The Wonderful Benefits of Being Miserable

Being miserable is just great, don’t you find?

It’s an art form that’s well worth cultivating. It brings so many benefits to our lives, which is of course why so many people do their very best to excel at it.

Misery doesn't bring you a better life in any of the shallow, flighty, surface ways people talk about like more friendship, love and lovers. Better relationships with your family, spouse or children. It doesn't improve your career, financial situation, health, stability, fulfillment or joy of life.

It doesn't make you happier – well of course it doesn't; that would be defeating the point!

The many benefits of being miserable

But this fine craft does allow you to feel superior and special in a way other people just don’t understand, which is fantastic. You can become a martyr overnight with a bit of misery – the innocent victim who tries so, so hard to be happy (not too hard though, be careful) and then the world just seems to conspire against you. You poor thing.

In an age where we have relative peace and prosperity, and more opportunities than ever before, it can be quite hard to find ways to feel like the beaten-down underdog. Misery solves that problem in a jiffy!

You get sooo much attention

And this is the greatest benefit of all: being miserable gets you so much attention and compassion. Big-hearted and guilt-prone people especially will feel compelled to help you, to listen to you, to feel sorry for you. Here’s the best part: people feel vaguely guilty around you too.

You’re sure to always have company. Misery loves company, and you make people more and more miserable around you. Some will leave you, but never mind about them. They just don’t get it.

And there’s more! You come across as so wise and worldly, because you notice all the crap in the world. You are the first to see what’s wrong with everything and every idea. And you stop people just when they were about to blindly run forwards happily into something fun, without paying due attention to what could go wrong.

You’re like a profound, tragic guru of worldly wisdom. How awesome is that!

And you never experience disappointment or disillusion, because you never expect or hope for anything in the first place. You never experience loss or deep pain because you get rid of meaningful love from your life in the first place.

“I get it! I’m sold! So how do I get good at being miserable!?” I hear you cry. Here are a few tips to set you on your way.

How to be miserable – your quick 10-step guide

1. Make good things small and temporary

If anything good happens and you accidentally notice it, make sure you see it as being temporary and as small as possible. Like a glitch in the system.

1. Make bad things huge and everlasting

When something bad happens, make sure you notice and express how terrible it was, and how it happened because it always happens, and the effects will last forever. Here’s a tip: the more you talk about it, the more a problem lasts and spreads.

1. See bad intentions behind everything

Turn innocent remarks into calculated insults from horrible people who intended to cause pain. See attempted attacks and offence behind everything.

1. Do everything for personal gain

Never just do something for someone else unless you can get something out of it. Make sure you point out how everyone else giving to others is doing it for themselves too.

1. Be terrified of economic loss

Talk about how close you are to being broke all the time. Worry consistently about losing your job. Watch the news and find all the evidence you can that you are on the brink of bankruptcy and destruction.

1. Cultivate a negative identity

If you have any personal problems, make them the only things that matter about you. Become a Depressed Person, an Anxious Person, etc. Oh, and of course make sure those problems last longer and get bigger.

1. Don’t feel or express gratitude

Gratitude has no place in the life of a true misery master. There’s nothing in this world to be grateful for – make that your mantra.

1. Blame your parents and background

Always remember, your life was set out before you even had a chance. Your parents messed you up, so that’s that. They are the cause of all your shortcomings and failures.

1. Don’t be shallow and enjoy the little things

Take no pleasure in the beautiful, lovely things in life. Good conversation, art, wine, music, beauty. Leave that to shallow, pathetic happy people who just don’t understand.

1. Focus on yourself and on the past

Ruminate and regret. Think and talk incessantly about every little problem you might have in your character, or something that happened to you. Don’t let anything go! All that mostly-imagined baggage is precious – and the key to a glorious life of absolute misery.

Here’s one extra bonus tip – always pretend you want to be happy. Pretend to yourself too. If you start admitting that deep down you’re trying to be miserable – well, you might just start thinking how absurd it all is and become happy instead.

And that would ruin everything!

Have You Breached Your Personal Integrity?

Giving your word to something is SACRED. Your word is who you are. When you make promises you cannot keep, you are plagued by guilt. We all are.

