64 Quotes by Andrew Bernstein

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.

Stress never comes directly from your circumstances. It comes from your thoughts about your circumstances.

We need to distinguish between stress and stimulation. Having deadlines, setting goals, and pushing yourself to perform at capacity are stimulating. Stress is when you’re anxious, upset, or frustrated, which dramatically reduce your ability to perform.

Stress is not the spice of life any more than arsenic is. And without it, you won’t feel bored.

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.

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.

Stress is a byproduct of subconscious beliefs you have about the world. You can’t choose not to believe something. You believe it because you think it’s true. To eliminate stress, you must learn to challenge these beliefs so that you see them differently.

People often say that stress is a motivator. What we’re referring to when we say this is really better described as stimulation and engagement.

To believe that your husband, wife, parents, kids, boss, job, bank account, or body is even partly responsible for your emotions, to think that there are bullets ‘out there’ that you have to contend with, that there are stressful life events to overcome, is to miss something vital.