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

As Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, ancient stoic philosophers, pointed out, we humans mainly feel the way we think. No, not completely. But mainly.

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?

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.

you virtually always ( yes, A-L-W-A-Y-S) have the ability and the power to change your intense feelings of anxiety, despair, and hostility.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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?