Customer Reviews

How to Make Yourself Happy and Remarkably Less Disturbable

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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.

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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)

I have to admit that I 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.

This book is a lengthy popular presentation of how to apply famous Dr. Ellis's Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) to yourself, with numerous examples, case studies and repetitions.

REBT is a philosophy more than psychology. REBT states that is not an adversity (A) that affects the human but the belief (B) of the individual about it, leading to negative consequences (C). These are the simple but most important ABCs of the therapy.

Dr. Ellis encourages disputing the irrational beliefs, avoiding generalization and absolutism, and unconditionally accepting self and the others.

Here is an excerpt from the book: "Exceptionally bad occurrences are only awful, horrible or terrible when you define them as such. Bad never really means awful but you may think it does. And you never have to think in that self-destructive way. In fact if you think clearly, you'll soon see that nothing - no, nothing - is awful. [.....] When you insist that an undesirable event is awful or terrible, you are implying - if you're honest with yourself - that it is as bad as it could be: completely or 100% bad. Bu actually nothing can be 100% bad, because it invariably could be worse. If you are tortured to death slowly, you could always be tortured to death slower. About the only thing that could really be totally bad would be the annihilation of the entire human race, all the living and non-living things that now exist, and the whole universe. Well, that hardly seems likely in the near future. Even if our entire universe were to be annihilated, that would be most unfortunate but not really awful for several reasons: (a) We all ultimately will die anyway, (b) Once we were destroyed, we wouldn't know that we were non-existent, (c) It is sad that many species - like tyrannosaurus Rex and the dinosaur - no longer exist, but is it really awful? (d) If you view possible or actual human (or animal) annihilation, as awful, how will that help you stay alive or be happy?"

Although Dr. Ellis has published more than 40 other self-help volumes, you can consider reading another book which is more brief and concise. There is a cute book "Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy - A Therapist's Guide" which, although targeted to practitioners qualified to practice psychotherapy, expose the REBT framework in much less words, and seemed much more vivid and easy to understand.

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.

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.

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.

This is the first book by Albert Ellis that I have picked up and tried to read. I was offput by his coined term "musterbate". I could not take the arrogant "you" statements that were peppered throughout the first several pages. By page 14 and this paragraph, I gave up.

"Your grandiose tendencies, as you can see, are both born and bred. You naturally make desires and preferences into arrant and arrogant demands. For you not to do so would take a good deal of time and effort - which you rarely bother to take!"

I am sure that there are tendencies in us all that we could take from this paragraph and from his book, but to make a broad sweep and put everyone in the same category was not about dealing with complicated people with various problems, but putting them all in a lump as insensitive narcissists. I have enough sense of self to know that this was not the kind of book that I want to read.