Attitude Is All You Need! Second Edition
About this ebook
“He is an independent thinker, and I would advise you to read some of his books, particularly Attitude Is All You Need! It will help you control your anxiety and overcome other emotional problems”—Albert Ellis, Ph.D.
The founder of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), Albert Ellis, was voted the second-most influential psychologist of all time by the American Psychological Association (APA).
Dr. Ellis devoted a chapter to Attitude Is All You Need! in his book How to Control Your Anxiety Before It Controls You.
Original Book
• This book was originally published in 1997.
• At that time, it was used for a training seminar for counselors and therapists.
• Some of the formatting and brevity of the original was the result of being designed around the use of presentation overheads.
• This 2011 version is a revised, updated, and expanded version of the original.
• The book sometimes addresses and talks to therapists and counselors, and at other times talks to the general public or potential clients.
• Please excuse this duality of audiences due to the origins of the work.
To be concise, the book is about Attitude Power (AP).
• From reading it, you will discover how to increase your Attitude Power, and how to decrease your attitude weaknesses and deficiencies.
• Many rules for managing your attitude are taught. You learned a lot of rules in school for science and math.
• If you have a trade or profession, then you learned a lot of rules to be in that trade or profession.
• You may have learned rules in many areas such as consulting, design, documentation, efficiency, ethics, handling, legal, materials, methods, processing, record keeping, safety, skill, tools, and various special procedures.
• Are you willing to learn rules for your sanity?
• Are you willing to learn rules for the management of your attitudes?
• Don’t you think the time and energy spent on improving your mental health is worth the benefits to your relationships and career?
• Your methods of coping with stress can be used to understand some of the features and benefits of the book.
• You can obtain these benefits by practicing the Attitude Power teachings.
FEATURE #1
• Attitude Power helps you to become more aware of your attitudes and the effects your attitudes have on you, your competence, relationships, and stress.
BENEFIT #1
• Your awareness of your attitudes allows you to switch from ineffective or damaging attitudes to effective or helpful attitudes. Attitude Power can be used to lower your stress by helping you to choose a less stressful attitude.
FEATURE #2
• Attitude Power helps you to become responsible for your attitudes and stress. Responsibility regains control lost to victimhood.
BENEFIT #2
• Your responsibility for your attitudes allows you to regain your personal power and take charge of your attitudes.
• When you are feeling stressed, you are more likely to look for internal methods of dealing with the stress than to blame uncontrollable external sources; hence, you are better able to lower your stress.
FEATURE #3
• Attitude Power helps you to choose the most effective attitude for the situation.
• You also learn to choose to choose again after testing the results of your attitude choices.
BENEFIT #3
• You can cope more effectively because your attitude not only does not get in the way of your coping—your attitude helps you deal effectively with the situation.
• Your stress is lower as you are more effective.
• You achieve more of what you want to achieve by choosing the attitude that will help you the most.
FEATURE #4
Attitude Power teaches the practice of acceptance when you cannot change things for the better. Acceptance overcomes stress.
BENEFIT #4
• You are free of bad stress.
• You do not let bad stress get worked out on your body, which leads to medical problems.
• You allow good stress to get things done.
• You switch from bad stress to prevent apathy, burnout, conflicts, cynicism, disease, fights, and illness.
Author's Works
• The author’s works offer 6 different approaches to self-help.
(1) In Breathe, you discover methods for congruence, self-relaxation, self-calming, and self-centering.
(2) In Garden, you discover methods for sorting out what thoughts work for you and what thoughts work against you. You also learn how to increase your productive thoughts and decrease your unproductive thoughts.
(3) In Not, you discover methods to stop using the number one mistake that underlies failure. You also learn how to be a more effective parent or leader.
(4) In Ego, you discover methods to reduce your devotion to and dependence on ego. You also learn how to be free, happy, and more creative.
(5) In Attitude Is All You Need!, you discover methods to sort out what attitudes are working for you and what attitudes are working against you. You also learn how to increase your productive attitudes and how to decrease your unproductive attitudes.
(6) In the four books Something For Nothing, Anything Goes, Acid Test, and 3D: Daily Dose of Discernment: 2005 you are given sayings and aphorisms to use for introspection, contemplation, and meditation. Please experiment until you find the one or two approaches that work best for you. Worry not if the approaches are the best for anyone else.
Ratings and reviews
About the author
Be it as a person's counselor or as a founding member of facilities for the homeless, Kevin Everett FitzMaurice, M.S., NCC, CCMHC, LPC, seeks to make others' lives better by helping others improve how they function. As a volunteer, he supports community services to improve others' living conditions. As a counselor, he "counsels" in the traditional sense: advising, directing, and nudging--or pushing--others into facing and resolving their issues.
Mr. FitzMaurice has a variety of formal and advanced training in counseling, which includes Addictions Counseling, Family Therapy, advanced Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), Transactional Analysis (TA), and over 1300 hours of diverse training for continuing education units (CEUs). To make the best use of that extensive training, he takes an integrative approach, grounding himself in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and using the other theories to build upon that one core theory, rather than focusing on multiple theories and mastering none of them.
After more than twenty years in counseling, Mr. FitzMaurice has worked four years in the substance abuse field, directed two community mental health programs, and spent fourteen years counseling in private practice. In that time, he has refined many principles for and methods of counseling. He now puts those principles and methods into book form to share them with a wider audience, so more people can benefit than he can reach in person. Currently, he has more than twenty books written, most of which are available worldwide as e-books from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Google, Kobo, and Apple.
The philosophical odyssey of Mr. FitzMaurice began in the late '60s. It has remained a mostly self-taught pursuit, with little formal training or education in philosophy. The odyssey started with Western philosophy and a study of pragmatism and atheism. For example, he read every work of Nietzsche that had been translated into English at that time. From there, he moved to the study of Zen, Buddhism, Hinduism, and a misguided experimentation with psychedelics to achieve states of superconsciousness. He continued into Eastern philosophy, pursuing Taoism and J. Krishnamurti. Next came a study of Christianity that started with seven readings of the Old Testament and nine readings of the New Testament from cover to cover, followed by a formal study of Western psychology. The ongoing influences for FitzMaurice's thinking continue to be Christianity, General Semantics, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), and an Eastern combination of J. Krishnamurti, Taoism, and Zen.
Academic Credentials: Master of Science (M.S.) in guidance and counseling, with a specialization in agency counseling, from the University of Nebraska. Associate of applied science in human services - chemical dependency counseling (with honors), from Metropolitan Community College.
National Certifications: National Certified Counselor (NCC); Certified Clinical Mental Health Counselor (CCMHC); Family Certification in REBT; Primary Certification in REBT; and Advanced Certification in REBT.
State Licensure: Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) in Oregon; Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC) in Iowa; Licensed Independent Mental Health Practitioner (LIMHP) in Nebraska.
Community Service: One of the original founders of the Francis House, Siena House, and Stephen Center homeless facilities still in operation in Nebraska. Supporter of the following charities: OxFam America, Amnesty International USA, Habitat for Humanity, and Green Peace.
