How to be miserable, stay grumpy, and suffer more.

OK have I got your attention? Sometimes we need to look at a problem from a completely new look. The title is a bit tongue-in-cheek, but what IF we were to explore a course that taught us how to suffer more and be grumpy. What would that look like?

Amendment: So I’ve had some really positive comments on this article in another forum. But I also had a really important constructive criticism so I'm adding 3 key points to remember as you read it. 
1. This article is intended for the reader themself, not to be used as a tool to criticize other people for being critical. 
2. There’s something called logic fallacies. One of those is when the opposite of a fact is also a fact. This is often not the case in reality. Example; Fact: carnivores have canine teeth. But the reverse is not true. Thus having canine teeth does not make something a carnivore. For example gorillas and camels among others, have canines and they are herbivores.

3, Just because something is a risk factor does NOT make it a cause. Example: "Moderate alcohol consumption has been linked to an approximate 30-50% increased risk in breast cancer."* But the alcohol does not cause breast cancer. Nor is it valid or helpful to blame women with breast cancer for drinking a glass of wine at their meal.

4. Poor health and disruption in happiness is not our fault because we are not "positive" enough.  There is an unfair system (sin) at place in our world, where often the person who is hurting has to do work to alleviate their own suffering even though it may not be their fault they are hurting in the first place.  Life can suck, but it doesn't have to stay that way.

5. My humorous look, intentionally overgeneralized, at some tools for cognitive behaviour therapy are not to be taken as rooted in some kind of all or nothing factual science. In fact doing so is a distortion in and of itself. My intention in this article is to look at oneself from a different perspective using humour, because humour can often be quite therapeutic when doing self reflection. We can be pretty hard on ourselves and I was hoping to alleviate some of that pressure by getting you to laugh at some of the mistakes that you might be making. But in no way would I want to shame anyone who is struggling with a critical attitude or denial or any of those things, in fact others may think you are being critical when you are just being honest.  That is there misunderstanding not a reflection on your character. I myself have struggled with many of the items in the follow list. I think that’s why I found it so relevant to me personally and why found so much humour in it.

  

The first step in being miserable would be to be, stay in denial. Why? Well, if you’re denying it you don’t have to deal with it. Denial a way of enabling you to continue to feel miserable when the event is already passed. You can deny that it’s over and relish in your depressed, angry, frustrated state. Next step, hold it all in. Certainly don’t share what you’re thinking and feeling with anyone else. After all they can’t help you. They’ll probably just say what you’re going through isn’t even relevant. At the very least, they’re going to minimize it and try, or worse yet try to fix it for you.

If you can’t hold it in, then complain. Complaining is a great way to stay grumpy. After all you’re just telling people the truth. I mean isn’t honesty the best policy? In fact, I highly recommend journaling. List all the problems you’re having and how miserable each one makes you feel. That way whenever you get a little too positive or happy, you can go back and rehash old grudges.

Mope. Moping lets the body know the correct position to be in when you’re feeling terrible. There’s nothing worse than a hypocrite, like someone smiling when they’re miserable inside. So it’s much better to mope because you’re being honest with the world around you.

Notice honesty has come up a few times. Being right is the best way to keep your relationships on the rocks and protect you from being vulnerable. After all when your always right it’s really hard for other people to live up to your expectations and that can increase your suffering tremendously.

Blame yourself and others. A good place to start is blaming others, that’s usually easier than blaming yourself. Well it does depend on your personality, and either one works pretty good. Blaming others takes all the responsibility off your shoulders, and since you’re not responsible you can’t fix it. Blaming others takes the pressure off you from having to make yourself miserable because people often hurt us and do us wrong.  Remember since you are right, they must be wrong. That’s just logical.

Of course if you have a hard time blaming others, then you can always turn to blaming yourself. This is also quite effective because it acknowledges the fact that you’re an idiot, a failure, and since you are those things there’s no point in trying to fix anything.  It’s just who you are and this will just continue to go on forever.

Minimize the positive. Those happy thoughts thinkers with all their foo foo fluff just don’t know reality. If you minimize positive things that you or others do, it helps put everything more in context of reality. It certainly won’t last. Nothing good lasts forever.

Accentuate the negative. You could even exaggerate a little bit.  I mean come on, realistically who doesn’t get that when you’re feeling miserable and grumpy, exaggeration is probably more truthful than saying it exactly the way it is. Here’s and example, I’ve got such a headache feel like my heads going to explode. I mean it’s not really going to explode, but you’ve got articulate it well so people get how you’re feeling.

Trust your emotions. Oh this is a good one. Your emotions are really going to tell you how you should be feeling and thinking. Just go with your gut, go with your heart, that’ll really stop all your positive thinking. I mean if you feel miserable you must be miserable. If you’re feeling lonely you must be alone.  You can’t trust that someone sitting beside you is really going to be there for you. I mean obviously they’re not doing enough to make you feel part of the group. Oh I guess I’m combining blame here. Well that’s great to show you can combine several of these to make them far more effective in staying miserable.

