Albert Ellis Quotes Page 3

“Having some support and the reassurance that my family, friends, or others will help me when I am anxious will often reduce my anxiety and panic.

But because such support and reassurance may not exist or may not continue, I’d better not rely on it solely. I also had better gain self-confidence and self-support.”

“A part of you will die if you continue to avoid those actions that you find 'terrible'. Stop doing the 'easy' things that you do on purpose to avoid what scares you.

Do what you are afraid to do, and it is better to try it over and over again. It won't be a panacea for all your problems, but I'm sure it will help you greatly.”

“Do not stop searching for, identifying and refuting irrational convictions over and over until you have intellectual and psychological immunity, just as you develop muscles with regular exercise.”

“Do the boring, but necessary or useful tasks first and quickly, any day!

And if your hesitation is the same, try to reward yourself with food, reading, or social relations with others, after doing what you are trying to avoid.

And if that doesn't work, punish yourself like talking to a boring person for an hour each time you put off what you have to do.”

“Hesitating and procrastinating will not make it easier for me to do a boring or difficult task. I will try to postpone the delay!”

“I will never be able to remain unmoved by harassment unless I am dead. How can I now be less affected by harassment while I'm alive?”

“If you constantly identify stressful thoughts and immediately refute them, you will not live a happy or stress-free life, but the quality of life will be better.”

“Telling yourself effective philosophical ideas is not enough, you must actually be convinced of them. As a human being, you are able to repeat it to yourself without actual conviction and at the same time be deeply convinced of its opposite.

It is also possible to utter any self-help mantras but still not be convinced even if you repeat them to yourself several times.

Why? Because people probably have strong desires and habits that sometimes disrupt logical thinking.”

“You are the main source of your stress and therefore the key to happiness is in your hand.”

“You can choose if you can stay away from them, but stop complaining that they are doing what they are not supposed to. If you have the power to stop them, use it wisely.

But if it is out of your control, do not pretend that you are in control and accept that people will often behave as they like and not as you want. It's unfortunate, but not terrible!”

“You have to show yourself – even if you don't like it at first to do what you are trying to avoid – that it is possible to live with and adapt to this discomfort.”

“You must know that your fears are part of the fears that everyone suffers from, and that others have irrational fears that paralyze them, even if they are not the same ones that hinder you.”

“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 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.”

“Insight is another name for awareness.”

“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.”

“The concept of deservingness for one’s 'sins' implies that certain acts are unquestionably under all conditions 'sinful'. And this is impossible to prove.”

“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.”

“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.”

“We can choose to change ourselves remarkably.”

“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!”

“You create both healthy and unhealthy feelings when your goals and desires are blocked.”

“You create severe anxiety when you jump from inclination to 'musturbation'.”

“You mainly make yourself needlessly and neurotically miserable by strongly holding absolutist irrational Beliefs (iBs), especially by rigidly believing unconditional shoulds, oughts, and musts.”

“Men are not disturbed by things, but by the views which they take of them.”

“Too many people are unaware that it is not outer events or circumstances that will create happiness; rather, it is our perception of events and of ourselves that will create, or uncreate, positive emotions.”

“If human emotions largely result from thinking, then one may appreciably control one's feelings by controlling one's thoughts – or by changing the internalized sentences, or self-talk, with which one largely created the feeling in the first place.”

“Happiness is experienced largely in striving towards a goal, not in having attained things, because our nature is always to want to go on to the next endeavor.”

“Life is indeed difficult, partly because of the real difficulties we must overcome in order to survive, and partly because of our own innate desire to always do better, to overcome new challenges, to self-actualize.”

“For many years now I have had the quaint idea that all humans – yes, the whole six billion of them on this planet – are out of their f*cking minds.”