Andrew J. Bernstein Quotes

The truth is that stress doesn't come from your boss, your kids, your spouse, traffic jams, health challenges, or other circumstances. It comes from your thoughts about these circumstances.

It's time we learned the truth about stress. It's time we identified the thoughts that actually create our stress and learned to dismantle them one by one.

Remember that stress doesn't come from what's going on in your life. It comes from your thoughts about what's going on in your life.

The truth is that there is no actual stress or anxiety in the world; it's your thoughts that create these false beliefs. You can't package stress, touch it, or see it. There are only people engaged in stressful thinking.

If you think negatively, it's hard to get out of tense moments.

Look closer at the stress in your own life and you can identify that negative emotions are always built on counterfactual statements.

What's taking place during stress is actually much simpler than a transaction between stressful life events and you. There aren't two parties involved in stress. There is only one - your own mind.

I try to keep away exterior events that are going to make me do something negative internally to myself.

There are a lot of things that I'm allowing myself to be, but it's a conscious effort to experience contentment for me. My brain doesn't do that naturally. I'm very overwhelmed all of the time.

Yeah, all those things, responsibility, pressure. It's a bit stressful. I try and come to terms with it by not thinking about it.

People don't just get upset. They contribute to their upsetness.

I always say I am a realist, and my mom says, 'No, you just have anxiety.'

We are not a victim of our emotions or thoughts. We can understand our triggers and use them as tools to help us respond more objectively.

I'm trying to stay as calm as possible and focus one day at a time, but when reality sets in, I feel everything: anxiety, excitement, nerves, pressure and joy.

Every time you feel depressed about something, try to identify a corresponding negative thought you had just prior to and during the depression. Because these thoughts have actually created your bad mood, by learning to restructure them, you can change your mood.

Almost all our suffering is the product of our thoughts. We spend nearly every moment of our lives lost in thought, and hostage to the character of those thoughts. You can break this spell, but it takes training just like it takes training to defend yourself against a physical assault.

I'm a worrywart, so I'm always a bit more stressed out than I should be or wish I was.

I think there's a danger, for me at least, in retreating and going inward and depression. I have to stay diligent against that tendency.

You might think that shifting your thoughts is as easy as setting your mind to it. But stressful thoughts aren't held in place through choice or will power. They're held in place through perceived truth value.

A lot of people, for example, live an anxious life. They don't realize they have a super-high level of anxiety. So we're gonna work on really writing down how anxious you feel at the moment you wake up. There's nothing wrong with it; the point is you learn to evaluate yourself and regulate yourself.

The less you think counterfactually, the less you experience stress. Stress, in this light, isn't a bad thing. It's simply a warning system telling you that your mind has lost touch with what's real.

The quality of my life has changed dramatically - not the events - but the way I handle them and my priorities and my sense of drama.

The only thing to know is how to use your neurosis.

Once you know the emotional building blocks of anxiety, you can influence them.

Every faculty and virtue I possess can be used as an instrument with which to worry myself.