If things aren't working out in your life and everything seems to be going wrong then it’s not weird karma or voodoo – it’s because you've breached your personal integrity. What this means is you have broken agreements with yourself or others and have lots of incompletion in your life. By sorting out all those broken agreements , cleaning them up and getting incomplete things complete, you will restore your power again.

Why Integrity is the Source of ALL Your Power

Integrity is not good or bad OR right or wrong. However, when you have integrity – you have POWER. When you say something will happen, and it does, your word has power.

Promises and declarations have no power on a foundation of little or no integrity. The height of madness is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result – making declarations and not having them happen has you lose faith in your ability to produce results.

So take a step back and ask yourself…

Where are you out of integrity? What is OFF? Are you up to date on your taxes, homework, work? Are you in communication? Where are you out of communication? Where are you hiding something? Where are you showing up late, where do you tell yourself ‘it doesn't matter’?

Start to be aware of when you make agreements and commitments with yourself and others. And STOP making promises you cannot certainly keep WITHOUT saying extra conditional words like:

‘I believe, I am told that, based on the following assumptions, to the best of my knowledge, as I understand it, provided I can achieve xyz, provided xxx happens, I can guarantee yyy, etc.’

This will allow you to stay in control, stay true to your word, and keep your power.

Already breached your integrity?

Don’t beat yourself up – you can reclaim your power. Here’s how to clean up your mess…

With yourself

The mastery of life includes integrity. Integrity is the process of cleaning up the mess you made. We made a whole bunch of agreements and didn't keep them. I said I wanted to be a chemist and never kept that agreement.

I only made that agreement with myself, but I am very important in my life. So I have to get my agreement that it is alright to let that original agreement go. Once I do that, the agreement ceases to exist. I start to look at the things that I agreed that I wanted to be, do and have, and find out that it’s alright not to be, do and have those now, and the agreements go.

With others

I've also made some agreements with other people and I will have to handle those agreements. I’ll have to say to whoever I made the agreement, “Look, I made an agreement with you and what I’d like to do now is not to keep that agreement. I’d like to know what you need in order to be willing to accept that.”

In your lives there will be people that you have an inherent agreement to communicate with that you haven’t communicated with. You've withheld your communication. You can go back and clean up that mess by taking responsibility and communicating with those people.

It may be hard, but it can be simple

If you've left some problems unsolved in your life – and a problem unsolved in your life is one that keeps coming up – you can handle it by expanding your purposes to include solving it. All of a sudden, what was a problem ceases to be a problem. It becomes a part of the solution.

For the most part, simply acknowledging to the person that you made an agreement with that you didn't keep your agreement with them, or that you did something to them, would be enough to clean it up. Essentially, what you do it for is to expand your purposes – which are to make your life work – to include making their life work.

YOUR ACTION PLAN to reclaim your power

Think right now – what agreements have you broken?

Choose one and expand your purpose to include solving that problem.

Get in communication with yourself or the other person involved, using the language in this post. For example, “We agreed xxx, yyy is what happened. I understand that what happened is not what we agreed. To restore my integrity with you I propose the following…”

Of course, be honest here too and don’t commit to anything you can’t do. Set out a realistic solution.

And prepare to feel absolutely incredible afterwards!

There are few things more liberating.

Share your story once you've taken action. I’d love to hear it!

Poor Me Syndrome (the New PMS)

Some people just love to enroll everyone in their lives in a sad story so they can get attention, have a sad story to hide behind, and not live a happy fulfilled life.

Perhaps you know someone like this. Perhaps you know someone like this… intimately?

You know when you’re stuck in this rut when you keep telling this story over and over again to random people in your life. When people pat your arm and say how sorry they are for you or if you walk around sighing a lot about your life. You also know you’re doing this when your reason for not being happy is your sad story.

A few sad story examples – sound familiar?

“My husband left me. My wife had an affair. I have no money because…”

“I would be happy if only Bob didn't leave me for the housemaid. I would be happy if my wife actually worked on our marriage. “

“I cannot work out because I have no time and my husband left me and I am so busy making my business successful so I just eat chocolate all the time.”

Ever catch yourself saying things like this? If you do, don’t beat yourself up, that might just become another sob story! Instead, it’s time to put that story aside and move past it.

Why self-pity is so seductive

Many people slip into self-pity because that first tiny step seems like a good idea. It’s like a comforting technique when ‘no one else quite gets me and my problem’. Perhaps it even gives you some fleeting therapeutic feeling of solace and comfort.

