How to Make Yourself Happy and Remarkably Less Disturbable

Rating:
Summary: If you stick with it, it will be helpful.
Review: At first I didn't know what to think of this book. Ellis, an internationally renowned psychologist and founder of the Albert Ellis Institute for Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, writes like a psychologist--a little too deep for the layperson. He also uses initials in his writing. Whenever you read "REBT," you are to remember it stands for Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy. "IB" stands for (Irrational Beliefs), "USA" (unconditional self-acceptance), and "UAO" Unconditional Acceptance of Others. I found it distracting to be reading a chapter and having to go back and find for which "IB," REBT," "UAO," and all the other initials stood. About haf-way through the book, things fell into place, made sense and became interesting. I started to understand what Ellis was saying, and the book became helpful and informative. His theory is, we are the captain of our ships--our minds. No matter what storms we must weather, we have what it takes to overcome these disturbances and continue our journey with smooth sailing, under our own power. On page 49 Ellis says, ". . .you have little control over many unfortunate Activating Events or Adversities (A's) that plague you, but you largely can control your Beliefs (B's) about these Adversities." He continues, "You can control and exhange your own disturbance-creating demands!" This is the heart of his therapy. Ellis relates patient's stories, how they were treated and how the overcame their problems. When reading these anecdotes, it gives the reader a feeling of, I'm not alone with my problems and they can be overcome. This is always helpful. Included in the book is an REBT Self-Help Form. This is a worksheet that allows us to put our problems on paper, examine them, research them, put them under a microscope and find an answer to them. Although a little intimidating at first, this book really does offer helpful suggestions if you are willing to stick with it and do some work. On the back cover of his book Ellis is described as controversial, charismatic and innovative. The answers to life's problems aren't easy and having someone shake us up a little just might be the push we need to get ourselves going in the right direction.

-End-

Rating:
Summary: If you stick with it, it will be helpful.
Review: At first I didn't know what to think of this book. Ellis, an internationally renowned psychologist and founder of the Albert Ellis Institute for Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, writes like a psychologist--a little too deep for the layperson. He also uses initials in his writing. Whenever you read "REBT," you are to remember it stands for Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy. "IB" stands for (Irrational Beliefs), "USA" (unconditional self-acceptance), and "UAO" Unconditional Acceptance of Others. I found it distracting to be reading a chapter and having to go back and find for which "IB," REBT," "UAO," and all the other initials stood. About haf-way through the book, things fell into place, made sense and became interesting. I started to understand what Ellis was saying, and the book became helpful and informative. His theory is, we are the captain of our ships--our minds. No matter what storms we must weather, we have what it takes to overcome these disturbances and continue our journey with smooth sailing, under our own power. On page 49 Ellis says, ". . .you have little control over many unfortunate Activating Events or Adversities (A's) that plague you, but you largely can control your Beliefs (B's) about these Adversities." He continues, "You can control and exhange your own disturbance-creating demands!" This is the heart of his therapy. Ellis relates patient's stories, how they were treated and how the overcame their problems. When reading these anecdotes, it gives the reader a feeling of, I'm not alone with my problems and they can be overcome. This is always helpful. Included in the book is an REBT Self-Help Form. This is a worksheet that allows us to put our problems on paper, examine them, research them, put them under a microscope and find an answer to them. Although a little intimidating at first, this book really does offer helpful suggestions if you are willing to stick with it and do some work. On the back cover of his book Ellis is described as controversial, charismatic and innovative. The answers to life's problems aren't easy and having someone shake us up a little just might be the push we need to get ourselves going in the right direction.

-End-

Rating:
Summary: How To Make Yourself Happy and Remarkably Less Disturbable
Review: Dr. Albert Ellis is a recognized expert in the field of rational emotive behavior therapy, which concentrates of changing behavior by replacing irrational beliefs with rational ones. A psychologist with a clinical practice, Dr. Ellis has written sixty-five books and published numerous articles on human behavior. How To Make Yourself Happy and Remarkably Less Disturbable, his newest book, offers readers practical guidance for achieving happy and satisfying lives.
Dr. Ellis is convinced that people have the ability to change their lives through the choices they make. He says you can "learn to change your thoughts, feelings, and actions and thereby reduce your emotional distress."
All of us have goals. Often someone or something keeps us from achieving those goals. Some people then have "negative feelings like sadness, disappointment, regret, and frustration," that can stimulate them to find ways of overcoming whatever is keeping them from their goals. Others have unreasonable feelings that result in emotions that produce self-defeating behaviors like depression, panic, or self-hatred. Ellis teaches readers how to recognize those unreasonable feelings and convert them to healthy emotions.
The basis of his process involves determining what beliefs you have that trigger your emotional responses. Irrational beliefs include "I-can't-stand-itis," absolutes like must and should, awfulizing, and worthlessness. You then dispute those beliefs with questions like: Is my belief logical? What evidence supports it? Is it really this bad or awful? Disputing irrational beliefs opens the way to replace them with more rational beliefs, like "I don't like this, but I can stand it." Rational beliefs allow you to handle adversities with less distress.
Ellis includes case histories of people who have overcome severe unhappiness with his techniques.
Readers wishing to ease their emotional distress will find How To Make Yourself Happy a useful resource.

