Your Erroneous Zones: Step-by-Step Advice for Escaping the Trap of Negative Thinking and Taking Control of Your Life

Immobilization can range from total inaction to mild indecision and hesitancy.

(1) Whenever you tell someone else that you are tired. (2) Whenever you tell someone else that you don’t feel well. If you are tired, you can exercise several options, but complaining to even one poor soul, let alone a loved one, is abusing that person. And it won’t make you less tired. The same kind of logic applies to your “not feeling well.”

You learned to put others ahead of you, to think of others first because that showed you were a “good” person. You learned self-effacement and were nurtured on instructions like “share your things with your cousins.” It didn’t matter that they were your treasures, your prized possessions, or that mommy or daddy might not be sharing their big-people

Are you motivated by your potential for growth, rather than a need to repair your deficiencies? (Chapter I)

There is only one moment in which you can experience anything, and that is now, yet a great deal of time is thrown away by dwelling on past or future experiences. Turning your now into total fulfillment is the touchstone of effective living, and virtually all self-defeating behaviors (erroneous zones) are efforts at living in a moment other than th

Becoming happier and more effective will mean becoming more aware of the choices that are available to you. YOU ARE THE SUM TOTAL OF YOUR CHOICES,

Feelings are not just emotions that happen to you. Feelings are reactions you choose to have.

• Be unable to take charge of your own life and live it the way you choose, simply because you won’t feel that you are worth the happiness you covet.

But approval should not be contingent upon being proper, nor should a child have to get a parent’s sanction for everything he says, thinks, feels, or does.

You get good at loving yourself, and suddenly you’re able to love others, to give to others, and do for others by giving and doing for yourself first.