And that first time you tell someone else your sob story, if they buy into it, it certainly does feel good to have them patting you on the shoulder and saying comforting things to you.

And BOOM, right in that moment you have initiated a few powerful psychological forces which will make it extremely likely you’ll continue making that sad story your friend and identity.

A lovely reward for misery

We all desire attention, connection and feelings of importance. And when people start turning to you and giving you all three at once, just because you put on a sad face and told a sad story, it’s like a huge reward and instant source of pleasure. Your unconscious mind thinks it’s hit the jackpot!

Of course, this is an illusion, comforting is nice, but too much becomes a very negative form of attention. And self-pitying people end up alone in the long run, or at best surrounded by other ‘poor me syndrome’ sufferers.

Consistency and identity

If you’ve read Robert Cialdini’s book Influence, you’ll know one of the most powerful drivers of our actions is a need to remain consistent with what we have previously done and said, and who we have told others we are.

Once you take the first step onto the slippery slope of ‘poor me, poor me’, you will feel compelled to continue. And the further you go, the more you will feel it is your identity, the more you believe it yourself and want to reinforce it. You begin to spiral down into this pit of self-pity and negativity. Until one day you cannot remember life being any other way.

We love the underdog, we feel for the victim

And PMS gives us a chance to become both! Isn’t it a kind of romantic, wonderful feeling to be the poor victim and underdog, downtrodden by the cruel world. You can feel important and have a wonderful excuse for not achieving or even trying to pursue your dreams.

With all these seductive factors you can see why so many people succumb to self-pity…

But it’s time to WAKE UP!

Here is the cold, hard truth;

There is nothing evolved about sob stories

You just want attention or want to avoid doing whatever it takes to have a great life. It’s a form of laziness and you are not solving anything by telling the world about your story. Every time you tell someone your story you’re reinforcing it. So stop.

Rather than telling people your sob stories and reasons for not having a great life, get busy on sorting yourself out in 2015 and commit to living a happy and fulfilled life come hell or high water.

Want a helping push in the right direction?

Get in touch, that’s what I’m here for!

Are You A Giver Or A Taker In Your Relationships?

Some people live life being just on the take – looking at what they can get out of every situation. They’re also not interested in doing something unless they get something in return.

In some way none of us will do anything unless we get something out of it but true joy in life comes from giving without a guarantee of receiving anything in return. Like unconditional love.

If you find yourself being conditional in the gifts you give people i.e. I gave you x, you owe me y then your gift was not given unconditionally.

From taker to dictator

I think self-centered people often wind up taking the Dictator role in relationships. Especially if they’re paired with a giver. This is where `who gets what and how much` is always determined by the taker, the other partner gets whatever the taker decides they’ll get. And that’s that.

This inevitably leads to unhappiness for the taker’s partner. And a failing relationship.

You can’t take and win

This fascinating study ‘Reciprocity is Not Give and Take’ illustrates a powerful reason why takers kill relationships. With a series of experiments, a team at the University of Chicago found that when it comes to social relationships, including intimate relationships, when one side gives, the other side can give equally and both parties feel satisfied.

But when one side takes, and then in return the other side takes the same or receives something of equal value, then the dictator (sorry I mean the taker) is the only happy one left. The other party who was initially taken from is still not happy. It’s just human nature.

So to sum this up, the only relationship that can work and flourish is two givers. But watch out, there are still ways being a giver can be bad for you.

Be a giver, not a record-keeping matcher

Make sure you’re a giver, and not a matcher – someone who remembers every little thing they gave and expects the equal amount in return, or they’re just not happy. This Psychology Today article explains the matcher nicely.

Very often such matchers don’t even express all the things they feel the other party owes them and they become martyrs – always giving, giving, giving and feeling sad and frustrated because the world just isn't giving back. See my earlier post on martyrs here. Don’t become one!

Givers can be taken advantage of

In any relationship the giver is the happiest and also potentially the unhappiest.

Just make sure you’re with another giver, not a taker or a matcher. And the best way to be is always strive to give unconditionally, expecting nothing in return. Except perhaps that warm feeling of giving to someone you love.

