Why do I get the feeling that whoever wrote this just came out of a bad relationship?
Yeah, I feel like every headline is missing a ", Sharon!" at the end.
Habits of Highly Miserable People
21–30 of 321 posts
Re: Habits of Highly Miserable People
#22This is perspicaciously cynical. I love it.
Re: Habits of Highly Miserable People
#23>Exercise: Sit in a comfortable chair, close your eyes, and, for 15 minutes, meditate on all the things you could lose: your job, your house, your savings, and so forth. Then brood about living in a homeless shelter. really roughly this is what stoics do, yet somehow they come to the conclusion "actually, what was i fearing? Proceed with adventure"...
I think people are just different. To some, thinking through the worst case scenario is a way to face and overcome their fears. To others, it's a way of instilling fears.
I think the idea behind the exercise, from a Stoicism standpoint, is to mentally expose yourself to the fear of being homeless (or whatever about the exercise creates anxiety for you). Eventually you desensitize yourself to that feeling and begin to realize it wouldn't be as bad as you think.
This is also an aspect of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).
Re: Habits of Highly Miserable People
#24This is perspicaciously cynical. I love it.
I think tone of the article is disgusting.
Re: Habits of Highly Miserable People
#25>Be afraid, be very afraid, of economic loss. I've always made a mental connection between permabears/zerohedge readers as likely miserable and unhappy people. The wild conspiracy theories and general hatred of certain groups in comment sections doesn't help, but noticed online and in person that people who are always predicting/worrying about the next catastrophe (financial or otherwise) generally lead unhappy lives…
Historically, the market has been great across the board for as long as most people have been alive (do you know anyone who was alive during the Great Depression and is alive today?). But doom-and-gloom negativity about the economy is a great marketing approach. It hits some button people have, gets them to buy gold or whatever other paranoid nonsense will save them from the Coming Economic Collapse.
Hits a button that some people have... most people don't appear to have that particular button.
Re: Habits of Highly Miserable People
#26This reminds me of the great book "The Situation Is Hopeless But Not Serious" [0] by the Austrian-American psychologist Paul Watzlawick. Excellent use of reverse psychology, let's you realize how many of those approaches you tend to use in your daily life. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Situation-Hopeless-Serious-Pursuit-Un...
I liked How to Be Miserable: 40 Strategies You Already Use. Which also helped with showing underrated strategies for upping happiness. https://www.amazon.com/How-Be-Miserable-Strategies-Already/d...
What's the point of posting a link to Amazon? Why are you doing free marketing for them?
You told us the name of the book, if I'm interested I know how to search.
I find this incredibly depressing.
Re: Habits of Highly Miserable People
#27I’m no expert on abject misery but reading 12pt serif text with a ridiculous line length on an iPhone screen has got to come pretty close.
Re: Habits of Highly Miserable People
#28> Have an affair (...) Don't enjoy life's pleasures
So... which is it?
> Taking pleasure in things like food, wine, music, and beauty is for flighty, shallow people.
Why is sex not listed in "life's pleasures"?
Re: Habits of Highly Miserable People
#29This article alludes to the importance of ego death: the entire spectrum of positive to negative self-perceptions are entirely mutable. You might’ve thought you were an awkward dork at one point, so you fulfilled your own expectations with subtle self-sabotaging behaviors to reinforce this identity persona.
More importantly, FIUYMI is a perfectly-viable strategy because it sells a persona to the practitioner’s self via repeated exposure.
Another consideration is to do all that is possible, while impossible, to remove ego from thoughts and instead focus as a trained observer: perceiving and gathering data.
Re: Habits of Highly Miserable People
#30>Exercise: Sit in a comfortable chair, close your eyes, and, for 15 minutes, meditate on all the things you could lose: your job, your house, your savings, and so forth. Then brood about living in a homeless shelter. really roughly this is what stoics do, yet somehow they come to the conclusion "actually, what was i fearing? Proceed with adventure"...
Those things never really scared me. Do they also meditate on being sick, in constant crippling pain and come to the same conclusion? I get a stomachache and recognize a bad personality change in myself. I dont imagine id be able to draw on the same mental skills while in that state for prolonged periods.