Goodbye Shitty Life – Reasons to be Cheerful
Some of the funniest song lyrics ever written came from the 80’s band, Half Man Half Biscuit. My favorite song from this group would be Reasons to be Miserable (Part 10), which includes this chorus:
Reasons to be miserable,
Another good excuse to be dead,
It’s one more thing to gripe about,
As I while away my days in bed.
The sad thing is that for many years these lyrics summed up my life fairly well. I took to negatively like a pig to shit. When it came to remembering all the miserable things that happened to me, my memory was razor sharp and always ready for more action. If holding a grudge was a talent I would have been famous the world over. The sky could have opened up and showered gold pieces on the path in front of me, and I still would have found things to complain about. It must have looked to other people like I enjoyed feeling miserable, but like most maladaptive behaviors it originated in fear.
In my role as a full-time miserable person I not only believed that, ‘shit just happens’, but that shittyness existed everywhere (the real dark energy), and it was just waiting to mess me around. I didn’t trust it when my life appeared to be going well because I knew that this meant that big trouble was ahead. I refused to be happy because this was tempting faith. In those days I thought of myself as an atheist, yet I still felt sure that a malevolent force existed that would smite me if I dared to be happy. I truly believed that by focusing on my own misery it would mean that life would leave me alone – now that is funny.
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I changed my perspective on life, and the world became a completely different place. I discovered that the only person getting in the way of my happiness was me. I also found out the amazing truth that we humans have the power to completely change the world with our thoughts. It is this simple, if we focus our attention on the shitty aspects of life we get to live in a shitty world. Our brain will obey our command by filtering out all the good stuff so that we can focus on the negative parts of life we are most interested in. You see, it is not possible for our human brains to manage all the data surrounding us at any given second. If we were aware of everything it would put us into mental overload, and we would soon be as mad as a box of frogs. Some filtering has to occur, and this is what the brain does for us (in fact some convincing theories see filtering as the only real function of the brain).
When I became focused on the positive aspects of my life the sky didn’t open and drop rocks on me. I was wrong, there was no force out there waiting to punish me for daring to be happy. I found the opposite to be true. The more I tried to concentrate on the positive, the more the world responded with positive things to focus on. I’ve trained my filters to seek out the good things in life, and this means that there is always something to feel cheerful about. I’m like a god who gets to create a universe to suit his whims – the good news is that we all get to play god in this way.
Hi Paul. I rarely seem to have time lately to read, enjoy, and respond to all the great blogging going on out there. This post serves as a good reminder to me about how insightful and salient your blog is. You are so right. It seems to me that having a positive frame of mind really is a key, if not cosmetically the key to obtaining happiness in life. Can you talk a little bit more in depth about how you moved from negativity to positivity? What was the process in which you got from point A to point B?
In some ways I think I may have a very similar personality as you do. I tend to be a serious worrier, and all my adult life I’ve struggled with depression and various social anxieties. I have managed to be relatively successful in life, with a good job, a loving wife, and a fair amount of financial security. I’ve also been able to kick the bottle away after years of alcoholism (have had maybe 5-6 beers in the past 14 months).
But regardless of these many positive aspects of my life, its the worrying and negative frame of mind in general that is my biggest anchor. The stewing resentments, stress, and anger – derived largely from a very high pressure work environment – can really mess me up and just make me miserable for days on end. Intellectually, cognitively, I know that thinking positive is the optimal goal, but actually being able to maintain positive thinking habits is a real challenge for me. Do you have any exercises or tips to suggest?
Thanks, keep up the great work.
Hi Tan, the truth is that sometimes I’m not sure if I’m changing or I’m being changed. The positive things in my life were always there, but I just wasn’t interested in them. I was afraid that being positive would put me in a vulnerable position. The way I got from A to B was by developing the belief that change was possible. Maybe I’d reached a point in my life where I’d no other choice. I dipped my toe in the world of positive thinking and it allowed me to see the truth. Of course knowing the truth was only half the battle, and the tendency is to slip back into old habits exerts a strong pull. I suppose that the real answer to your question is that I now have faith in the process. My intention is to have a positive outlook most of the time, and this is where the path has taken me. I know this works. A couple of weeks ago I had a repeat performance of my work related worries, and I was able to take it in my stride. I knew that things would work out, and this freed me up to the right things.