minimized.

When you are anxious about some feared condition that you will encounter, you will tend to avoid that situation and thus get rid of your anxiety—temporarily. In the long run, however, you probably increase it.