Give from the heart because you want to. I think you’ll agree that’s true love and the foundation of something beautiful.

How to know you’re receiving unconditional love

And at the same time respect yourself, don’t be taken disadvantage of and make sure you’re receiving unconditional love too. Not in a tit-for-tat way. But just be aware of it.

When you’re conscious of this you’ll know if your partner is playing the role of a taker and dictator. And you can communicate it to them if they are, because they’re probably unaware of it.

When your partner gives love and is happy, regardless, you know it’s no strings attached giving. And when you mess up, make poor choices, get in your partner’s way, take a wrong turn or sabotage your own happiness and you’re partner’s not disappointed or irritated. And stays right with you, without judging or punishing. That’s another sign you’re not with a taker.

So, are you a taker or a giver in your relationships?

Share your thoughts!

Don’t Hate the Love Month, Learn to Love It!

The love month is upon us, and some people hate it because they are single. Is this you?

Well, time to cheer up – here’s how anyone can learn to love the love month. The thing to remember is that a romantic relationship is not just about sex. It’s about intimacy too, in all its many guises.

Love and intimacy are actually around you all the time in different forms. The problem is, as human beings in our society, we are attached to love or intimacy in a particular form or package.

If it isn't tall, dark and handsome with the name ‘boyfriend’ OR hot and sexy with the name ‘girlfriend’ then we reject it. And when we do that, we fail to see just how much love we have in our life so we wind up running around spitting at couples and cursing at happy matches because we feel angry about being single.

Love is all around you, it’s no cliché

Love is all around and perhaps you don’t have a boyfriend or a girlfriend but you will have 4-5 amazing people in your life who provide love in its different ways.

This feeling we have of a need for love is actually a need for the various components of love and intimacy, and when we reject and shut off these things because they do not fit some sort of socially accepted package, we are stopping ourselves from enjoying a huge amount of pleasure endorphins and overall feelings of wellbeing.

If you break down the components of a romantic relationship, you might find you have a lot of love around. Here are some examples.

Companionship

Your mother/father/the dude you watch football with/a friend you watch movies with or collect stamps with – who provides companionship in your life? You get this in many places.

Snuggles

Who do you get snuggles from? Perhaps a beloved pet, a huggy friend, your mother/father or a giant teddy bear. You could volunteer at a shelter or go visit a dogs’ home or buy a giant pink panther teddy bear. You could even put a sign up that you will give away free hugs to get your snuggle time. The simple act of snuggling releases endorphins – doesn’t matter who or what with.

Laughter

Who makes you laugh? Don’t tell me no one makes you laugh in your life! Surround yourself with gigglers or go try out some Laughter Yoga.

Good Listening

Find someone in your life who really listens to you and gets you. You already know this person and perhaps you don’t spend enough time with him or her. Schedule that in.

Romance

When you are single, it’s tricky to get the romance fix BUT there are probably single people in your life you can flirt with so find them and flirt with them.

If you are brave and put yourself out there into environments where you are in close physical contact with new people, it might just creep up on you. Join a dance class and try out that tango with a hunky man, or go to a dating event and simply enjoy the spark of getting to know new people.

See how much easier the love month is to bear when you break it down and find the components?

Go and get the intimacy you need. It’s all there just waiting for you!

Happy Valentine’s day!

Lot’s of hugs

Should we fake it until we make it??

According to Mail Online there was an article written on “Why acting like you are in love can lead to the real thing” that if you want to feel in love, perhaps you should fake it until you make it.

The article suggested that if you behave in the way you want to be perceived by others, you can develop emotions birthed from those actions.  Normally it is the other way around in that; from experiences and emotions, our behavior that follows afterwards is subject to how we have felt, hence the reason we acted in that way. But taking this on the complete flip side, this study suggests our behavior of “acting with certain emotions” can develop those emotions, to then be real.

To test the theory of behavior affecting emotions, The results are published in Prof Wiseman’s new book, Rip It Up,  where Prof Wiseman, of the University of Hertfordshire, held a speed-dating night, where some of the prospective partners were asked to act as though they were already in love with each other. The 100 volunteers, taking part in the study in Edinburgh, were encouraged to hold hands, gaze into each other’s eyes, and whisper secrets to each other, according to the Daily Telegraph. When questioned at the end on their feelings, 45 per cent of those who had ‘acted in love’ wanted see each other again – more than double the average rate of 20 per cent. Interesting stuff innit?

