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I Do Not Have to Act the Way I Feel
LOGIC: Just because I feel angry it does not follow that I have to act angry.
SELF-CONTROL: I can choose how I will respond despite how I feel.
VICTIM: I will not be a victim of my own emotions. I will choose how to respond despite what my emotions cry.
SLAVE: I will not be a slave to my emotions. I will decide how I will respond--NOT my emotions.
CONTAIN: I can and will contain my feelings for the appropriate time and place. If they need release, they can wait for the right occasion.
EXAMPLE: I will not express my anger to the State Trooper who has stopped me for speeding. I will choose to remain calm and will express my anger at a later time.
PRACTICAL: I will deal with my feelings when it is helpful and NOT hurtful for any concerned.
EXAMPLE: I will not let my feelings guide my conversation with my inadequate boss. Instead, I will let my mind rule and will deal with my feelings about my boss later.
WEAKLING: I will NOT act like an emotional weakling who has to risk his life over words. For example, I now see that cowboys are the weakest of all fools for they are willing to die for nothing. Odd as it may first appear, the macho character is the real weakling.
ANGER: I can overcome my anger by thinking and acting against my anger. I can think and act against my anger by not letting my anger victimize me.
QUOTATIONS VARIOUS SOURCES
"Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath:"--Ephesians 4:26
"He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down, and without walls."--Proverbs 25:28
"I tried to change the world and failed. I changed myself and the whole world changed too!"--Author unknown
"The willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life is the source from which self-respect springs."--Joan Didion
"The more you are willing to accept responsibility for your actions, the more credibility you will have."--Brian Koslow
"Life always gets harder towards the summit--the cold increases, responsibility increases."--Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, 1844-1900
"Nobody can bring you peace but yourself."--Ralph Waldo Emerson
"We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same."--Carlos Castenada
"Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional."--Anonymous
"What poison is to food, self-pity is to life."--Oliver C. Wilson
"Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be."--Abraham Lincoln
"Some pursue happiness, others create it."--Anonymous
"The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself."--Benjamin Franklin
"Each man the architect of his own fate."--Sallust
"The ability to accept responsibility is the measure of the man."--Roy Smith
"Man must cease attributing his problems to his environment, and learn again to exercise his will--his personal responsibility in the realm of faith and morals."--Albert Schweitzer
"It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves."--William Shakespeare
"My philosophy is that not only are you responsible for your life, but doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment."--Oprah Winfrey
"An excuse is a lie guarded."--Jonathan Swift
"A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds."--Francis Bacon
"Luck is where preparation meets opportunity."--Anonymous
"Nothing stops the man who desires to achieve. Every obstacle is simply a course to develop his achievement muscle. It's a strengthening of his powers of accomplishment."--Eric Butterworth
"Obstacles don't have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don't turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it."--Michael Jordan
"While they were saying among themselves it cannot be done, it was done."--Helen Keller
"Whatever may be, I am still largely the creator and ruler of my emotional destiny."--Albert Ellis & Robert A. Harper, A Guide to Rational Living, Third Edition, p. 252.
"The only disability in life is a bad attitude."--Scott Hamilton
"God has entrusted me with myself."--Epictetus
"Why is it that people are willing to take responsibility for their happiness or mild sadness but not their severe disturbance or great unhappiness?--why ego of course!"--Kevin Everett FitzMaurice
"Teaching the principle of emotional responsibility can be one of the hardest tasks in REBT as clients may have habitually blamed others for their problems and now the therapist is pointing to the true source of their emotional problems--themselves."--Michael Neenan and Windy Dryden, Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy: Advances in Theory & Practice, page 43
"It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere."--Agnes Repplier
"A man's as miserable as he thinks he is."--Marcus Seneca
"Either do not attempt at all, or go through with it."--Ovid
"Great works are performed not by strength, but by perseverance."--Samuel Johnson
"If we have not peace within ourselves, it is in vain to seek it from outward sources."--Francois de La Rochefoucauld
"A baby expects to be soothed, but a mature adult soothes themselves."--Kevin Everett FitzMaurice
"Adults are expert at self-disturbance and inept at self-soothing."--Kevin Everett FitzMaurice
"No one has ever gotten to anyone."--Kevin Everett FitzMaurice
"If pleasure first, then pain second."--Kevin Everett FitzMaurice
"There is no man so low that the cure for his condition does not lie strictly within himself."--Thomas L. Masson
"Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first."--Mark Twain
"Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does."--Jean-Paul Sartre, 1905-1980
"But let every man prove his own work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another."--Galatians 6:4
"Are you part of the problem or part of the solution?"--Annonymous
