You Can Choose To Be Happy: "Rise Above" Anxiety, Anger, and Depression (Paperback)

by Tom G. Stevens (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"I'm a self-help book junkie, and this is the best self-help book I've read."

"This book is a terrific combination of scholarship, superb information, and spirituality."

"It's packed with insightful knowledge and expertise. All the personal experiences, and all the skills that I learned will stay with me forever."

"I am a professional and find most self-help books too simplistic. I was happy to find one that was so interesting and that I could get so much from. I highly recommend it to people who are more advanced in their own self-development."

"This book is much more clear, understandable, and 100 times more useful [than other self-help books]." -- Readers

A test group of 35 adults read a prepublication version of the book. 100% said that they would recommend the book to a friend--40% said they already had. When asked, overall, how useful the book was, readers gave it a average rating of 8.23 on a 1-9 rating scale. -- Test Goup

A thorough presentation, rich in detail, yet very reader friendly. I enthusiastically endorse Tom Stevens' book and recommend it as a powerful tool for human development. -- Dr. Wayne Dyer, author of Your Erroneous Zones, Pulling Your Own Strings, Your Sacred Self

The degree to which this book integrates so many current ideas from diverse areas of psychology and applies them in such a practical way is remarkable. -- Dr. David Dowell, a psychology professor and associate dean at Calif State University

Product Description
* Do you want to discover the causes of happiness and unhappiness?
* Would you like to develop greater self-esteem?
* Do you want a more positive, but realistic, view of the world?
* Would you like to learn how to achieve more mental control over emotions such as anxiety, anger, guilt, and depression?
* Do you worry too much about pleasing others, rejection, or gaining approval?
* Are you too dependent on others for your happiness? * Would you like to get more internal control of your life or become more assertive? * Are you too codependent (take too much responsibility for others)?
* Do you want to improve your ability to motivate yourself, achieve your goals, and have a greater impact on the world?
* Would you like to feel less stress and make your time more productive?
* Would you like to advance in your journey to self-actualization (be more like self-actualizing people, who are extremely happy and productive)?

Overcome stress, low motivation, unhappiness, loneliness, codependency, shyness, emptiness, and negative thinking. Develop self-esteem, assertiveness, emotional control, time-management, confidence, spiritual harmony, success, and self-actualization.

If you want to maximize your happiness, this book is for you!

Many books may help you with some of these issues. How is this book different? Readers of prepublication copies say that it really works. Dr. Tom Stevens is not the type of author who just writes about what others have done. Dr. Stevens' knowledge about how to be happy--despite difficult circumstances--comes from helping hundreds of clients as a licensed psychologist, from his years of study and research, and from his own life. He lives the ideas he writes about. He views emotional problems from philosophical-spiritual, psychological, and personal perspectives. He considers his greatest accomplishments to be a happy life, a wonderful marriage, and his contributions to the happiness of others. He believes we can learn to do what we enjoy or enjoy what we do. His unusual background and experience has helped him assemble one of the most complete and up-to-date books about HOW TO BE HAPPY.

This book is for people who are serious about being happy. You can develop your inner power to "rise above" negative emotions, and You Can Choose To Be Happy. Each chapter is packed with valuable information about how to be happy even in the most difficult circumstances--even if you have a history of unhappiness or depression. The book is especially for people who value self-growth and development to become happier healthier people. It teaches how to explore deep causes of stress and unhappiness and how to find alternative routes to happiness no matter what the situation is. It explores underlying beliefs that lead to pessimism versus realistic optimism.

People often look for a book about how to overcome past low self-esteem, anxiety, depression, procrastination, shyness, lack of assertiveness, or other specific problems. However, these problems are often just symptoms of deeper beliefs that cause the person to think or act dysfunctionally. What is "broken" usually isn't just a habit, but one's basic beliefs. In contrast to the specific, problem-oriented approaches of many books on the market today, a primary goal of this book is to empower the growth-oriented core of our personality--something Dr. Stevens calls the "Higher Self." Inner harmony and growth are keys to happiness. Each of us has a Higher Self that can remain a weak voice within; or it can become a strong leader--the executive of our personality. Providing change in the top-level of our personality is a necessary part of transcending our history and progressing toward self-actualization. To become strong, the Higher Self must develop a positive, functional philosophy of life and must learn the knowledge and skills required to bring all of our subparts into harmony--like a maestro conducting a great symphony.

