7 Principles That Will Guarantee Constant Misery
You don’t just wake up miserable one day and stay that way. To the contrary, producing a nice, consistent level of misery takes a lot of work. Do you ever hear anyone say, “Wow, that guy does whatever it takes to be miserable!” Of course not. Everyone is too busy patting the happy people on the back. “Wow, I wish I could be as happy as she is!” “They’re just such a happy couple!” “Wow, what a happy child!” How about a little appreciation for all the work people put into being utterly miserable? After all, as you’re about to see, depression takes effort!
1) Don’t pursue your ideal self.
Abraham Maslow once said, “If you plan on being anything less than you are capable of being, you will probably be unhappy all the days of your life.” So, take his advice to heart. Make comfort your highest priority. Surf the web as much as possible at work and do the same things, day after day, year after year without making any effort to improve. Veg out in front of the TV every night and channel surf. Don’t read, don’t take classes, do the same old, same old. Get yourself into a nice deep rut and then, as an extra added bonus, blame your spouse or kids for “holding you back” and keeping you from achieving the dreams you haven’t made any effort to pursue for years. That’s just the sort of stagnant life that will help keep you down in the dumps.
2) Isolate yourself.
People are flighty, they go away, they let you down. Sure, they also lift you up, make you feel connected, and give you someone to share the ups and downs with, but forget about all of that and focus on the bad side of other human beings. Have a nice time with someone and then make sure you’re unavailable for two months so they don’t get any funny ideas. If they’re insistent about trying to be a bigger part of your life, just give them the cold shoulder until they give up. Also, make sure not to reach out and bring anyone new into your life. If you do make that effort, give up the first time everything doesn’t go perfectly. That’s one of the most frightening definitions of hell I’ve ever heard — cut off, alone forever without the hope of ever experiencing love or human warmth again. On the one hand, that’s not as scary as being tortured forever, but on the other hand, you can experience it right here on earth and many people willingly choose to do so.
3) Make other people responsible for your happiness.
Do you know who cares as much as you do about your happiness? Other than God, nobody — and even He seems inclined to let people live with the consequences of their poor choices. You might think, “Hey, what about my spouse, my parents, my grandparents and my friends? They love me and want me to be happy!” Sure, but they also have their own lives to live which takes up the majority of their time. It’s even worse if you start relying on the government to take care of you. Ask the people in New Orleans after Katrina or the people in Jersey after Sandy how well FEMA looked after them. They didn’t do such a great job, right? That’s how it always turns out. So, put your own happiness last and just ASSUME that your parents, your lover, your spouse, your government — someone, somewhere, somehow will show up and put making you happy right at the top of his list. That will enable you to have a long, sad, unsatisfying wait topped off by a big helping of deep disappointment that no one ever puts you first.
4) Spend a lot of time focused on things you can’t control.
Worrying will wear you down under the best of circumstances, but if you really want to ramp your frustration level up to 11, spend your time worrying about things you can’t control. What kind of mood will someone be in tomorrow? What if your child gets sick? What if your boyfriend doesn’t like what you cook him for dinner next week? Getting upset about these sort of issues allows you to combine a sense of helplessness along with a completely useless, anxiety-producing activity. So, it’s the worst of all worlds.
5) Think short term all the time.
Everybody thinks short term sometimes, but the true experts at making themselves miserable have turned it into an art form. They become captives of their emotions and live for short-term gratification. Of course, that ignores the fact that for most people, life is a long piece of business and those short-term choices may still be reverberating decades hence. So drive drunk, have sex without a condom, walk out of a good relationship the first time you get frustrated, try that drug because there’s no way you’ll ever get addicted, go along with your friends when they’re doing stupid things because you don’t want to tell them “no.” Then there are the short-term decisions that you can repeat habitually. Blow half your paycheck each weekend, don’t put any money back at all, and then struggle to pay your bills. Yell at your kids every time they upset you. Nag your spouse incessantly for annoying you until he can’t stand to be around you. If you really want to be forlorn over the long term, living in the short term as much as possible will really help with that.
6) Become attached.
