You are the master of your fate and you create your own happiness.

If I am not for myself, then who will be for me?  And if I am only for myself, then what am I?  And if not now, when?
- Hillel the Elder, 1st Century B.C.
 

 It's never the events that happen to us that make us disturbed, but our view of them.
Epictetus, 1st Century A.D.


Happiness and misery depend as much on temperament as on fortune.
- Francois de la Rochefoucauld, 17th Century


Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
- Abe Lincoln


Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them.
- Leo Tolstoy


 To be in Hell is to drift; to be in Heaven is to steer.
- Geo. B. Shaw


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It is not that someone else is preventing you from living happily;
You yourself do not know what you want.  Rather than admit this,    
you pretend that someone is keeping you from excercising your liberty.
Who is this?  It is yourself.
- Thomas Merton, 1961

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I am responsible for the achievement of my desires.
I am responsible for my choices and actions...
I am responsible for my personal happiness.
- Dr. Nathaniel Branden


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"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have."

- Thomas Jefferson

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If you think you're free, there's no escape possible.
- Ram Dass

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Happiness is something you can work at.  It's a matter of identifying the things you do that get in the way of happiness,  and figuring out what positive activities you can do everyday to augment it.

- David Lykken, U of Minnesota

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Depressed people are caught in a  feedback loop in which distorted thoughts cause negative feelings, which then distort feelings further.

You can break the cycle by changing the thoughts.

A big part of cognitive therapy is training clients to catch the thoughts and  distortions and then find alternative and more accurate ways of thinking.


Over many weeks,the client's thoughts become more realistic.  The feedback loop is broken and the client's anxiety or depression abates.



- Jonathan Haidt, Psychologist and Happiness Researcher


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