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Whenever you avoid alarming situations, you almost always increase your anxiety about them.

Albert Ellis

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Albert Ellis
Age: 93 †
Born: 1913
Born: September 27
Died: 2007
Died: July 24
Behaviour Therapist
Cognitive Scientist
Non-Fiction Writer
Psychologist
Sex Educator
Pittsburg
Pennsylvania
Avoid
Anxiety
Whenever
Increase
Situation
Almost
Always
Alarming
Situations

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The great majority of the things we now make ourselves panicked about are self-created 'dangers' that exist almost entirely in our own imaginations.
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Most people would have given up when faced with all the criticism I've received over the years.
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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.
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Reality is not so much what happens to us rather, it is how we think about those events that create the reality we experience. In a very real sense, this means that we each create the reality in which we live.
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I'm very happy. I like my work and I like the various aspects of it - going around the world, teaching the gospel according to St. Albert - I like that. And seeing clients, doing group therapy, writing books.
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There's no evidence whatsoever that men are more rational than women or that men are more willing to surrender their irrational beliefs. Both sexes seem to be equally irrational.
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We can actually put the essence of neurosis in a single word: blaming - or damning.
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The world consists mainly of love slobs who need other people's approval. Most people don't live their own lives very well.
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Beginning in the 1960s, many studies showed that people who hold what we call irrational beliefs are significantly more disturbed than when they don't hold them, and the more strongly they hold them, the more disturbed they tend to be.
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If you would stop, really stop, damning yourself, others, and unkind conditions, you would find it almost impossible to upset yourself emotionally - about anything. Yes, anything.
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There are three musts that hold us back: I must do well. You must treat me well. And the world must be easy.
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By honestly acknowledging your past errors, but never damning yourself for them, you can learn to use your past for your own future benefit.
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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 ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny.
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And just as two wrongs don't make a right, rage against offenders is probably the worst way to try to correct them.
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The goal of all life is to have a ball.
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Being assertive does not mean attacking or ignoring others feelings. It means that you are willing to hold up for yourself fairly-without attacking others.
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The goal...is not to change your desires and wishes but to persuade you to stop demanding that you absolutely must have what you wish-from yourself, from others, and from the world. You can by all means keep your wishes, preferences, and desires, but unless you prefer to remain needlessly anxious, not your grandiose demands.
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Spirit and soul is horseshit of the worst sort. Obviously there are no fairies, no Santa Clauses, no spirits. What there is, is human goals and purposes as noted by sane existentialists. But a lot of transcendentalists are utter screwballs.
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Lack of forgiveness of others breeds lack of self-forgiveness.
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The attitude of unconditional self-acceptance is probably the most important variable in their long-term recovery.
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