How to Make Yourself Happy and Remarkably Less Disturbable

Psychologist Albert Ellis, colloquially known as the "father" of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy and the "grandfather" of Cognitive Behavior Therapy, presents How to Make Yourself Happy and Less Remarkably Less Disturbable, a self-help guide of tips, tricks, and practical techniques for increasing the happiness and decreasing the worry and trouble in one's life. Chapters cover "self-starting beliefs" to motivate positive personal change, means to identify and dispute one's own self-defeating and irrational beliefs, reinforcement techniques, stimulus control, time-out procedures, and many more ways to get a handle on one's own thoughts and actions. "You definitely have the ability, as a human blessed with constructivist tendencies, to think, feel, and behave less disturbedly... you can do this by working on your thoughts, feelings, and actions, all of which are significantly interrelated." Highly recommended.

Ellis is in a select class of thinker. I always get something positive out of all of his books. There are a lot of feel good books out there and I have read many of them. You feel good when you read them, like church revival meetings, but there are no tools for lasting changes. Raw, raw, raw your great, think big, the sky's the limit and on and on. Leave the cash and good luck is what you get from that stuff. Snake oil at its best. Ellis provides tools for meaningfull and lasting change for the better. Any one can increase their level of happiness by reading this book and applying the simple examples. That's one of the many things I like about Ellis, complex problems have simple solutions.

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.

I think that this is a very good book by Ellis. All you will need to know, to understand the Ellis system, is covered here. Ellis was voted one of the top three therapists of this century, but he is NOT THE BEST TEACHER OF HIS THEORY in the self help books he writes (I have heard him in action on tapes and seen him in action once: he is great IN PERSON)The BEST SELF HELP BOOK FOR THIS SYSTEM is "Unfair Advantage" by TOM MILLER. It is interactive (a workbook where he makes you write down things)

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.