UI 060: "The 14 Habits of Highly Miserable People & How to succeed at self-sabotage."

So this week's podcast was based on an essay I recently read by a woman who has taught me a tremendous amount, Cloe Madanes.  

Here is her bio in case you don't know of her: Cloé Madanes, HDL, LIC is a world-renowned innovator and teacher of family and strategic therapy and one of the originators of the strategic approach to family therapy. She has authored seven books that are classics in the field: Strategic Family Therapy; Behind the One-Way Mirror; Sex, Love and Violence; The Violence of Men; The Secret Meaning of Money; The Therapist as Humanist, Social Activist and Systemic Thinker; and Relationship Breakthrough.

She has presented her work at professional conferences all over the world and has given keynote addresses for the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy, the National Association of Social Workers, the Evolution of Psychotherapy Conference, the Erickson Foundation, the California Psychological Association, and many other national and international organizations.

Madanes has won several awards for distinguished contribution to psychology and has counseled outstanding individuals from all walks of life. She has been featured in Newsweek, the Washington Post, and the Boston Globe. Her books have been translated to more than twenty languages. (source: www.CloeMadanes.com)

The essay is titled:

The 14 Habits of Highly Miserable People

How to succeed at self-sabotage.

and you can click here or above to read the full essay.

The premise is simple enough.  

 

Sure, people say they want happiness and fulfilled lives, but they act contrary to those words.  The reality is that many, if not most, people behave as though they really, truly desire misery rather than joy.  To be clear, I am referring to the vast majority who actually have tremendous amounts of free choice and free will.  I am not referring to those with brain trauma or organic (ie. congenital, biological, chemical) pathologies.  

 

The truth is that most of us have the freedom to determine our state of mind and our behavior.  But unfortunately, in general people live their lives as if they have no ability to determine or direct their reactions to life.  They are simply helpless subjects guided by the environment.  They claim a desired destination, but do little if anything effective to get them to where they say they want to go.  Actually, they do a lot to make sure they are no where near where they say they want to go. 

 

Sounds odd perhaps, but once you take an objective view of how people behave in contradistinction to their words, and make your decision based on their actions rather than rhetoric... it will all make sense.

 

So maybe what they really want is a miserable life and not a happy one.  If someone said "I want to be wealthy" but did none of the things required to earn wealth (basics like: graduate high school, get a job, work tenaciously, get married before having kids, etc.) and instead did the antithesis... Wouldn't you assume what they really want is a life a poverty?

 

If based on their actions, what people really desire is misery, then what is the best way to go about?  And why?  Why would someone (even yourself perhaps) actually want to be miserable?  There must be some benefit right?

 

Well of course there are many benefits to acting miserable such as:

• Attention and Care: People feel sorry for you.  They might actually feel guilty because somehow they are at fault.  If so, you may have hit a jackpot, and now you can manipulate that person to do all kinds of things for you.
• NO Hopes, NO Desires, NO Cares, NO Disappointment: When you and your world are all worthless and meaningless then there is nothing to gain or lose.  You are NUMB.  Misery can be a powerful anesthetic allowing you to disconnect and check out from the world.  And the more disconnected you are... the more miserable you can act.
• You are brooding and intelligent: People will assume you are a profoundly deep thinking intellectual.  The shallow, happy people could never understand or appreciate the burden of your insight and existential wisdom and understanding of the world.  If you are not miserable, then you are not paying attention...

So if you really want to perfect the art of misery, then lets learn how to do it effectively.

The 14 Habits of Highly Miserable People

(List from Cloe Madanes.  Edited by me for brevity.  For my full commentary please listen to the podcast, and you can read her comments by clicking here.)

 

"1. Be afraid, be very afraid, of economic loss. The art of messing up your life consists of indulging these fears, even when there’s little risk that you’ll actually suffer such losses. Concentrate on this fear, make it a priority in your life...

Fearing economic loss has several advantages. First, it’ll keep you working forever at a job you hate. Second, it balances nicely with greed, an obsession with money, and a selfishness that even Ebenezer Scrooge would envy. Third, not only will you alienate your friends and family, but you’ll likely become even more anxious, depressed, and possibly even ill from your money worries. Good job!

2. Practice sustained boredom. Cultivate the feeling that everything is predictable, that life holds no excitement, no possibility for adventure, that an inherently fascinating person like yourself has been deposited into a completely tedious and pointless life through no fault of your own. Complain a lot about how bored you are. Make it the main subject of conversation with everyone you know so they’ll get the distinct feeling that you think they’re boring. Consider provoking a crisis to relieve your boredom.

A side benefit of being bored is that you inevitably become boring. Friends and relatives will avoid you. You won’t be invited anywhere; nobody will want to call you, much less actually see you. As this happens, you’ll feel lonely and even more bored and miserable.

3. Give yourself a negative identity. Allow a perceived emotional problem to absorb all other aspects of your self-identification. If you feel depressed, become a Depressed Person; if you suffer from social anxiety or a phobia, assume the identity of a Phobic Person or a Person with Anxiety Disorder. Make your condition the focus of your life. Talk about it to everybody, and make sure to read up on the symptoms so you can speak about them knowledgeably and endlessly. 

4. Pick fights. This is an excellent way of ruining a relationship with a romantic partner. Once in a while, unpredictably, pick a fight or have a crying spell over something trivial and make unwarranted accusations. The interaction should last for at least 15 minutes and ideally occur in public. During the tantrum, expect your partner to be kind and sympathetic, but should he or she mention it later, insist that you never did such a thing and that he or she must have misunderstood what you were trying to say. Act injured and hurt that your partner somehow implied you weren’t behaving well.

