Not matter what you read and find useful on this site all that needs to be said is Embrace Life.

Your immediate question will likely be "What  does that mean and how do I go about doing that?" Saying that and doing that are very different. My articles are intended to do just that.

If you are an adult, you are responsible for all your choices, decisions, thoughts, emotions, feelings and behavior.

So often we trick ourselves into believing that something else or someone else is responsible for our behavior. We do this by using poorly supported arguments or weak language. 

As a result of this negative unhelpful thinking, we become angry, anxious or depressed. We become stuck until something changes our thinking.

This site was not built in a vacuum. I am a writer who has had most of the experiences that my articles refer to. I have also read and studied many books starting with Psycho-Cybernetics by Doctor Maxwell Maltz.

Learning does not stop when you leave school. The purpose of school is to teach us how to learn, to teach us the process of learning for life. And, if you are curious enough about any subject, and continue to learn, that subject can become a second vocation. Mine just happens to be writing and thinking about thinking.

I also studied NLP, in particular Using Your Brain For A Change By Dr. Richard Bandler. Dr. Bandler, one of the creators of the therapy called Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) has written many books on the subject. I have most of his books in my collection as well as many from other authors.

From both of these books I derived my own understanding of a model of the mind That is all any human being can expect or be expected to do.

That model is a way of understanding human behavior, which I have already explained in several of the articles.  As a model it is no less useful than other theory of psychology.

In order to further understand and expand my ideas of how the mind works,  I became interested in various therapies. 

In particular, cognitive-behavioral therapy seemed a logical addition to the ideas I found so fascinating.

In fact the model of the mind is identical in most respects with the ones explained in the above recommended books.

Included below are books on cognitive-behavioral therapy.

I recently read Feeling Good Handbook by David D. Burns, MD. His book has been thoroughly tested and is recommended in a new therapy called bibliotherapy. In other words a self-help book that allows you to work through your problems and become your own therapist.

I also read the book The Depressed Child by Dr. Douglas A. Riley. I include this here because I feel it should be required reading for anyone planning to become or already a parent. It too provides information to understand both yourself and your child.

Finally, while I have not yet read this book, I have read many articles by Dr. Ellis.  This book lays out a therapy called Rational-Emotive Therapy. As with all the other books Refuse to Make Yourself Miserable provides the reader with tools to adjusting thinking and beliefs and emotions and live more rationally.

I hope that each of you will confirm what I merely touch on for yourselves. Either by reading and doing the exercises I suggest, or by reading any of the recommended books.

To embrace life is enough!