Creating your own misery

As long as you live in a society with other fallible humans you will be frustrated and hassled - not merely occasionally - all of your life. The best way to avoid feeling miserable about virtually anything that will ever occur in your lifetime is to admit that you create your own misery.

(Irrational beliefs that interfere with emotional health include..)

• I must do well... win the approval of others... or else I will rate as a rotten person.

• Others must treat me with considerately and kindly... Other people must not behave incompetently or stupidly.

• The world (and the people in it) must arrange the conditions under which I live so that I get what I want when I want it.

Albert Ellis