Another way of doing this is to say unexpectedly, “We need to talk,” and then to barrage your partner with statements about how disappointed you are with the relationship. 

5. Attribute bad intentions. Whenever you can, attribute the worst possible intentions to your partner, friends, and coworkers. Take any innocent remark and turn it into an insult or attempt to humiliate you. ...The idea is to always expect the worst from people.

(...And if a) person asks what’s wrong, don’t say a word: let him or her suffer.

6. Whatever you do, do it only for personal gain. Sometimes you’ll be tempted to help someone, contribute to a charity, or participate in a community activity. Don’t do it, unless there’s something in it for you, like the opportunity to seem like a good person or to get to know somebody you can borrow money from some day. Never fall into the trap of doing something purely because you want to help people. Remember that your primary goal is to take care of Numero Uno, even though you hate yourself.

7. Avoid gratitude. Research shows that people who express gratitude are happier than those who don’t, so never express gratitude. Counting your blessings is for idiots. What blessings? Life is suffering, and then you die. What’s there to be thankful for?

8. Always be alert and in a state of anxiety. Optimism about the future leads only to disappointment. Therefore, you have to do your best to believe that your marriage will flounder, your children won’t love you, your business will fail, and nothing good will ever work out for you.

9. Blame your parents. Blaming your parents for your defects, shortcomings, and failures is among the most important steps you can take. After all, your parents made you who you are today; you had nothing to do with it. If you happen to have any good qualities or successes, don’t give your parents credit. Those are flukes.

10. Don’t enjoy life’s pleasures. Taking pleasure in things like food, wine, music, and beauty is for flighty, shallow people. Tell yourself that. If you inadvertently find yourself enjoying some flavor, song, or work of art, remind yourself immediately that these are transitory pleasures, which can’t compensate for the miserable state of the world. The same applies to nature. If you accidentally find yourself enjoying a beautiful view, a walk on the beach, or a stroll through a forest, stop! Remind yourself that the world is full of poverty, illness, and devastation. The beauty of nature is a deception.

11. Ruminate. Spend a great deal of time focused on yourself. Worry constantly about the causes of your behavior, analyze your defects, and chew on your problems. This will help you foster a pessimistic view of your life. Don’t allow yourself to become distracted by any positive experience or influence. The point is to ensure that even minor upsets and difficulties appear huge and portentous.

You can ruminate on the problems of others or the world, but make them about you. ...By ruminating not only on your own problems but also those of others, you’ll come across as a deep, sensitive thinker who holds the weight of the world on your shoulders.

12. Glorify or vilify the past. Glorifying the past is telling yourself how good, happy, fortunate, and worthwhile life was when you were a child, a young person, or a newly married person—and regretting how it’s all been downhill ever since.

... Focus on what you could’ve and should’ve done, instead of what you did. This will surely make you miserable.

Vilifying the past is easy, too. You were born in the wrong place at the wrong time, you never got what you needed, you felt you were discriminated against, you never got to go to summer camp. How can you possibly be happy when you had such a lousy background? It’s important to think that bad memories, serious mistakes, and traumatic events were much more influential in forming you and your future than good memories, successes, and happy events. Focus on bad times. Obsess about them. Treasure them. This will ensure that, no matter what’s happening in the present, you won’t be happy.

13. Find a romantic partner to reform. Make sure that you fall in love with someone with a major defect (cat hoarder, gambler, alcoholic, womanizer, sociopath), and set out to reform him or her, regardless of whether he or she wants to be reformed. Believe firmly that you can reform this person, and ignore all evidence to the contrary.

14. Be critical. Make sure to have an endless list of dislikes and voice them often, whether or not your opinion is solicited. For example, don’t hesitate to say, “That’s what you chose to wear this morning?” or “Why is your voice so shrill?” If someone is eating eggs, tell them you don’t like eggs. Your negativity can be applied to almost anything.

It helps if the things you criticize are well liked by most people so that your dislike of them sets you apart. Disliking traffic and mosquitos isn’t creative enough: everyone knows what it’s like to find these things annoying, and they won’t pay much attention if you find them annoying, too. But disliking the new movie that all your friends are praising? You’ll find plenty of opportunities to counter your friends’ glowing reviews with your contrarian opinion."

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So these are just 14 habits, there are many more.  But the truth is you can succeed in being miserable with just few of the habits done on a consistent basis.

On the other hand, if you do NOT want to be miserable then you should evaluate your life and see if you perhaps practice any of these misery habits.  Maybe you have your own particular method of developing misery and destroying your chances of happiness.  Write it down and decide if that is something you'd like to continue... or not.

It is up to you. 

In the final analysis, in general people have the ability to determine their mindset and behavior, they simply may not be aware or willing to put in the effort.  And yes, it does take effort.

I learned at a very young age that anyone can be a jerk.  It takes no effort to be angry or miserable.  However, it takes tremendous effort to act happy despite circumstances.

As Dennis Prager says "Life is Relentless", and it can feel overwhelming.

Life keeps happening to us and there is no pause button allowing us to regroup or catch up.  And there definitely is no rewind button to fix our past transgressions.  

But what we have been given is the gift of the present day, and the freedom to determine how we will live it.  We have little control over how life unfolds, but we have tremendous control over how we deal with it.  

I argue that should you become keenly aware of avoiding these 14 habits of misery and instead do the opposite, then you will find the faith and happiness God has always intended for you.

Determine if you have any of these habits.  See how they have served you.  Decide if they are worth it to you.  And if not, how can you transform them into habits of happiness.

Just like you can change your habits to go from being an overweight and/or unhealthy person to a fit and healthy one, so to can you change your habits for misery into happiness.

Become as focused on improving your character as you may have been in improving other aspects of your life (appearances, money, etc.).

Start now.