This 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.
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.
I know where you're coming from, but here in the states a lot of real people are struggling to afford real goods and services that they need to stay alive: housing, healthcare, education, etc.
I wouldn't say economic anxiety is just 'nonsense fueled by conspiracy theorists.'
There is this hypothesis in psychology, depressive realism, that says that depressed persons see reality more clearly but this better vision isn't an advantage, on the contrary it's useless.
Do not do this. Do not live in the past. Do not think about what might, what could, what should have happened. Learn from it and move onwards. Nothing good comes from constantly dwelling on things that can't be changed.
Comparing your past self to your present self can be extremely destructive if you think you were in a better place then than you are now.
Maybe sometimes it’s abjectly true - you became homeless and in the past you weren’t so it was better back then. In a lot of cases you’re probably looking back on a high moment while in the middle of a low moment. Either way, the comparison does far more harm than good and it might well hold you back.
Goes to identity. Telling people not to do this is pointless unless you can suggest another way to construct identity. A person without a past is... an interesting thought experiment, but not something that exists in the real world. Identity builds up in layers -- what is your nation, your religion, your favorite team, your hometown, your college, your spouse, your child. If you give all of that up, then who are you? What are your goals? What do you believe in? What are you willing to fight for? What gives life meaning?
A better bit of advice is "avoid ruminating" and this applies to every thought, not just the ones that involve the past. But even that is not easy, especially for those who create things, since to create something you have to ruminate on it heavily, for months or years -- this is probably why there is an overlap between depression and creativity.
The key difference between rumination and self-reflection is that rumination doesn't accomplish anything. As soon as you finish examining whatever you were examining, you're right back at square one with no new insights. It's essentially beating yourself up for doing the best you can.
Self-reflection seems like rumination, but the goal is to learn something from whatever you're examining. To take a lesson from it, if there is a lesson. Not every moment is a teachable moment. If you're lucky, many of them are.
Sometimes an experience is just an experience, and there's nothing different you could or should have done. Take, for example, the numerous times I've been honked at in traffic. Is there some hidden meaning in those beeps? Should I have been paying more attention in that moment? Or did I make an honest mistake? If it's an honest mistake, there's nothing I can really do. No magical training regimen will make me an infallible driver, so I have to move on.
It's tempting in some cases to keep looking for a lesson. Some experiences will never contain a lesson no matter how hard you look. Rumination is cultivating the desert of those experiences.
"The key difference between rumination and self-reflection is that rumination doesn't accomplish anything"
The fundamental activity involves reviewing a thought over and over again, sometimes thousands of times over many years. Sometimes this leads to a new painting, a new novel, a new movie script, a new piece of software, or a new insight about something that happened to you as a child. Sometimes a person fails to make any progress.
You write "The key difference" but these are words without meaning. Sometimes you ruminate on a novel you are writing, but you can't figure out the ending, so you accomplish nothing. Sometimes you ruminate on that time you insulted your alcoholic brother and the next month he killed himself, but this time, reviewing the memory, you recall that he'd said he was going to kill himself long before, so it wasn't really your fault.
There is a reason why therapists often want to talk about a person's childhood -- sometimes reviewing the past leads to a new insight. Sometimes it doesn't. You can't judge the value of the activity simply by whether it produces something. Sometimes it will and sometimes it won't.
Maybe dwelling for a long time on those things is how some people learn. Not everyone can think about something in the past for a brief moment, learn everything and then discard it. Sometimes it takes years to interpret everything, and put the pieces together.
Thinking about something briefly and then moving on cold turkey is often completely phony: basically a form of denial. You're not free if you have "off limits" areas that you don't let yourself think about.
>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).
Most homeless people are suffering from a cocktail of problems with abuse, mental illness and drugs. If you woke one one morning to find yourself on the street with ragged clothes and empty pockets in a foreign city, but you still had your wits about you, you likely wouldn't be there for long.
because they find a home. Think about how many people in the US are living hand-to-mouth, where any disruption can cause them to fall behind on rent. Those people make up the majority of people who have been homeless recently. They are homeless for the time it takes them to save up a deposit and find a place to live.
Most of them are in a better state then alone in a strange city, with nothing but the clothes on their back. They often have jobs, and may be living on couches or in a car, or have a bank account, or social support (Not enough to keep them in a home, but something.)
The homeless that are sleeping rough for 9 months tend to stay homeless. It is a horrible way to live, and it breaks you down really fast.
That's just an example, it's not about actually being homeless but about losing everything you have. It's not as bad as you think, and as long as you're healthy and free, you should be able to rebuild.
Most of the homeless are couch surfing, living out of cars, etc. In one sharehouse I lived in, we had one guy on the couch and another in a tent in the back yard, both of whom were acquaintances going through a rough time. As far as worst cases go, while it would suck to have to sleep on someone's couch, it's honestly not that bad.
Being without a home sucks and is logistically annoying and aggravating to a significant degree. But a lot of the misery of most homeless people is due to the intractable personal problems that landed them there to begin with.
It does get compounded by social stigma. For me, the social stigma and the very real problems that caused was the worst part of being homeless for 5.7 years.
A lot of homeless people sleep in a tent. That's what I did. Some people do that for fun and call it camping.
I find it more helpful to examine the fear of being homeless and judge it. If I found myself in that bad situation, would I actually be helpless, or would I find a way to overcome it? Evidence based on my past experience suggests that I'd overcome it; therefore the fear is invalid.
Most psychotherapy seems like a clinical, medicalized repackaging of wisdom that the ancients already had. (Which is most certainly not to disparage the value of psychotherapy!)
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.
The buddhists do that and more. For example, recognizing the components of the body to such a degree that even when you see the most attractive person you may become entirely disgusted.
I think this is a better exercise. I stole it from Seneca.
Look at the back of your wrists: see those fragile greenish-blue veins?
What if tomorrow - while thinking about some problem with money or love - you trip and fall, and a particularly sharp rock on the ground or a shard of glass on the street cuts one of those thin exposed blue-green veins open?
What is the reaction you're "supposed" to get by thinking about that? I took a moment to think about it and I don't think I got it. My reaction was, "Well then I probably die", but I don't feel particularly different about the present.