Remember, if it’s ever happened once, somewhere, to someone, it can happen to you. That’s right if it’s possible it’s probable. There’s at least one person out there who got run over by a truck while sitting in their living room. You should worry about that every time you sit down to enjoy watching some TV. I mean sure, they’d have to drive on the sidewalk, across the lawn, and through the house wall, but it’s possible right? And I mean if we’re going to be positive, we need to be positive that the possible can happen. That leads me to the next one.

If it’s happened before it’s going to happen again. If you found a hair in your food three times in a row, then you can certainly conclude every time you eat out there will be a hair in it. This is a good one to combine with our last one “if it’s possible it’s probable”. After all if bacteria can be on hair, and you found hair in your food three times, you better watch out for flesh eating bacteria in your burger. This tip can add much anxiety to your miserable grumpiness which is a bonus.

Label everything. Now I don’t mean with stickers. Of course you could do that which would take up time and anything that waste your time helps to make you miserable because you’ve wasted time. But what I’m talking here is labelling people or yourself. You see when you label something it really encapsulates what it is at its core. I mean someone didn’t just spilled the milk they are a slob. You didn’t just fail the one test, you are an absolute failure. See how much worse that sounds, there’s great material here for feeling miserable.

I think those tips should really help you to suffer and stay miserable. But if this course really wasn’t right for you then might I suggest the reverse of these? I also recommend reading Dr. David Burn’s best selling book, “Feeling Good” or listen to his podcasts. But I warn you that won’t do much to help you feel grumpy.

OR Get our NEW e-book "The Truth Shall Set You Free" - click here!

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* McDonald, Jasmine A, et al. “Alcohol Intake and Breast Cancer Risk: Weighing the Overall Evidence.” Current Breast Cancer Reports, U.S. National Library of Medicine, Sept. 2013, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3832299/.

Body, Mind & Soul An Integrative Approach

So I thought today I would talk a bit about why I believe in an integrative approach of body, mind, and soul.  And why I follow a plant-based diet as well as other lifestyle choices.  

Since science can’t really articulate the separation of the physical brain and emotions/thoughts, this will be a little bit philosophical. We all have our different views that come from a combination of things we’ve read from science or the Bible or even social media posts. And while I could document the sources where I get my ideas from, the reality is, I cannot prove it and my goal is not to convince you of my believe but rather to understand a little bit more about why I do what I do.  So, I hope you will read all the way through this article with that in mind.

You may have heard me say body mind health, or body mind and soul, or integrative approach, or various combinations of these. Certainly it's in the name of my blog, website and facebook pages. LOL. Obviously, when I say 'body,' I’m referring to your physical body. Mind refers your thoughts and feelings and soul is the essence of who you are or your personality. 

You might be with me so far, or not, but I’m not sure you’ll be on board with my next belief which is that not only our minds, but our souls are also intricately linked to our physical brain. One of the evidence is for this is Phineas Gauge who had an abrupt personality change when a tamping bar went through his frontal lobe. There’s actually many more stories of people who had brain injuries or disease, and had personality changes, emotional problems, or even the way they think changed. Unlike alzheimer's, some dementia patient's family members will tell you this is NOT the person they remember. So we know that physical disease and injury to the brain do you change thoughts and emotions in a person, and even their personality. As a Christian I believe the breath of life comes from God, as mentioned in Genesis and in the New Testament, and goes back to God when we die. I just don’t believe that the soul and the breath of life are the same thing. I don’t think that your soul lives on without a body.  I actually have a Bible study on this if you like and you can get that here. Don't get me wrong, I do believe in heaven and life after death, just not life immediately after death, I believe in the resurrection John 5:28. 

You might have different definitions for these words, or beliefs, and that’s absolutely fine. I do know many things that affect one affects the other. Having a doctrinal difference won’t affect how we work together, it only explains why the body, and specifically the brain, is so important to protect. Because whether you believe the soul is a separate entity from your body or not, we can agree the mind is affected by physical health, and that one can no longer make good decisions if they get a stroke from a poor lifestyle. Our brain's can't function properly without our whole bodies working in good order.  We need proper nutrition for the chemical messengers in our brains, we need exercise for circulation and delivery of these, and so much more.  We’ve seen this in science many times. We know that extreme lack of sleep can cause emotional problems such as irritability and poor cognitive function. Likewise we know certain thoughts can actually reduce physical pain, reducing emotional stress can lower your risk of cancer and heart disease, and many other interconnections.

A plant based diet is one of the best ways to get on the road to optimal health.  The blue zones are centuries of proof that eating lots of plant foods and limited sugar, added fat, and animal products, is the most healthy way to eat.  There are hundreds of studies and books in modern research to back this up. And even some of those following a keto or low card diet believe this so much they endeavor to be vegan or close to it, which is not easy to do, but is possible. 

  

I think in general people forget how important their overall health is to their emotional happiness.  Of course I totally believe in any state of health you can have peace and even happiness. And I do believe that we can’t always determine how healthy will be by our choices. I realize there are other factors that influence our health such as DNA, environmental factors, and other unknowns out of our control.  Let’s do what we can, when we can, is my philosophy. This is why I choose to walk with you on your journey, rather than dragging you along on mine.