The book is written as a guide of how to be miserable, but they recommended to turn them around into tips for being less miserable.
Happiness is incidental. You can setup your environment so that happiness is a natural occurrence but you can’t pursue it.
- Exercise: The first of the 40 ways to be miserable, is not to exercise, so exercise 30 minutes 3 times a week.
- Sleep: Sleep on a regular schedule and sleep enough
- Vitamins: Check whether you are getting enough Vitamin B6, B12,D and Omega 3 and Iron.
- Be Yourself: Not being yourself and simply being a mirror to what others want to hear is not sustainable. You can do this maybe for a week, before it will make you miserable. If there was no applause and no criticism who would you be. If you have an opinion express it, an interest follow it.
- Purpose: One way to get purpose, ask yourself what you would do if your life was important
- Attainable Goals: Break up Ultimate goals into intermediate goals, which are: Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic and Time-defined. See SMART goals. They make success more likely.
- Don't Delay: What would you do if you were already good enough? You might begin living your life rather than preparing for it.
- Don't Over Commit: The inability to say no, places other people firmly in charge of your life. For example replying to every email.
- Blaming yourself for negative outcomes and attribute positive outcomes to external factors.
- Unhelpful thought patterns identified by cognitive therapists, like catastrophising, mental filter, etc. Once you identify that you routinely engage in black-and-white thinking, the shades of grey slip into view. See Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT).
- Think Ahead: Every activity has a feeling before, during and after. Running: negative, medium, great. Youtube: positive, negative, negative. Think ahead of how the next activity is going to impact you after and during rather than before. We could pluck roses all along the road into misery, never realizing where we are headed.
- People who have self esteem, aren't actively working on it, they are only focusing on the task at hand. People who have low self esteem are actively criticising themselves. Stop actively criticising yourself then you will also have the mythical "self esteem" and self acceptance.
- You can cultivate a sense of futility in altruism by aiming high. I won't donate if my donation doesn't cure cancer or educate at least 100 children. Don't ignore the impact of collective effort - how the mutual contributions of thousands combine to create great forces of change.
- Ignoring negative emotions will magnify your misery. See your emotions as signals and use them for guidance. Anger: someone imposed on my boundaries, Guilt: I have violated my own standards, Happiness: do that again.
- "You don’t need your past experiences to be miserable, typically your current behaviour is enough."
- "Unhappiness is best defined as the difference between our talents and our expectations" - Edward de Bono
- "The best way to stop appreciating something, is to buy it" - Alain de Botton
Instead our mood darkens we need to treat our instincts with suspicion. Usually we will experience relief only when we learn to act against our temptations, often engaging in what psychologist Marsha Linehan (developer of dialectical behaviour therapy) calls Opposite Action. We feel tempted to withdraw, and so we approach instead. We feel exhausted but we use this as our cue to get more exercise. Itching to defend ourselves by attacking others, we instead cultivate compassion. Agitated and antsy, we take ten minutes to sit quietly and meditate. We notice the impulse, know that is leads downward, and turn right rather than left.
When you know there are temptations that are simply too powerful too resist, simply acknowledge the choice point that are sliding past. Do so in an accepting manner. You have the right to make the choice and you only have so much strength to push for change. By acknowledging the choice you are laying the groundwork for change.