Buddhists believe that the principle cause of suffering is attachment. So, learn to love everything you own like a hoarder. Cling to your girlfriend like she’ll always be around. Say things like, “I can’t imagine what life would be like without my little doggie,” even though your lifespan is nine times as long as his will probably turn out to be. When something great happens, just take it for granted because after all, you can count on it being there forever! Instead of enjoying each moment as it comes, fill your life with material goods, activities, and people that you just can’t do without and then just wait. Then life, being what it is, will step in and take what you love away from you, which will allow you to brood over it incessantly. Some people can do this for DECADES which is, as you can imagine, really depressing.
7) Focus on the bad, not the good.
Find me the happiest human beings you know and get them to spend an hour thinking about the people in their lives that they care about who are no longer around, the things they want out of life that they don’t have, their biggest failures, their biggest disappointments, how they’ve let people down, what they lack and why they should be depressed and by the time they’re done, they’ll be completely despondent. This is because much of life is arbitrary. If you get fired, is it because you’re a loser who’s probably not going to be able to get a job anywhere else before you go broke and get thrown out of your apartment, or was being fired a blessing because you get to take a couple of weeks off before you’ll probably find a job that pays better with more opportunities for a promotion? If you have a break-up, is that someone you care about leaving your life forever or an opportunity to find your real soulmate? The key to living a life of sorrow is to settle on a negative interpretation and then to ruminate on it as much as possible, like a cow chewing cud until its jaw gets tired. Even if all else fails, this will help keep you mired in a nice, consistent funk over the long haul.
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More from John Hawkins at PJ Lifestyle:
Dang. You skewered me. I gotta work on about five of these. A couple are from recent current events, but the rest I’ll claim all by myself. Thanks for the jump start. Good article.
Thanks John! After the past week, I needed this.
Yep. Got me on this one. Thanks for the reminder. I really enjoy your articles; they contain a lot of important reminders and wisdom.
That first one cut DEEP, but for some reason I kept reading!!!! Thanks for this useful list. [;0)
You make it sound so simple. Thanks for the tips. I can’t wait to become miserable too. I have found the way. And just in time for Christmas. I will make copies for every happy person I know. I just hope I have enough paper.
Well I am off to a good start hitting four out of seven. I’ll put the other three on my New Years resolution list. Although I am a bit curious as to how to remain isolated while also becoming attached. If I can do that than I shall be well on my way to becoming a zen-master of misery.
Obviously you’ve been fortunate never having to experience depression. I hope this isn’t your attempt to help a friend; you failed miserably.
They say that alcoholism is a disease. I don’t believe it, but think that people choose to be falling down and rolling around in the gutter drunks. Surely it can’t be *that* hard to just not take the first gulp, if you know that booze affects you like krypton affects Superman.
Likewise, those who claim PMS and depression is what makes them insufferable, boring, and/or lazy. Did Darwinian survival of the fittest *really* choose to select for the sad sack in his/her bed who refuses to get up and go to work because of a sad depression?
If you’ve never experienced any of these things it’s easy to be dismissive. Doesn’t make you right, though.
Incredibly ignorant comment about alcoholism AND depression. I don’t mean that in a hostile way, but really that is just an incredibly ignorant comment.
Natural selection doesn’t select for suicide either, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
I have suffered from severe depression, and I wish I had read an article like this ten years ago. It might have saved me from making some terrible mistakes.
This column is absolutely brilliant. John just nails it.
In short, if you are susceptible to depression, print this column out and post it on your bathroom mirror. Read it every day and make a point of not falling into these behaviors. I guarantee your life will be infinitely better.
All right, enough Web surfing, people… get to work!
ouch! Printed it out and will reread as often as I can.
Well, I read your article.
It was interesting.
I could go outside and try to enjoy the day but it’ll probably rain.
There are some fun things I could do but they might end up being expensive. So I’ll just have to wait.
*sigh*
Pooh said he was going to stop by. He’ll probably notice that my house is messy.
Piglet didn’t bring my book back to me like he said he would.
Guess I’ll just sit here and wait.
Mr. Hawkins, you left off a few…..having to live with a knownothing, donothing, opinionated witch who is never happy, never content, who goes on periodic rampages where she blames me for all injustice from yesterday to the reign of Charlemagne. Also, drinking too much because of all the domestic tranquility I have to endure.
I know I hate it when that happens….
brobro, if it’s as bad as you say, you should leave. Life is too short…
Funny! And oh so true! The one you left off, number 8, is never taking any action to fix numbers 1 – 7!!
