How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything-yes, Anything!,: Revised And Updated

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.

Whenever you feel seriously upset (anxious, depressed, enraged, self-hating, or self-pitying), or are probably behaving against your own basic interest (avoiding what you had better do or addicted to acts that you’d better not do),

But neurosis still comes mainly from you. You consciously or unconsciously choose to victimize yourself by it. And you can choose to stop your nonsense and to stubbornly refuse to make yourself neurotic about virtually 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?

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.

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?

When you think in this rigid, musturbatory way, you will frequently feel anxious, depressed, self-hating, hostile, and self-pitying. Just stick to your profound, rigid shoulds, oughts, and musts, and you will see how you feel!

Not all emotional disturbance stems from arrogant thinking. But much of it does. And when you demand that you must not have failings, you can also demand that you must not be neurotic. Stevie, for example, clearly saw that he was neurotic—and then put himself down for being disturbed and hence made himself more neurotic.

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