Quotes by Richard Carlson

“Stress: The confusion created when ones mind overrides the bodys basic desire to choke the living daylights out of some jerk who desperately deserves it”

“Stress is when you wake up screaming and you realize you havent fallen asleep yet”

“Stress is nothing more than a socially acceptable form of mental illness”

“Stress is basically a disconnection from the earth, a forgetting of the breath. Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency. Nothing is that important. Just lie down.”

“When you let someone else win an argument, often you both end up winners”

“Our minds can work for us or against us at any given moment. We can learn to accept and live with the natural psychological laws that govern us, understanding how to flow with life rather than struggle against it. We can return to our natural state of contentment.”

“No one knows exactly where thought comes from, but it can be said that thought comes from the same place as whatever it is that beats our heart... it comes from being alive.”

“Will this matter a year from now?”

“[But its never too late, or too early, to be happy -- a message Carlson wants everybody to listen to.] There is a big payoff to learning to be happier, ... You handle your parents better, you handle your peer pressure, you handle life in general with a lot more equanimity, and it just gets to be a lot more fun.”

“Theres a huge number of people stuck in a lousy commute or a tiny house, or they finally got the raise theyre hoping for. Its not a bottomless pit, but its a large, large group.”

“We have to shore this thing up like a New Orleans levy.”

“Typically you issue those releases when you get partial payment. We were bending over backward, issuing them even when we were not getting partial payment. We stopped doing that when they filed bankruptcy.”

“The trick is to be grateful when your mood is high and graceful when it is low.”

“Ive got to tell you, the people in the neighborhood, theyre looking for the wings.”

“The ill effects of thought come about when we forget that thought is a function of our consciousness... an ability that we as human beings have. We are the producers of our own thinking.”

“It seems that we have it backward in our society. We tend to look up to people who are under a great deal of stress, who can handle loads of stress, and those who are under a great deal of pressure.”

“Dont Stress the Small Stuff--and its all small stuff,”

“Circumstances dont make a person; they reveal him or her.”

One of the mistakes many of us make is that we feel sorry for ourselves, or for others, thinking that life should be fair, or that someday it will be. Its not and it wont. When we make this mistake we tend to spend a lot of time wallowing and/or complaining about whats wrong with life. Its not fair, we complain, not realizing that, perhaps, it was never intended to be.

Effective listening is more than simply avoiding the bad habit of interrupting others while they are speaking or finishing their sentences. Its being content to listen to the entire thought of someone rather than waiting impatiently for your chance to respond.