© hacky
I came across this excellent article by Chloe Madanes, about how to be miserable, and started to think how these miserable habits can just kill your career. Mindset is so important in having a great career and success flows from happiness, not miserability. (Is that a word? I think I may have invented it!). Although we’ve all had, or known of, bosses who were vile and grumpy, most people prefer to be around people who are reasonably positive (without being a complete Polyanna).
The article’s very funny, because each ‘habit’ has an exercise to make you even more miserable, and the author is clearly having a little fun at the expense of The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People. At the same time, though, it’s thought provoking. Well worth reading through and seeing which ones you practice without even realising it. Here goes…
Most of us claim we want to be happy—to have meaningful lives, enjoy ourselves, experience fulfillment, and share love and friendship with other people and maybe other species, like dogs, cats, birds, and whatnot. Strangely enough, however, some people act as if they just want to be miserable, and they succeed remarkably at inviting misery into their lives, even though they get little apparent benefit from it, since being miserable doesn’t help them find lovers and friends, get better jobs, make more money, or go on more interesting vacations. Why do they do this? After perusing the output of some of the finest brains in the therapy profession, I’ve come to the conclusion that misery is an art form, and the satisfaction people seem to find in it reflects the creative effort required to cultivate it. In other words, when your living conditions are stable, peaceful, and prosperous—no civil wars raging in your streets, no mass hunger, no epidemic disease, no vexation from poverty—making yourself miserable is a craft all its own, requiring imagination, vision, and ingenuity. It can even give life a distinctive meaning.