Rating:
Summary: How To Make Yourself Happy and Remarkably Less Disturbable
Review: Dr. Albert Ellis is a recognized expert in the field of rational emotive behavior therapy, which concentrates of changing behavior by replacing irrational beliefs with rational ones. A psychologist with a clinical practice, Dr. Ellis has written sixty-five books and published numerous articles on human behavior. How To Make Yourself Happy and Remarkably Less Disturbable, his newest book, offers readers practical guidance for achieving happy and satisfying lives.
Dr. Ellis is convinced that people have the ability to change their lives through the choices they make. He says you can "learn to change your thoughts, feelings, and actions and thereby reduce your emotional distress."
All of us have goals. Often someone or something keeps us from achieving those goals. Some people then have "negative feelings like sadness, disappointment, regret, and frustration," that can stimulate them to find ways of overcoming whatever is keeping them from their goals. Others have unreasonable feelings that result in emotions that produce self-defeating behaviors like depression, panic, or self-hatred. Ellis teaches readers how to recognize those unreasonable feelings and convert them to healthy emotions.
The basis of his process involves determining what beliefs you have that trigger your emotional responses. Irrational beliefs include "I-can't-stand-itis," absolutes like must and should, awfulizing, and worthlessness. You then dispute those beliefs with questions like: Is my belief logical? What evidence supports it? Is it really this bad or awful? Disputing irrational beliefs opens the way to replace them with more rational beliefs, like "I don't like this, but I can stand it." Rational beliefs allow you to handle adversities with less distress.
Ellis includes case histories of people who have overcome severe unhappiness with his techniques.
Readers wishing to ease their emotional distress will find How To Make Yourself Happy a useful resource.

Rating:
Summary: A good Ellis book
Review: Granted, this isn't Albert Ellis' best book, you'd be better off starting with "A Guide to Rational Living". But Mr. Hettinger misses the point in his review. In his review he says that he "just couldn't take it anymore". Saying something like that is very un-REBT like. He calls much of what's in the book semantic B.S. Well Mr. Hettinger, how you think is ALL sematics to coin a phrase from Maxie Maultsby, a well known cognitive behavioral therapist, you use words to think. The reason Dr. Ellis keeps hammering on certain points is to get it through our fool heads. As far as using words such as "awful" and "horrible" the fact is you don't NEED to ever define anything as other than bad. Bad is bad, sometimes very bad. Those words are often over-defining the badness of events and therefore using them can make you feel worse. So why use them. Just saying "horrible" makes you feel worse because of the contortions your face goes through when saying it. The same contortions can't be done when saying "bad". Smile and you feel better, frown and you feel worse. Try it. This is a good book, thought not his best.

Rating:
Summary: A GREAT BOOK BY A SIMPLY GREAT MAN!
Review: I have ruthlessly criticized Albert Ellis in other reviews and I apologize. I now have many of his books and tapes. This book really stands out and will show you new "flavors" of how to make yourself less miserable. And Thank God, in this book, Ellis is taking the whip in his hand and stating PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE. This book is simply a Godsend. I have already benefitted from it greatly. Ellis pounds home the fact that humans can be happy. They have a choice. I am now dropping "wanting the approval of others". So the anxiety pitches down. This is becoming more and more ingrained in my brain. In this book, Ellis has come up with a beautiful new acronym. USA. Unconditional Self Acceptance. I can now relax. Do yourself a favor and buy this book. I didn't practice hard before so I blasted Ellis. But this book is a Godsend for anybody who has problems with depression or anxiety. Yes, you can make yourself happy. Thank you, Dr. Ellis.

