Stop Thinking, Start Living

Copyright

HarperElement

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 london Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

and HarperElement are trademarks of

HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Originally published as You Can Feel Good Again by Thorsons 1993 First published by Thorsons 1997 Published by Element 2003 This edition published by HarperElement 2012

39

FIRST EDITION

© Richard Carlson 1993

Richard Carlson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.

Paperback ISBN: 9780722535479

Ebook edition © August 2012 ISBN: 9780007383092

Version 2016-10-21

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

1 Possibilities

2 Your Thoughts and the Way You Feel

3 Healthy Psychological Functioning

4 Dismissing Thoughts

5 Wisdom

6 Thoughts Grow with Attention

7 Thought Systems

8 Choice Points

9 The Thinking Habit

10 Moods

11 Living in the Present Moment

12 Life Is Like a Pendulum

13 Mental Health and the Dynamics of Unhappiness

14 Grief and Loss

15 Illness and Death

16 Many Problems, One Solution

17 Unhappiness Is Your Curriculum

18 The Art of Optimism

19 Happiness and Gratitude

Footnotes

List of Searchable Terms

About the Publisher

Introduction

I respectfully ask that you try to forget everything you have ever been told about unhappiness, pessimism and depression – where these feelings come from, how serious they are, and how difficult they are to overcome. Try to forget about all the attempts you have made that have failed and all the approaches that promised results but did not deliver. Even though I am going to explain how you can begin to feel better today, I don’t ask you to believe me with blind faith. Instead, I ask that you use your own common sense when evaluating what you are about to read. By the time you finish this book I believe you will not only feel better, but also understand exactly why most approaches failed you before.

The way to get the most out of this book is to approach it with an open mind. See whether it makes sense to you and if it sounds like something that you already know intuitively. Some of what I propose will be quite different from what you have been exposed to before. Don’t let this be an obstacle to getting the help you deserve. Keep in mind that if what you have already learned was the answer you were looking for, you wouldn’t be reading this book today. You would be out enjoying your life.

The information given here is different because it represents a new understanding in the field of mental health. It doesn’t build on other approaches you may already be familiar with. If you can digest and ‘take to heart’ the information in this book, you will feel better right away. There is very little effort involved; all you have to do is understand what you read on an intuitive level and make a gentle effort to put your understanding into practice. As you will see, I don’t offer any fancy techniques or any sophisticated psychological theories to sift through. What I offer you is a simple yet profound commonsense-based understanding of mental health and happiness that really works, and that can be implemented immediately. I have seen people who have been unhappy or depressed for as many as 30 years walk away from my office feeling better than they can ever remember. And what’s more, the good feeling you will learn to tap into sticks with you.

I am a stress-management consultant who teaches people some very simple facts about their own internal functioning – what makes them tick and what makes them fall apart. The principles that I teach are generic, meaning they apply to everyone. I receive referrals from therapists around the country who have seen their clients rid themselves of depression as a result of what I teach. As people learn about the habitual processes that contribute to their own misery, and the ways that they use their own minds to sabotage their lives, they quickly discover a natural and relatively effortless way to escape the grips of unhappiness and lifelong pessimism.

My approach is based on a set of principles known as the Psychology of Mind.^>1 It is being used by growing numbers of therapists, consultants and educators, with spectacular results! The methods you will learn have been extrapolated from these principles in a way that is geared towards freeing you from unhappiness.

Many professionals now teaching this approach have come to believe that a majority of the more ‘conventional’ therapeutic approaches available today to treat unhappiness can actually make matters worse instead of better. This is not to say that there aren’t excellent, well-qualified therapists practising traditional therapy – there most certainly are. What you may discover, however, is that many of the practices that therapists currently use tend to fuel an already depressed state. Clients are directed to ‘get in touch’ with their most negative feelings and analyse their pasts in order to transcend their present situations. They are asked to study, if not relive, their childhood as well as their more recent past so that they can better understand the psychological damage that was inflicted on them.