If that's the thing I'm supposed to feel then so be it, but I feel Seneca intended for some greater profundity, or he would dispense with the mental theatrics. What am I missing? Does it need to be more visceral?
This is the first time I've heard the quote, but I think it's to appreciate that life is short and could end at any time, and while bleeding out you'd realize that worrying about these long-term things was a waste of time.
I fail to see that as highly positive though - with that attitude, I would stop exercising and invest all of my savings into cake and pizza. These things would make me happy each day, but miserable each month.
That's not exactly the purpose Stoics do that AFAIK.
One of the objectives is to appreciate what you have right now and stopping this urge that we have in today's society to always get more.
If you stop and really think about how bad it would be to live without your eyesight, for example, you can appreciate even the smallest things we take for granted.
> Compare Greek καρπός (karpós, “fruit”) and κείρω (keírō, “to cut off”), English harvest, sharp, shear.
Carpe diem totally fits; You just have to consider that an optimum can be approached from two sides, ie the right time to harvest, neither too soon nor too late. In another sense it might mean the day is ripe, I guess. But it's not cape diem, not take the day away.
That’s part of it, but mostly, it’s about thinking if the worst thing that can happen and how would you deal with it: do you bleed out peacefully or crying?
We are always thinking nothing will happen to us, yet, we’ve all here have had problems, accidental or due to our own stupidity, that have already changed the course of our life for the worse.
Seneca says it’s worth thinking about that every day to find peace of mind.
That life is absurd and fortune can bring death as easily as peace.
It’s my fault for not putting more time into my comment; it’s more about finding a scenario that scares you: since I also have no fear of poverty or sickness thinking about that does little for me.
An absurd death scares me so that’s ehy I used that, but if losing life doesn’t scare you, then maiming? Like you get hit by a self driving car and instead of losing your life, you lose both eyes, or both your arms, etc. You are also paralyzed now.
Now it’s very hard to kill yourself. Maybe impossible. But if your mind is still at peace, then you are truly wise, and you’ve made good use of your time in the world.
I would be a horrible and mean wretch if that calamity happened to me. I know I’m a mess, and I couldn’t face that future with any poise or grace.
From what I understand about suicide, no little crossways cut on those veins will ever kill you. You have to go up the arm and deep. Humans aren't that fragile really.
I'm probably doing it wrong but the first thing I think of is "better do that on a busy street, hopefully there's someone that knows to bind off my wrist or something[0]"
Do I need to imagine that I'll bleed out alone, with everyone walking past me as if I don't exist?
Because 1. I don't like that exercise and 2. it mostly makes me consider to what extent I'm currently surrounding myself with people that dis-compassionate an whether I should move ...
3. does it matter that one of my wrists actually has a huge scar, that's grown with me from when I was 4 years old, jumped off a couch and smashed my tiny right wrist into a glass on the table? I managed to miss both my artery and my tendons, ... or I wouldn't be typing this :D
You’re not doing it wrong; perhaps you’re more worried about how others will treat you because you feel you’re lacking friendships?
Most, if not all, would watch you bleed out: its the bystander effect. See the Kitty Genovese murder. Are you bothered by this?
You could have died. I fell and hit a glass table too and now I have a scar right next to my eye, less than a finger width away.
I could have lost the eye but I don’t like to think about it either. There’s a lot of stories where I could have been maimed, and I do have injuries that have left me weaker.
I had a sign: Act now or homelessness later. Choose.
Homeless shelters here are terrible TBH. I’d rather sleep rough. Living in a van for me is better than a house or apartment because:
- no rent, no mortgage
- no noisy neighbors sans the phony-“tough,” backwards-hat teenager act
- less space to fill it up whth $crap I don’t need
- always mobile
- able to leap tall buildings in a single bound
- dual burner stove and 20 kg propane tank
- all Burner, all the time
- no lawn to mow
- no bills but the basics
- it’s really quiet
- no neighbor from hell to gas you out smoking, using too much lighter-fluid and cooking with their BBQ right next to a fence below you and screaming/terrorizing/trying to intimidate everyone
- indoor nudist as long as I want
- volunteers of the blond varietal tested suspension for squeaks; needs more data
- able to monitor DIY blinker fluid meters closely
I saw this documentary on cnbc about modern day slavery on fishing boats[1]. Ppl are promised jobs, entrapped and sold to shipping vessels as slaves where there are worked to death. When someone falls sick or dies from overwork they simply throw the body out in the ocean. I am still traumatized by this documentary, I can't imagine anything worse that could happen to a human being.
I can shop at whole foods that does the homework for me but what about Chinese masses that don't give a shit. Why do humans have to reproduce so much and at all costs. fucking sick!
...and many of the rest were killed, because they were resisting, and/or to cow others who might have tried to resist.
You're missing the point: telling victims they're victiming wrong (literally, as in, "You're doing that wrong", which is so unbelievably much of this thread) is bullshit. It's especially so if you have no relevant experience on which to make that judgement, and that goes double if your likelihood of having that experience is structurally negligible. Hand-waving about how someone should handle something that has never — and, for practical purposes, will never — happen to you is ludicrous on its face.
> Anyway, perfectly ordinary slaveowner DiCaprio asks a rhetorical question, a fundamental question, that has occurred to every 7th grade white boy and about 10% of 7th grade white girls, and the profound question he asked was: "Why don't they just rise up?"
Kneel down, Quentin Tarantino is a genius. That question should properly come from the mouth of the German dentist: this isn't his country, he doesn't really have an instinctive feel for the system, so it's completely legitimate for a guy who doesn't know the score to ask this question, which is why 7th grade boys ask it; they themselves haven't yet felt the crushing weight of the system, so immediately you should ask, how early have girls been crushed that they don't think to ask this? But Tarantino puts this question in the mouth of the power, it is spoken by the very lips of that system; because of course the reason they don't rise up is that he-- that system-- taught them not to. When the system tells you what to do, you have no choice but to obey.
By buying fish obtained this way, the consumers in the second paragraph economically empower the perpetrators of the first paragraph to continue, allegedly because of food demand created by overpopulation.
Not endorsing the argument, but there is a connection.
I spent three months traveling through Central America. You really quickly get used to a constant sense of danger — the water and food can kill you, the bugs can kill you, the roads can kill you, the police and gangs could kill you — hell even taking a hot shower there is tempting fate since they have electric heaters in the shower heads and basically no electrical safety standards to speak of.