Leading psychologist Richard Wiseman says that behaving as if you find someone attractive increases your susceptibility to their charms, and increases the likelihood of you falling in love with them. And although he does not advocate arranged marriages he believes a lot can be learned from them. Arranged matches are carefully considered, with thought going into whether potential partners’ families, interests, values and life goals are compatible.

Which if we are honest a sad reality is that in society today, that same careful thought and consideration is not going into a lot of relationships and marriages as it should. People marry for love which by all means is the most shared reason and a fantastic reason at that – however there needs to be more than just love, there needs to be commitment, not just to the person but to the relationship, there should be a connection and mutual understanding of expectations of that relationship and mutual passion to fight for one another when the going gets tough.

Those who marry for love alone in some cases can be blinded by passion and so overlook the crucial details that should never be overlooked. With arranged marriages however, the commitment is normally very strong. They get married knowing they won’t leave, due to family situations or the requirements agreed upon before getting married. Consequently when times are harder, they don’t run away and often bad situations bring the couple closer.

I am in no way encouraging an arranged marriage, however the action that is taken in an arranged marriage because of the different mindset is seemingly apparent to the results, that it can bring people closer by not having the option to quit, so they act accordingly.

Actions are the quickest, easiest and most powerful way to instantly change how you think and feel.’ in this same way when tough times arise in any relationship, rather than hold yourself stagnant in those emotions, the study of taking action is demonstrating an astounding result. The famous saying of positive thinking can determine positive results. If you do positive action, you can bring about positive thoughts and feelings!

If you act with a positive action despite how you may feel, it can not only develop positive emotions but a new outlook to your situation or your relationship.

With soaring divorce rates and record numbers of single-parent households increasing, researchers suggest it is time to rethink our approach to love.

‘The idea of leaving our loved lives to chance with an attitude of “Let’s see how it goes” may be OK at the beginning but when considering a future, a change in thought is screaming ‘necessary’.

We plan our careers, our children’s education and our finances but we’re still uncomfortable with the idea that we should plan our love lives.  But with everything else in which we want success, don’t we normally make a plan? A vision on where we want to be, and a passion to fight for what we want? We have commitment to excellence until we reach it, true? My question is… how much of this is applied to a successful relationship? Why wouldn’t we take the same consideration and care?

Relationships are core to life. Other things can make us happy, sure. But without relationships we would have no one to share our happiness with. If we take more action in our relationships regardless of current emotions I think we will be astounded with the results in the long run.

Act positively. It might just develop those positive emotions you’ve been craving.

Till next time!

Lots of hugs

So, Does Time Actually Heal All Wounds?

Today I want to talk about this idea that time heals wounds. 

I think we can all agree that divorce causes huge chaos. It’s the end of something that was born of love, cemented at a ceremony and carried the combined hopes and dreams of those who shared your relationship and rooted for you. Those who haven’t been through divorce can’t fully comprehend the pain, humiliation and sense of confusion, loneliness and failure.

During my divorce I saw a therapist for a while. She told me that as I had been married for seven years, it would probably take me at least 18 months to get over the relationship and that I should ’take my time’. She commenced the therapy sessions by taking me back to an incident from my youth. I was four years old and had been abandoned by my parents outside Sunday School. She linked my feelings related to the divorce to the fear I’d felt then.

We explored that incident for some time and after two hours of deconstruction (and a hefty bill later), I left feeling thoroughly disempowered and confused. Not only was I annoyed with my former husband, I was now annoyed with my parents too.

I’m not knocking therapy, but after trying out several therapists in the early days of my divorce, the process of therapy didn't work wonders for me for the following reasons:

1. I had no understanding of what I was going through and going to therapy didn't give me any power in taking charge of my own healing

2. The healing process didn't feel transparent, it felt like the therapist had the secret to healing and the only way I was going to find out the secret was to commit to being deconstructed on a weekly basis for 18 months.

3. I felt that there was no goal or focus to my healing. The focus was instead on me fitting in whatever I needed to say within 1 hour.

4. I was surprised that therapy didn't encourage or talk about the necessity in creating a ‘container’ to ensure I was held together during my divorce.