Rating:
Summary: A GREAT BOOK BY A SIMPLY GREAT MAN!
Review: I have ruthlessly criticized Albert Ellis in other reviews and I apologize. I now have many of his books and tapes. This book really stands out and will show you new "flavors" of how to make yourself less miserable. And Thank God, in this book, Ellis is taking the whip in his hand and stating PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE. This book is simply a Godsend. I have already benefitted from it greatly. Ellis pounds home the fact that humans can be happy. They have a choice. I am now dropping "wanting the approval of others". So the anxiety pitches down. This is becoming more and more ingrained in my brain. In this book, Ellis has come up with a beautiful new acronym. USA. Unconditional Self Acceptance. I can now relax. Do yourself a favor and buy this book. I didn't practice hard before so I blasted Ellis. But this book is a Godsend for anybody who has problems with depression or anxiety. Yes, you can make yourself happy. Thank you, Dr. Ellis.

Rating:
Summary: Poorly written and not terribly useful
Review: I have to admit that I could gave up on this book after about the first 100 pages. There are many problems with it, and after a while I just couldn't take it any more. First, Ellis repeats himself over, and over, and over again - there are a number of key points in the book and they get beaten to death. Second, the book (at least the first 100 pages) is remarkably content-free in terms of actual guidance on how to implement any of the author's ideas in real life. Third, it reads as if it was dictated into a handheld recorder - it could have benefited from some editing. Fourth, the author's ego intrudes throughout (how many authors have you read lately who have their own eponymous "institutes"?) and one tires of it very quickly. Fifth, and most importantly, many of the ideas expressed in the book turn out to be little more than word games and were annoyingly stupid. For instance, a lot of space (a LOT of space) is devoted to a painstaking and, in the end, ridiculous analysis of the events in life that we ought to (in order to promote a long-term "happy" frame of mind ) think about as being merely "bad" or perhaps occasionally "very bad" rather than maladaptively labeling them as "awful" or "terrible." For instance, if my wife should suddenly die I will only make myself all the more miserable by labeling it as "awful" or "terrible" - instead, I will be better of in the long run if I can think of it in less traumatic terms (i.e., as merely "very bad") because after all it could have been my wife AND children who died. I don't know about you, but that doesn't make me feel a lot better and amounts to nothing more than semantic BS in my mind. He actually gives the following example (paraphrasing): "Even if you're being slowly tortured to death, it's still not awful and terrible because you COULD be tortured to death even slower!" The author's thesis is that "literally nothing" is awful and terrible, and if we think it is well then we're just going to be unhappy.

I know there's got to be more to this guy and his approach than the silly ideas and examples presented in this poorly written book. This having been the first book of his I've read, I can't say. I got to the "slow torture" part and tossed the book in the trash.

A good book in this area - one that is very carefully and well written with a lot of application to real life - that I can recommend highly is "The Feeling Good Handbook" by David Burns. Cognitive therapy looks to be a good approach, certainly far better than psychoanalytic approaches. And I know that Ellis is one of the founders of this approach - but this book is awful.

Rating:
Summary: Culmination of Ellis's Rational Emotive Therapy
Review: The book is basically 200 pages long and it's basically tells you how to be less disturbable which is basically what Ellis' idea of happiness is. To become more disturbable is to be more happier. His whole theory is that basically, it is not what happens to us, but how we interpret it. If we interpret something as bad then it is bad. If we interpret it as good then it is good. The reaosn we interpret things as bad or good is because of our belief systems. For example if you believe that you must be liked by everybody who you feel affectionate for then you will feel depressed if you don't get that love. The book basically first of all explains to you that the reason you get depressed is because of your feelings and expacations for the world. Then part 2 is basically how you can change these beliefs using thinking ways, behavioral ways, and emotive ways. This book is basically a culmination of all the methods that you can use to defeat your irrational beliefs. The book is very, very good because it written in a very simple language and you can acutally feel the author is right there talking to you. He explains concepts in very easy ways. His therapy is hard-nosed but optimistic. He doesn't make promises that he can't back up. The last chapter is devoted to self-actualization. The reason why I said it was a culmination of rational-emotive therapy is because the basically new thing that I have learned from this book (after reading 5 of his earlier one) is basically new ways I can dispute my beliefs. You should also read A guide to rational living and A Personal Guide to Happiness. The books are a little bit older but they still tell you how to apply it even more to different situations.

In conclusion, the book is very good and has very good explanations of the theory. Its best part is the many ways he tells you how to dispute your irrational beliefs. No other book that he has written, at least I think, has so many methods as this one on how to defeat your irrational beliefs. It is written in plain style and I believe that it can help people.

Rating:
Summary: Very good!
Review: This is a pretty good book