You either have to cower in your hotel in fear or live life. I went hitchhiking in Nicaragua, sledded down a volcano, went cliff diving, etc — stuff i’d never do at home.
There’s something to be said for facing down your fear of death and acting in the face of it.
This just isn't true. They felt exactly the same as OP up until the moment they died. A sudden death is, by definition, something that can not be regretted.
I'm sure some of them felt some amount of regret in the last, terrifying moments between when they realized that they were going to die and when they finally lost consciousness.
> To that specific individual, it doesn't because they are dead.
I wasn't clear enough. The decisions one makes during their life are affected by whether or not they care about anything that happens after they are dead (any many specifics beyond that). Many people do things whose primary impact won't be felt until long after they are gone. So it isn't true to simply say that nothing matters after the individual is dead.
Exactly. Doing this, if anything, makes me incredibly grateful I haven’t lost those things. And at the same time realize that it wouldn’t be the end of the world.
I don't get that impression from the stoics, this sudden 'hmmmph?' clarity that's almost amused at how silly oneself was being.
What I do get is that you can fear the worst and live in that fear to the point that it almost feels like you are experiencing what you fear every moment you are not experiencing it. And it either happens or it doesn't. And if it does, well, I don't know.
Someone or something fucked up somewhere, but I'm certainly not going to blame myself as though I am lord and master of all events that come to pass, seer of all future events and protector of all ills. Humans share that burden equally, and some feel it more than others. But I think like the stoics, like Zen, you can cultivate a sort of inner strength from that suffering.
That doesn't mean pursue suffering to be strong, no no no, not at all. It means you work with what you have. You have pain, use it. Use it to make someone else's life better. You have joy, enjoy it.
I'm not sure it's the right philosophy, or way of being, but it's the most clear and present thing I can muster when I feel my feelings. And I think stoicism reflects that. Deep sadness, old wounds, aching pains. Don't use it against yourself to worsen the hurt. If all you can be is neutral, be neutral. If all you can be is Zen, be Zen. If you can be happy, be happy. Don't take some old dead Greek dude's word for how to live your whole life. There are plenty of other Greek philosophers who spoke of happiness, to learn from too.
Yes, it seemed a bit random and confusing to me. I didn't think drugs or gambling obviously made people miserable - aren't they purpose made for pleasure? They don't really annoy other people either which turned out to be what the list was actually about - it should be called "Behaviors I don't like in other people because I don't know how to handle them".
They are purpose made for pleasure, but not happiness.
Put another way: those things are constructed to induce a point-in-time pleasurable state of mind; not create lasting happiness—in fact, they are often at odds with sustainable positivity due to their risk/feedback/reward cyclic nature.
Maybe it’s just semantics but what is the distinction between doing something like drugs for pleasure versus doing something like drugs for escapism? Do they overlap?
I’m now oddly reminded of Freud’s Civilisation and It’s Discontents, where he talks about the pleasure principle, etc — I should pick it up again but it felt tedious.
CGP Grey made a great video [0] pretty similar to this, it has a bunch of points about physical things (changing sleep schedule, staying indoors) and keeps the same sarcastic tone.
I found it informative and probably from honest experience. It's superficial chearful embrace towards problems people create for themselves is instructive towards correcting those habits.
Same. I find it making appeals to the just-world fallacy, not understanding that some people really do experience extended hardship without deserving it.
I don't speak for anyone besides myself when it comes to mental illness, but I've come to a point in my life where I'm just like 'Jesus fucking Christ can this shit please be just over with - can I please just be happy with the life I have left and not live my entire life being miserable over what used to exist or what terrible things may happen?'
Because when you dwell on suicide often enough, when you attempt suicide multiple times, when you get to that attempt where you are really sure, 'this is it - I actually have to say goodbye' eventually you realize 'I'm going to die one day. I'm convinced that day is today. Is this all the life I get? Was that it?'
And hopefully for others who go through something similar, and luckily in my case, I didn't die. Because even if I'm stuck in my head and think 'it really would be better if I was just dead', I don't want my whole life to be a combination of empty and shallow happiness I only realize I had, once it's gone entirely.
Hardship sucks for all of us. But the point is, don't focus on it when things are good. Life flies the fuck by otherwise, and what kind of an experience is that? Only happy when reminiscing, always sad when you actually have happiness, because you knew so well, that happiness is fleeting, and everything good in life must end eventually?
Mental illness is no joke to overcome, life is full of turmoil, sadness, pain, misery.
But I'm sure this will come across as callous and cruel to those still suffering with it, just as I felt when my family kept telling me to 'get over it' or how it's weakness or whatever the fuck people say to others to prove they are fed up with being miserable. It comes out fucked up, from anyone. People who go through it and come out the other side sound unsympathetic, but that's often because they are still suffering, but they want to feel like they have a choice. Not just a label they feel permanently stuck with until they die. What kind of a life is that to look forward to? Same patterns, same habits, same sickness. Same guilt and fear of proving the contrary - how will others take my triumph over misery? Will that make them feel defeated?
People with enormous amounts of sadness often have enormous amounts of empathy, and letting go of their sadness can seem like letting go of their empathy. So they cling to it. But it's something everyone with that kind of heart, I suppose, can choose to go through, or not, I don't know. I know myself. I know I'm sick of being miserable. I know talking about every sad and miserable thing I've ever been through only makes me more miserable. I know it affects others around me. I know it's a cycle one can be afraid of - how do I affect others when I feel so much pain? How can I be allowed to have my own feelings and get through them, without watching them dissipate across everyone around me?
I don't know if I'm better, I don't know if I'm worse. It's a curse, and a burden. But I know wholeheartedly, if I keep all of it in, it's going to kill me. And if I don't try to 'get over it' (again, the words can seem callous, but take this to mean whatever it should for the individual), in whatever way I can, it's going to hurt me and hurt everyone I try to connect with and love.
So sometimes I have to fucking laugh at it. Because, isn't that so fucked up? That I get what it does, and I can't do shit about it?
C. S. Lewis defined Joy as a desire-perhaps, if not probsbly unfulfilled-that is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction.