Happiness is not just a good feeling; it comes from a feedback mechanism built into the brain that measures how our lives are doing overall. The big secret of how You Can Choose To Be Happy helps you become happier (in even difficult circumstances ) comes from striking new insights about the causes of emotions. The "Harmonious Functioning Model" of emotions will teach you how to adjust your emotions almost like adjusting a thermostat to turn up the emotional heat or to turn it down. Learn how to "rise above" anxiety, anger, and depression. The Harmonious Functioning Model of the relationship between thoughts and emotions provides a simple state-of-the-art model that readers can use to better understand and control their emotions.

The harmonious functioning model assumes that the brain is an information processor and assumes that the main functions of the cerebral cortex are (1) to learn at an optimal rate and (2) to carry out the executive functions of running our lives. Therefore, it should be no great surprise that learning and mental control are among our strongest [higher] human motives.

The primary function of the sensations--like pleasure and pain--is to provide feedback about the innate, lower need states [hunger, thirst, sex, etc.]. The primary function of the emotions--like anger, anxiety, depression, and happiness--is to provide feedback about the learned, higher need states information and managing our lives. For example, sex normally produces powerful, innate sensations of pleasure. However, the thought that one might get AIDS can overshadow any biologically-based pleasure and create emotions like fear.

Think of a time when you had a "peak experience." What was happening? What caused it? When the brain is learning at an optimal rate (when its inputs or tasks are optimally challenging at all levels), then it hums along in a state of harmonious functioning. Our mind is functioning in the way "it was designed" to optimally function. If we are overstimulated or overchallenged with too much input for our abilities, then we feel the overarousal emotions such as anxiety and confusion. If we are understimulated or underchallenged, then we feel bored or depressed.

Being "in the zone" of harmonious functioning creates the "Big 3" outcomes of peak learning, peak performance, and peak happiness. This model explains why people who seem to have all life's advantages are often less happy than people who have much less. It is mental control of events--not external control--that is the key to happiness.

Our happiness level tells us how healthily our body, mind, and "spirit" are functioning. Our emotions tell us if our lives are in proper balance and harmony. We cannot be maximally happy if we only live for today or only live for ourselves. An innate brain mechanism controlling our emotions scans our personal world and will not let us completely ignore important issues.

Knowing that in any situation we can choose one of many internal or external routes to happiness gives us optimism and confidence--mental control of the situation. However, all these routes eventually end in thoughts; thoughts measured by this harmonious functioning-emotions brain mechanism. Therefore, harmonious thinking--not just getting what we want--is the key to happiness. It is the match between inputs and our expectations, abilities, and other thinking processes that determine our emotional reactions. When the match is harmonious, the result is happiness.

Understanding and planning increase mental control of emotions. Chapter 8 summarizes six powerful mental control strategies for raising or lowering our emotional temperatures. It provides the reader with specific tools for "rising above" anxiety, anger, and depression.

Relationships and loneliness are key sources of happiness or unhappiness. Readers can learn how to overcome fears of rejection and criticism or unhealthy needs for acceptance or codependence. They can become more internally controlled and assertive. Chapter 6 tells how.

Finally, O-PATSM is a time and life management system that Dr. Stevens has taught to thousands of people through his workshops and has proven to help people reach their goals, get more control of their lives, be more productive, and have more fun!

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Wheeler-Sutton Publishing Company (February 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0965337715
• ISBN-13: 978-0965337717
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #473,293 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Marriage & Family Therapist from California, May 4, 2000

By A Customer

Only read this book if you want to change your life. This book is for people who want to help themselves and believe that they have choices in their lives. As a therapist, I believe this concept is one of the most important awarenesses you can have. Once a person accepts this they know they can have more control over their reactions in every life situation. Dr. Stevens book is not to entertain but to give well thought out strategies for rising above difficult situations and moving towards "harmonious functioning", which he defines as having happiness and harmony in your life.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Love this book, December 21, 2007

By	janis winters "janis winters" (Colorado) - See all my reviews

This is a great book. Each sentence is relevant with a point and it's structured very well. Complex material is presented in a simple manner and there isn't any filler. It is clear the author is a great teacher. It reminds me of all the good professors I've had who were so comforting with sound advice from life experience and sincere wisdom. I found this book the day after I was given a diagnosis for bipolar disorder and it changed everything for me in a matter of hours. I am ordering a copy so I can highlight passages and come back to it again and again. I'm not a sucker for self-help books. I am skeptical of most books and bored very easily. My first impression of this book was that it may be too simple as I have been forced to read many dry, complicated texts as I earned a Masters of Science. However, I soon found that the material was very deep and presented so well that it was easy to understand and impossible to put down. Thanks to the author for helping me to rediscover the internal sources of contentment that I had lost in my post grad life and presenting the tools I needed to reject my life-long diagnosis and easily gain control of my moods and my own happiness.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best self help books, June 11, 2004

By A Customer

said it all above plus it's free on author's website.