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, ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny. ››There are three musts that hold us back: I must do well. You must treat me well . And the world must be easy. ››Even injustice has it's good points. It gives me the challenge of being as happy as I can in an unfair world. ››Acceptance is not love. You love a person because he or she has lovable traits, but you accept everybody just because they're alive and human. ››The emotionally mature individual should completely accept the fact that we live in a world of probability and chance, where there are not, nor probably ever will be, any absolute certainties, and should realize that it is not at all horrible, indeed - such a probabilistic, uncertain world. ››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. 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. ››Much of what we call emotion is nothing more or less than a certain kind - a biased, prejudiced, or strongly evaluative kind - of thought. ››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. ››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. ››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 have considerable power to construct self-helping thoughts, feelings and actions as well as to construct self-defeating behaviors. You have the ability, if you use it, to choose healthy instead of unhealthy thinking, feeling and acting. ››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.' ››You mainly make yourself needlessly and neurotically miserable by strongly holding absolutist irrational Beliefs (iBs), especially by rigidly believing unconditional shoulds, oughts, and musts. ››