YMMV, but I think this is an accurate and essential insight. Maybe it's pertinent to your story, maybe not. At the same time, I suspect much of our internal suffering hinges on the fact.
my understanding is the article was pointing to the difference between having a problem/difficulty, and letting it define you. Two different people can have the same chronic ailment - one will be defeated by it, the other will attempt to live a happy life despite it. The article is advocating the latter over the former.
While there's a correlation between objective hardship and subjective misery, it's not perfect. Some people have happy temperaments even when times are tough, and some people are miserable even when times are good.
"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."
Alternately, you could make a website that has a good user experience by default for people using some of the most popular platforms instead of sticking with arbitrary standards from decades ago
Well, I appreciated the presumably intentional humour in this comment even if no-one else did so don't consign yourself to abject misery over the reactions.
This 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.
not necessarily - he could just be invoking the "do not attribute to malice what can easily be explained by stupidity" rule
It's not always so easy to tell apart the things you have control over vs. the things you don't, but I think that all these rules can be summarized in one line, which is basically: If you're feeling sorry for yourself, you'd better find something more productive to do.
> It's not always so easy to tell apart the things you have control over vs. the things you don't, but I think that all these rules can be summarized in one line, which is basically: If you're feeling sorry for yourself, you'd better find something more productive to do.
I wholly agree with this. There's something deeply insightful, subtle and difficult about recognizing one's own control in a situation. I've thought about this a lot in the last year. The way I phrase it right now is: people don't have a choice until they realize they have one.
Not fully. The point (I think) is not letting oneself be consumed by a problem & constantly identifying to be about it. There are way more things to define you.
There's a huge difference between saying "I have severe depression, and it takes great effort for me to get through a day without buckling" and saying "I have severe depression, so my daily mental breakdowns aren't my fault".
True, but I think they were alluding to the difference in outlook that suggests who takes responsibility for the downsides. One way is using it as an excuse to dismiss others concerns and the other way is having empathy toward how your situatiom affects others and acknowledging their side of the same challenge.
That's a handy LPT that is lost on people "consumed by a problem" already.
To borrow from Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
I take writings like this as rather tongue-in-cheek. I feel they dismiss reality: we easily define others as X because we lack information.
We'll label a person miserable or outcast, rather than be interested in their take, regardless. Because the way they approach discourse doesn't abide the popular meme.
If you're telling yourself that you might be falling for a bit of a sneaky misconception about your problems. Take it from me, there's a big difference between realistically accepting a mental health problem and making it into your whole identity and wallowing in it.
There's also a big difference between mental health denial / "get over it already" and making steps to finally stop it from totally dominating your life in the future.
Depression is like a separate animal inside you with its own drives for survival and reproduction. You don't turn your back on it, but you don't let it devour you and steal your name and face either.
If it can manage to, it would love to take control of you and make you believe that there is literally nothing that can help and you're utterly powerless to change anything, and that anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is just one of those people who doesn't understand and thinks you can just cheer yourself up out of depression by smiling and going outside or whatever. That's a false dichotomy.
The author doesn't say that she doesn't like people who give themselves a negative identity, but rather that it's a habit which makes them miserable, which is plausible.
She also doesn't say that any of the habits can be casually broken, if only they are recognized.
Me and my SO have serendipitously discovered a great way to defuse arguments: it's the question "Are you accusing me of foulness?" (any sufficiently Victorian synonym works here)
For some reason most people reflexively deny this in reply and realise that they've been attributing bad intentions groundlessly.
Unfortunately this doesn't work on people who have a mindset which requires there to always be someone at fault.
Reminds me of the Principle of charity [1] that "requires interpreting a speaker's statements in the most rational way possible and, in the case of any argument, considering its best, strongest possible interpretation".
I've found adopting this mindset to be one of the most important habits I've picked up, and eliminates so much drama.
This is also the basis of the Steel Man Argument [0] [1], as opposed to Straw-manning. Instead of attacking (basically nitpicking) the easy missteps in your opponent's reasoning, find the best form of their argument, and then argue with this. It seems to me as the ideal way to both win over those on the other side and provide yourself with a solid ground. You present yourself as avoiding undermining their position (really listening and caring to understand where they are coming from) and present a better argument yourself.
This is in fact the only way to maintain credibility with both sides when resolving an argument. Unfortunately judges who routinely follow this rule are uncommon.
Obviously it depends on the circumstance, but not every disagreement is about "winning" the debate. Sometimes the win is in building or saving the relationship.
Steelmanning is just applying the Least Convenient Possible World principle to debating. If you're picking nonessential nits then you might technically be right but you're probably also dodging the actual interesting questions.
I’m not interested in telling you you’re wrong. You being wrong is your problem. I’m interested in my being right. If I can extract some information from our conversation that moves me to a better understanding of things then I have done all right from the interaction (assuming the time involved is short). The steel man allows me to extract this information from the interaction.
In practice, if someone isn’t capable of using the information I provide to re-assess their position, continued interaction is likely to be low quality. This isn’t a fault thing. It could just be that I’m incapable of interacting reasonably with this person. Either way, it’s then time to disengage.
Paraphrased as the (oft-ignored) third guideline for HN comments: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
My personal solution to defuse an argument with the wife is to stick out my tongue and say something stupid. Gets a laugh unless I'm REALLY in trouble, and then it's on to plan B.
My SO and I do something similar. When it (almost never) gets contentious, one of us will just yell: "I Declare Disagreement!" in the same manner that Michael Scott declared bankruptcy on The Office.
Instantly breaks up the tension and we can take a breather before resuming more rationally.
One of the main techniques taught in Marshall Rosenberg's Nonviolent Communication book https://www.amazon.com/dp/189200528X is how to discover each other's intentions and share your own intentions and needs. The techniques I learned from this book helped my relationships immensely. The audio book is also excellent https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TKMBJKE .
A couple people I showed this to immediately got upset by #3.
I get that it comes off as another "Just stop being depressed/anxious" argument, which is undoubtedly tone-deaf, but there's still a point to be made here.
Depression and Anxiety are real issues, and you can't just "get over it". However, being in control of oneself and refusing to define yourself by things like depression and anxiety are important to besting things like depression and anxiety.
Just because it is an affliction doesn't mean you should allow yourself to be defeated by it. It doesn't mean that you are doing any good using these problems as an excuse, because no matter how unfair it seems, depression and anxiety isn't an excuse for willful misery.