Then there is variation rule #9: It is always someone/something else’s fault. The blame game made me do it.
Remember a time when you lost someone very, very dear to you–a parent, a grandparent, a spouse, a child, a friend. You felt a great deal of pain and anguish–so much pain that you might have cried incessantly, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, lashed out at others; and those things once important to you seemed very distant.
When you were mourning your loved one, how would you have replied if someone said, “Snap out of it!” “He’s gone, get over it!” “The world isn’t going to end tomorrow!” Be honest: Would you have replied, “Yes, you’re right, it’s time to be happy now, thanks” ?
Ridiculous, isn’t it? Yet that’s what columns like yours assume about people who suffer from depression. Depression is that exact feeling of deep, painful loss I described above–except it’s there all the time, FOR NO REASON AT ALL. Your column merely helps perpetuate the stigma. Yes, we can snap out of it! We can control those negative thoughts! We can turn that frown upside down! Woo Hoo!
I’m not saying we should get all hypersensitive or politically correct about people who suffer from depression. But if you’re going to talk about depression, do it with some knowledge behind you. Don’t conflate a mental illness with a temporary downer. Kthxbai.
BTW, I also need to clarify that all those negative feelings/ideas listed in your column DO come with the constant mourning that is depression. Yes, it is possible to overcome a lot of them with medication and therapy–but it’s not permanent. It’s a constant struggle.
Taxpayer there is certainly something to what you say however, we need to distinguish situational depression from clinical depression. If you are sad and lethargic for a period of time because your beloved died or dumped you or because your house just got foreclosed on or you just got fired, you are suffering from situational depression. If you are depressed just in general because you think you suck and the whole world sucks and there is not much point in living–even absent any specific bad triggering event or situation–then you are clinically depressed and your observations apply. I think the article is aimed more at situational than at clinical depression. I agree that insofar as applied to the latter type this article appears insensitive and unhelpful. Mostly good advice for situational depression although as others have observed many are more easily said than done.
Having been married to one women diagnosed with such clinical depression and “significant othered” to another, I can recommend for point #8 the following: Get the h*ll away as fast as you can.
Your tender loving care for years and years will, more often than not, solidify their depression rather than help it. The best chance that that person has is to hit bottom and, realizing that there is no one is left willing to cater to their depression, may just find a way to embrace life properly. No it will not work with everyone because there are some undoubtedly serious physiologically-based mental illnesses out there. But there are also physical illnesses that you cannot do anything about.
For all your trouble, you will get old and in the accounting of your life will say – well I didn’t do much of anything but I did stick by a depressed person for 50 years. Is that admirable or tragic?
Yes, I know the difference, but I’m not confusing the two. I’ve had clinical depression for nearly 30 years, so I know more than a little bit about it. I’m trying to get people to understand what clinical depression is like, by comparing it to the situational type most encounter. I’ve actually done that little exercise (in a more complex form) with groups, and it brings about very uncomfortable realizations of what clinical depression is–and how deeply wrong their assumptions are about the disorder. Just like many of the assumptions made in this column.
Thanks for the reply Anon. On re-reading I see your comment really applies to some extent to both types of depression (e.g., if your friend’s wife just died, you don’t go slap him on the back and tell him to “snap out of it; if you’re truly clinically depressed, you are not ABLE to act upon most of the author’s suggestions without outside help).
In both kinds of depression, the pain is the same. Only the duration is different.
Mike Wallace “came out” about his struggle with depression. He put it beautifully. To paraphrase–If you were lying on the couch, and across the room was a magic pill that would take away your depression forever, the illness is such that you could not get off the couch to get that pill.
John Hawkins, you are brilliant, simply brilliant. This is the first time that I actually read your stuff, so I also read all of the attached entries. Thank you for being a lightbulb.
Living in California.
Sure Texas has problems too but at lest there some hope there.
“….except it’s there all the time, FOR NO REASON AT ALL.”
This is a hallmark sign of clinical depression. Chances are medication coupled with psychotherapy is in order.
Excellent piece. You’ve become one of my ‘must reads’.
WHAT TO EXPECT AFTER AMERICA COLLAPSES – ANARCHY!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ujoqjb1DdBs