5. My healing also did not fit into the ‘let’s meet once a week for 1 hour’ structure. I required a phone call here, a text there, an email at 1am or a session with 1 day’s notice. I wanted a friend to walk with me through the process and not interact in a conventional way. Everything in my life was moving so fast that by the time my weekly session arrived, everything had changed and I spent the session catching her up versus actually making any real progress.

I decided that there had to be a better way and created the naked divorce process to eliminate these specific issues.

Over time and working with countless clients, I have found that like me, there are people who wanted to explore alternatives to therapy and an alternative to, as one of my clients put it; ‘washing myself in the same dirty water week in and week out’.

I am sure you are familiar with the old adage that ‘Time heals all wounds’. This concept has become so synonymous with healing, that the thought of healing quickly feels fake and unbelievable. Therapy has consequently based it’s practice and disciplines on the premise that you need a great deal of time to heal.

I prefer Rosemary Kennedy’s thoughts on time…

“It has been said, ‘time heals all wounds.’ I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But the wound remains.”

Without running the risk of sounding too philosophical, time is an artificial structure, much like a state, provincial or country line. Have you ever seen a state or provincial line? I used to look for them on the ground when I was a kid and never found one.

What I tell my clients when they say ‘Time heals all wounds’ is that time doesn't heal anything, time simply passes. It is what we do with our lives while time is passing that either helps us, heals us, or mires us in the past.

Whenever anyone encounters major trauma, there is an inevitable period of chaos. One of my clients actually said;

“I feel like a piece of fabric fraying at the edges, one piece of thread at a time. I can only really handle what is right in front of me – one thing at a time, one thing at a time – like tunnel vision”

Many people, mistaking the turbulent transition for the change itself, decide that they prefer the bad old days. They lose faith and go back to the old way of life where they are avoiding the pain or finding a comfort zone in their healing.

When we do that, when we run counter to our gut knowing that change must come, we have to rationalize our cowardice. “Better the devil you know,” we say, “than the devil you don’t know.” And so we cast out the world that might have been and remain stuck in old ways.

Maybe this passivity is itself the devil it fears. It pretends to be our ally, but it is really our tormentor. The timid part of ourselves fails to realize that more solutions would be found if more of us participated — if we didn't “wait and see.” Seeing and doing are joined at the bone.

In my work with men and women in the area of divorce coaching, I've noticed that some seem to have an ability to accept the hurts and disappointments of life and move on. They are goal orientated and know that the future is where they’re headed, not the past.

Others, however, seem to get stuck. They remain in the past and in their pain, as if those events had just happened, playing the “wait and see” game. Time played no factor in the one group moving on and the other group remaining stuck. It had to do with what they did within that time that made the difference.

Likewise, I could have taken six years to get over my divorce, but the steps would have been the same had I taken 21 days, 21 months or 21 years to do so. There are no shortcuts to getting over a failed marriage or life-changing trauma, but there are guidelines you can follow to get through the trauma efficiently and effectively.

When I considered my therapist’s advice to ‘take my time’, I decided it was probably in her best interests that I do so as her livelihood depended on me needing her inputs every week.

Time is an important factor in healing, but consider that telling people you ‘need lots of time’ is often an excuse to delay healing.

The question is not how much time it takes to heal, but rather how you spend that time. I had to reach an understanding that it was only myself putting the brakes on my healing.

So if you put this concept of time aside, imagine how amazing it would feel to have the new life you dream of. The new you. The woman who is over her old relationship, empowered, happy and at peace? This book is an invitation into a world where life and healing is not a struggle. Where living your dreams is a way of life, not an unreachable destination.

To many of you, this might sound like a fantasy. But I promise: No matter what brought you here, no matter how deep or painful your emotions are or what your personal story is, success is possible.

So I have an exercise for you, if you are willing. Write down:

a) Take some time to think back on your life. How have you dealt with loss in the past? (Whether it was the loss of someone special or a beloved pet)

b) What steps did you take that were healthy and healing?

c) What steps did you take, or not take, that hampered your recovery?

d) Keeping all that in mind, how are you spending your time day-to-day in healing from your divorce?

Consider if you are still feeling some anger, hurt, upset that perhaps you are not over your divorce and perhaps taking some steps towards healing could be beneficial for you…

Sending you a big hug!