Giving advice in a deeply sarcastic form just obscures the message. It's OK if it's for a silly lighthearted topic, but for anything serious it's just tacky.
I did not think these things were so simple, but... yes, I used to know someone that could have served as a model for the article as well. Every single point seems to apply to this person.
This list can hurt some feelings, but it sure could help some people if it was more widely known.
It seems to me that the people with hurt feelings are not exactly the same as the ones described by the article.
4, 5, 7, 9, 13 and 14 are definitely hostile behaviours. They're also self-damaging because, as I advised, people runs. But these behaviours are firstly and foremost against others.
If someone gets hurt feelings about those, I'm fine with it.
having been, for want of a better term, ‘highly miserable’ in the past, the entirety of this article comes across as insidiously toxic and detrimental to the mental well-being of those who are suffering.
there is a.. loosely similar CGP Grey video, which approaches the matter in a much more rational context [1]
for anyone suffering, i emplore you to not read this and watch this instead;
I didn't watch your linked video, but I definitely agreed with your post. As someone who has also been highly miserable (aka clinically depressed) in the past, various sentiments along the line of "come on, life is great, why can't you appreciate it?" and "that's no so bad, suck it up" most definitely did NOT help me overcome my depression.
Which makes me wonder: if the purpose of this post is to belittle "miserable" people, well I guess it succeeds, but then that seems a pretty miserable thing to do in the first place. If the purpose is to ironically remind folks that there are easy things you can do to not be miserable, I don't think it's doing it in a particularly effective way.
Having been both clinically depressed and just generally negative and miserable, I think there's a large difference. This article addresses the latter of those two situations in a way that resonated pretty deeply with me. Clinical depression is drastically different and should be treated more as a disease than a state of mind. I don't believe this article comes across as suggesting its conclusions can treat clinical depression but rather are the symptoms of highly negative and miserable states of mind.
Hard to distinguish, as clinical depression produces many of the maligned behaviors, making it reasonable to read this piece as an attack on those suffering.
OTOH, there is a CBT angle here. That is, a depressed person may find relief in working to recognize and change the behaviors and thinking that supports those behaviors.
Yeah, agreed. "Just stop thinking like that" is terrible advice for someone suffering depression (or etc). Especially with the added spice of "and also you're a jerk."
I do think there's a good point here that these patterns are self-reinforcing, and that there can be a kind of counterintuitive pleasure in really getting down into the muck and living there. See also Notes from Underground. But the snide and aggressive tone here is really bizarre.
I think it depends on how you take it; some of cognitive behavioural therapy is about changing how you behave physically in order to achieve changes of your mood, or break you out of unhealthy mental habits.
As someone who is still in school and struggles with emotion/time management/procrastination, I was particularly hit by "focus on goals that are after which you wish to achieve." People around me have pointed this out to me, but it was only until recently did I realize how serious it was.
I think that my impulsive nature and addiction to novelty fuel this problem. Even browsing Hacker News is a manifestation of this. HN always has some cool idea that I could be studying or hacking on when I have free time. But I spend too much time thinking about possibilities than getting done what's right in front of me, because I'm addicted to novelty. I especially neglect school work, which isn't boring at all and rather fascinating and useful, and instead try to find weird things to explore. My huge queue on Pocket is one of many testaments to this. The result is poor, and I feel miserable and disappointed in myself.
Of course, as the video touches upon, modern technology (social media, apps, even internet pornography) exploits humans' desire for novelty (though as previously explained, I think I'm far more vulnerable than average). The video helped me see the connection between my habit and this tendency.
The point is that you'll always have to ensure a chunk of time for your "main" activity and give it sustained efforts. Reading broadly and exploring a range of topics is always good and beneficial, but you need to limit your time on them. If you just spend your whole day reading various disparate newsletters and articles instead of focusing on one book, one particular area that you dive deep into, your career prospect, etc., it wouldn't work.
Yeah, I am disgusted in reading this, really sickens me. I have reached out to the author that I might be able to help her. This article really makes me want to create a counter-article, "The 14 True Identities of Joyful People"(I've exchanged Habits for True Identities, because it is an inherent worth that we all have and when known transforms us to choose Joy, this not being of works as is the case with habits).. Anyways, I suspect I may just write that article.
At least this can point out some of the cognitive traps that they might not be aware of. Also this might help people around them recognize their problems and then try to find them help. When the awareness of depression is still not high enough in the population, many of the problems can be hard to properly understand, describe and classify.
At least I would say I can recognize some patterns both in my past self and also in several people I am familiar with much clearer after reading it. I don't think the author in any way wanted them to get "pilloried" and "feel bad". That's definitely not the intention.
I think the sarcastic tone of the article is extremely effective at getting its message across. It felt like been repeatedly slapped in the face but ending up grateful for the experience at the end.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 274 ms ] thread[0] https://www.amazon.com/Situation-Hopeless-Serious-Pursuit-Un...
https://www.amazon.com/How-Be-Miserable-Strategies-Already/d...
You told us the name of the book, if I'm interested I know how to search.
I find this incredibly depressing.
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.
I wouldn't say economic anxiety is just 'nonsense fueled by conspiracy theorists.'
I'm saying scenarios of imminent collapse of the economy are nonsense.
Do not do this. Do not live in the past. Do not think about what might, what could, what should have happened. Learn from it and move onwards. Nothing good comes from constantly dwelling on things that can't be changed.
Maybe sometimes it’s abjectly true - you became homeless and in the past you weren’t so it was better back then. In a lot of cases you’re probably looking back on a high moment while in the middle of a low moment. Either way, the comparison does far more harm than good and it might well hold you back.
A better bit of advice is "avoid ruminating" and this applies to every thought, not just the ones that involve the past. But even that is not easy, especially for those who create things, since to create something you have to ruminate on it heavily, for months or years -- this is probably why there is an overlap between depression and creativity.
Self-reflection seems like rumination, but the goal is to learn something from whatever you're examining. To take a lesson from it, if there is a lesson. Not every moment is a teachable moment. If you're lucky, many of them are.
Sometimes an experience is just an experience, and there's nothing different you could or should have done. Take, for example, the numerous times I've been honked at in traffic. Is there some hidden meaning in those beeps? Should I have been paying more attention in that moment? Or did I make an honest mistake? If it's an honest mistake, there's nothing I can really do. No magical training regimen will make me an infallible driver, so I have to move on.
It's tempting in some cases to keep looking for a lesson. Some experiences will never contain a lesson no matter how hard you look. Rumination is cultivating the desert of those experiences.
The fundamental activity involves reviewing a thought over and over again, sometimes thousands of times over many years. Sometimes this leads to a new painting, a new novel, a new movie script, a new piece of software, or a new insight about something that happened to you as a child. Sometimes a person fails to make any progress.
You write "The key difference" but these are words without meaning. Sometimes you ruminate on a novel you are writing, but you can't figure out the ending, so you accomplish nothing. Sometimes you ruminate on that time you insulted your alcoholic brother and the next month he killed himself, but this time, reviewing the memory, you recall that he'd said he was going to kill himself long before, so it wasn't really your fault.
There is a reason why therapists often want to talk about a person's childhood -- sometimes reviewing the past leads to a new insight. Sometimes it doesn't. You can't judge the value of the activity simply by whether it produces something. Sometimes it will and sometimes it won't.
Thinking about something briefly and then moving on cold turkey is often completely phony: basically a form of denial. You're not free if you have "off limits" areas that you don't let yourself think about.
really roughly this is what stoics do, yet somehow they come to the conclusion "actually, what was i fearing? Proceed with adventure"...
This is also an aspect of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).
You don't end up homeless when you have someone to call to come and get you. You end up homeless when you've burned through that bridge.
Those factors are not under my direct control. Some of them may have been in the past, but not in the present.
The homeless that are sleeping rough for 9 months tend to stay homeless. It is a horrible way to live, and it breaks you down really fast.
Except you only see the ones who are visibly homeless, so how do you know?
It does get compounded by social stigma. For me, the social stigma and the very real problems that caused was the worst part of being homeless for 5.7 years.
A lot of homeless people sleep in a tent. That's what I did. Some people do that for fun and call it camping.
Occasionally there is a moment where the character extrapolates from some minor failure to dying "homeless, penniless, and alone" and then recovers.
It's more that they reflect on how much worse things could be, in order to instill gratitude and appreciation for what you already have.
Look at the back of your wrists: see those fragile greenish-blue veins?
What if tomorrow - while thinking about some problem with money or love - you trip and fall, and a particularly sharp rock on the ground or a shard of glass on the street cuts one of those thin exposed blue-green veins open?
If that's the thing I'm supposed to feel then so be it, but I feel Seneca intended for some greater profundity, or he would dispense with the mental theatrics. What am I missing? Does it need to be more visceral?
One of the objectives is to appreciate what you have right now and stopping this urge that we have in today's society to always get more.
If you stop and really think about how bad it would be to live without your eyesight, for example, you can appreciate even the smallest things we take for granted.
It's not supposed to be a "carpe diem" thing.
> Compare Greek καρπός (karpós, “fruit”) and κείρω (keírō, “to cut off”), English harvest, sharp, shear.
Carpe diem totally fits; You just have to consider that an optimum can be approached from two sides, ie the right time to harvest, neither too soon nor too late. In another sense it might mean the day is ripe, I guess. But it's not cape diem, not take the day away.
Never went after the etymology of it, interesting how it has nothing to do with "seize the day" as I originally thought.
We are always thinking nothing will happen to us, yet, we’ve all here have had problems, accidental or due to our own stupidity, that have already changed the course of our life for the worse.
Seneca says it’s worth thinking about that every day to find peace of mind.
By the way, I recently noticed my veins are not symmetric on both hands. I'm not sure what to think of that either.
edit: it's impossible to know which hand is yours.
It’s my fault for not putting more time into my comment; it’s more about finding a scenario that scares you: since I also have no fear of poverty or sickness thinking about that does little for me.
An absurd death scares me so that’s ehy I used that, but if losing life doesn’t scare you, then maiming? Like you get hit by a self driving car and instead of losing your life, you lose both eyes, or both your arms, etc. You are also paralyzed now.
Now it’s very hard to kill yourself. Maybe impossible. But if your mind is still at peace, then you are truly wise, and you’ve made good use of your time in the world.
I would be a horrible and mean wretch if that calamity happened to me. I know I’m a mess, and I couldn’t face that future with any poise or grace.
Look at your feet: see those little toes?
What if tomorrow - while thinking about some problem with money or love - you get hit by a speeding 10 ton truck and you die instantly?
Do I need to imagine that I'll bleed out alone, with everyone walking past me as if I don't exist?
Because 1. I don't like that exercise and 2. it mostly makes me consider to what extent I'm currently surrounding myself with people that dis-compassionate an whether I should move ...
3. does it matter that one of my wrists actually has a huge scar, that's grown with me from when I was 4 years old, jumped off a couch and smashed my tiny right wrist into a glass on the table? I managed to miss both my artery and my tendons, ... or I wouldn't be typing this :D
Most, if not all, would watch you bleed out: its the bystander effect. See the Kitty Genovese murder. Are you bothered by this?
You could have died. I fell and hit a glass table too and now I have a scar right next to my eye, less than a finger width away.
I could have lost the eye but I don’t like to think about it either. There’s a lot of stories where I could have been maimed, and I do have injuries that have left me weaker.
Homeless shelters here are terrible TBH. I’d rather sleep rough. Living in a van for me is better than a house or apartment because:
- no rent, no mortgage
- no noisy neighbors sans the phony-“tough,” backwards-hat teenager act
- less space to fill it up whth $crap I don’t need
- always mobile
- able to leap tall buildings in a single bound
- dual burner stove and 20 kg propane tank
- all Burner, all the time
- no lawn to mow
- no bills but the basics
- it’s really quiet
- no neighbor from hell to gas you out smoking, using too much lighter-fluid and cooking with their BBQ right next to a fence below you and screaming/terrorizing/trying to intimidate everyone
- indoor nudist as long as I want
- volunteers of the blond varietal tested suspension for squeaks; needs more data
- able to monitor DIY blinker fluid meters closely
what ?
ps: oh, comics
I can shop at whole foods that does the homework for me but what about Chinese masses that don't give a shit. Why do humans have to reproduce so much and at all costs. fucking sick!
1. https://www.cnbc.com/oceans-of-crime/
General form: Why don't victims behave the way I think they should, in circumstances I've never experienced?
Also remember that it was the most docile that were captured.
You're missing the point: telling victims they're victiming wrong (literally, as in, "You're doing that wrong", which is so unbelievably much of this thread) is bullshit. It's especially so if you have no relevant experience on which to make that judgement, and that goes double if your likelihood of having that experience is structurally negligible. Hand-waving about how someone should handle something that has never — and, for practical purposes, will never — happen to you is ludicrous on its face.
EDIT: Phrasing
Quoting:
> Anyway, perfectly ordinary slaveowner DiCaprio asks a rhetorical question, a fundamental question, that has occurred to every 7th grade white boy and about 10% of 7th grade white girls, and the profound question he asked was: "Why don't they just rise up?"
Kneel down, Quentin Tarantino is a genius. That question should properly come from the mouth of the German dentist: this isn't his country, he doesn't really have an instinctive feel for the system, so it's completely legitimate for a guy who doesn't know the score to ask this question, which is why 7th grade boys ask it; they themselves haven't yet felt the crushing weight of the system, so immediately you should ask, how early have girls been crushed that they don't think to ask this? But Tarantino puts this question in the mouth of the power, it is spoken by the very lips of that system; because of course the reason they don't rise up is that he-- that system-- taught them not to. When the system tells you what to do, you have no choice but to obey.
Not endorsing the argument, but there is a connection.
You either have to cower in your hotel in fear or live life. I went hitchhiking in Nicaragua, sledded down a volcano, went cliff diving, etc — stuff i’d never do at home.
There’s something to be said for facing down your fear of death and acting in the face of it.
I'm sure you are not surprised to hear that many disagree with this.
As for what happens in the realm of death, we'll see when we get there.
I wasn't clear enough. The decisions one makes during their life are affected by whether or not they care about anything that happens after they are dead (any many specifics beyond that). Many people do things whose primary impact won't be felt until long after they are gone. So it isn't true to simply say that nothing matters after the individual is dead.
What I do get is that you can fear the worst and live in that fear to the point that it almost feels like you are experiencing what you fear every moment you are not experiencing it. And it either happens or it doesn't. And if it does, well, I don't know.
Someone or something fucked up somewhere, but I'm certainly not going to blame myself as though I am lord and master of all events that come to pass, seer of all future events and protector of all ills. Humans share that burden equally, and some feel it more than others. But I think like the stoics, like Zen, you can cultivate a sort of inner strength from that suffering.
That doesn't mean pursue suffering to be strong, no no no, not at all. It means you work with what you have. You have pain, use it. Use it to make someone else's life better. You have joy, enjoy it.
I'm not sure it's the right philosophy, or way of being, but it's the most clear and present thing I can muster when I feel my feelings. And I think stoicism reflects that. Deep sadness, old wounds, aching pains. Don't use it against yourself to worsen the hurt. If all you can be is neutral, be neutral. If all you can be is Zen, be Zen. If you can be happy, be happy. Don't take some old dead Greek dude's word for how to live your whole life. There are plenty of other Greek philosophers who spoke of happiness, to learn from too.
> Let’s exclude some obvious ways, like doing drugs ...
Not entirely, though. But I did get disgusted not long after, by the smug tone.
Maybe it's all sarcastic ranting about self-help literature. But even if so, I didn't find it very funny.
Put another way: those things are constructed to induce a point-in-time pleasurable state of mind; not create lasting happiness—in fact, they are often at odds with sustainable positivity due to their risk/feedback/reward cyclic nature.
I’m now oddly reminded of Freud’s Civilisation and It’s Discontents, where he talks about the pleasure principle, etc — I should pick it up again but it felt tedious.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO1mTELoj6o
I found it informative and probably from honest experience. It's superficial chearful embrace towards problems people create for themselves is instructive towards correcting those habits.
Because when you dwell on suicide often enough, when you attempt suicide multiple times, when you get to that attempt where you are really sure, 'this is it - I actually have to say goodbye' eventually you realize 'I'm going to die one day. I'm convinced that day is today. Is this all the life I get? Was that it?'
And hopefully for others who go through something similar, and luckily in my case, I didn't die. Because even if I'm stuck in my head and think 'it really would be better if I was just dead', I don't want my whole life to be a combination of empty and shallow happiness I only realize I had, once it's gone entirely.
Hardship sucks for all of us. But the point is, don't focus on it when things are good. Life flies the fuck by otherwise, and what kind of an experience is that? Only happy when reminiscing, always sad when you actually have happiness, because you knew so well, that happiness is fleeting, and everything good in life must end eventually?
Mental illness is no joke to overcome, life is full of turmoil, sadness, pain, misery.
But I'm sure this will come across as callous and cruel to those still suffering with it, just as I felt when my family kept telling me to 'get over it' or how it's weakness or whatever the fuck people say to others to prove they are fed up with being miserable. It comes out fucked up, from anyone. People who go through it and come out the other side sound unsympathetic, but that's often because they are still suffering, but they want to feel like they have a choice. Not just a label they feel permanently stuck with until they die. What kind of a life is that to look forward to? Same patterns, same habits, same sickness. Same guilt and fear of proving the contrary - how will others take my triumph over misery? Will that make them feel defeated?
People with enormous amounts of sadness often have enormous amounts of empathy, and letting go of their sadness can seem like letting go of their empathy. So they cling to it. But it's something everyone with that kind of heart, I suppose, can choose to go through, or not, I don't know. I know myself. I know I'm sick of being miserable. I know talking about every sad and miserable thing I've ever been through only makes me more miserable. I know it affects others around me. I know it's a cycle one can be afraid of - how do I affect others when I feel so much pain? How can I be allowed to have my own feelings and get through them, without watching them dissipate across everyone around me?
I don't know if I'm better, I don't know if I'm worse. It's a curse, and a burden. But I know wholeheartedly, if I keep all of it in, it's going to kill me. And if I don't try to 'get over it' (again, the words can seem callous, but take this to mean whatever it should for the individual), in whatever way I can, it's going to hurt me and hurt everyone I try to connect with and love.
So sometimes I have to fucking laugh at it. Because, isn't that so fucked up? That I get what it does, and I can't do shit about it?
I'm sure that's how this author feels.
YMMV, but I think this is an accurate and essential insight. Maybe it's pertinent to your story, maybe not. At the same time, I suspect much of our internal suffering hinges on the fact.
That's not a word you see every day.
;)
Here's the full link with all the page bloat included: https://www.alternet.org/here-are-14-habits-highly-miserable...
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"?
The list of life's pleasures is not exhaustive.
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.
It's not always so easy to tell apart the things you have control over vs. the things you don't, but I think that all these rules can be summarized in one line, which is basically: If you're feeling sorry for yourself, you'd better find something more productive to do.
Did I invoke one of the stupid rules from the article just right now? :)
I wholly agree with this. There's something deeply insightful, subtle and difficult about recognizing one's own control in a situation. I've thought about this a lot in the last year. The way I phrase it right now is: people don't have a choice until they realize they have one.
There's a huge difference between saying "I have severe depression, and it takes great effort for me to get through a day without buckling" and saying "I have severe depression, so my daily mental breakdowns aren't my fault".
To borrow from Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
I take writings like this as rather tongue-in-cheek. I feel they dismiss reality: we easily define others as X because we lack information.
We'll label a person miserable or outcast, rather than be interested in their take, regardless. Because the way they approach discourse doesn't abide the popular meme.
There's also a big difference between mental health denial / "get over it already" and making steps to finally stop it from totally dominating your life in the future.
Depression is like a separate animal inside you with its own drives for survival and reproduction. You don't turn your back on it, but you don't let it devour you and steal your name and face either.
If it can manage to, it would love to take control of you and make you believe that there is literally nothing that can help and you're utterly powerless to change anything, and that anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is just one of those people who doesn't understand and thinks you can just cheer yourself up out of depression by smiling and going outside or whatever. That's a false dichotomy.
She also doesn't say that any of the habits can be casually broken, if only they are recognized.
Me and my SO have serendipitously discovered a great way to defuse arguments: it's the question "Are you accusing me of foulness?" (any sufficiently Victorian synonym works here)
For some reason most people reflexively deny this in reply and realise that they've been attributing bad intentions groundlessly.
Unfortunately this doesn't work on people who have a mindset which requires there to always be someone at fault.
I've found adopting this mindset to be one of the most important habits I've picked up, and eliminates so much drama.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man#Steelmanning
[1] https://lifehacker.com/utilize-the-steel-man-tactic-to-argue...
The steel man locks the truth somewhere inside; and one doesn't look in case ones conversational partner feels offended by being wrong.
Of course you can't tell me I'm wrong; because you have to give my argument the best possible interpretation even if it doesn't deserve it ...!
In practice, if someone isn’t capable of using the information I provide to re-assess their position, continued interaction is likely to be low quality. This isn’t a fault thing. It could just be that I’m incapable of interacting reasonably with this person. Either way, it’s then time to disengage.
"remember that an argument between you and your partner is you two against the issue rather than against one another"
I think it is a great way to refocus the conversation and work toward a solution.
Run for the hills?
Instantly breaks up the tension and we can take a breather before resuming more rationally.
I get that it comes off as another "Just stop being depressed/anxious" argument, which is undoubtedly tone-deaf, but there's still a point to be made here.
Depression and Anxiety are real issues, and you can't just "get over it". However, being in control of oneself and refusing to define yourself by things like depression and anxiety are important to besting things like depression and anxiety.
Just because it is an affliction doesn't mean you should allow yourself to be defeated by it. It doesn't mean that you are doing any good using these problems as an excuse, because no matter how unfair it seems, depression and anxiety isn't an excuse for willful misery.
Not only does this method work to make yourself miserable, but also all the people around you. If you detect this behaviour, run like hell.
This list can hurt some feelings, but it sure could help some people if it was more widely known.
4, 5, 7, 9, 13 and 14 are definitely hostile behaviours. They're also self-damaging because, as I advised, people runs. But these behaviours are firstly and foremost against others.
If someone gets hurt feelings about those, I'm fine with it.
there is a.. loosely similar CGP Grey video, which approaches the matter in a much more rational context [1]
for anyone suffering, i emplore you to not read this and watch this instead;
[1] - https://youtube.com/watch?v=LO1mTELoj6o
I didn't watch your linked video, but I definitely agreed with your post. As someone who has also been highly miserable (aka clinically depressed) in the past, various sentiments along the line of "come on, life is great, why can't you appreciate it?" and "that's no so bad, suck it up" most definitely did NOT help me overcome my depression.
Which makes me wonder: if the purpose of this post is to belittle "miserable" people, well I guess it succeeds, but then that seems a pretty miserable thing to do in the first place. If the purpose is to ironically remind folks that there are easy things you can do to not be miserable, I don't think it's doing it in a particularly effective way.
OTOH, there is a CBT angle here. That is, a depressed person may find relief in working to recognize and change the behaviors and thinking that supports those behaviors.
I do think there's a good point here that these patterns are self-reinforcing, and that there can be a kind of counterintuitive pleasure in really getting down into the muck and living there. See also Notes from Underground. But the snide and aggressive tone here is really bizarre.
As someone who is still in school and struggles with emotion/time management/procrastination, I was particularly hit by "focus on goals that are after which you wish to achieve." People around me have pointed this out to me, but it was only until recently did I realize how serious it was.
I think that my impulsive nature and addiction to novelty fuel this problem. Even browsing Hacker News is a manifestation of this. HN always has some cool idea that I could be studying or hacking on when I have free time. But I spend too much time thinking about possibilities than getting done what's right in front of me, because I'm addicted to novelty. I especially neglect school work, which isn't boring at all and rather fascinating and useful, and instead try to find weird things to explore. My huge queue on Pocket is one of many testaments to this. The result is poor, and I feel miserable and disappointed in myself.
Of course, as the video touches upon, modern technology (social media, apps, even internet pornography) exploits humans' desire for novelty (though as previously explained, I think I'm far more vulnerable than average). The video helped me see the connection between my habit and this tendency.
At least I would say I can recognize some patterns both in my past self and also in several people I am familiar with much clearer after reading it. I don't think the author in any way wanted them to get "pilloried" and "feel bad". That's definitely not the intention.