Reddit reviews How to Be Miserable: 40 Strategies You Already Use

There's an excellent book that formalizes your line of thinking called How to Be Miserable: 40 Strategies You Already Use.

The author is a psychologist specializing in emotional disorders who spent decades collecting all the bad habits his clients engaged in that made them depressed / anxious / etc.

He then organized the habits from most impactful to least impactful in a satirical "self harm" book.

CGPGrey made a reductionist video covering some of the highlights.

FWIW, going to bed and waking up at a different time each day, a shitty diet and not exercising were his top three recommendations to maximize your own misery.

Ship date is already slipping...

I hear you; many in healthcare / therapy have a hard time admitting when they themselves need help.

If all you want is a book, try How to Be Miserable: 40 Strategies You Already Use.

That said, I'm just going to say up front that it's called "self-help" for a reason, you can't force /give it to someone else.

Baserat på denna boken, ifall någon är intresserad

How to Be Miserable

I really enjoyed Sapiens, and I'm picking up some more of the author's books soon. Fascinating theories on why humans developed language, money, art, religion... All of it. Well worth your time.

Becoming Who We Need To Be was a good (short) read. I'm a fan of the author's work already (particularly his podcast), and the book is a thought-provoking look at a wide variety of topics. More a collection of essays than anything.

Jordan Peterson gets a fair bit of stick, but I found 12 Rules for Life to be quite a powerful read. I don't agree with all of what he writes, but there are some very good lessons in here for sorting one's shit out. A lot of it very obvious now that I've read it, but sometimes you need things spelling out for you.

Religious or not, I would encourage anyone to read The God Delusion. Dawkins is quite militant in his atheism, but it does present a lot of good arguments as to why religion isn't necessary for a person to act morally.

How To Be Miserable resonated with me quite a lot. Bits of it are in a similar vein to 12 Rules for Life, but essentially it's a self-help book that's approaching the matter from the slightly tongue-in-cheek perspective of wanting to make yourself as miserable as possible (ie. don't do these things). Another fairly short, but quite enjoyable read.

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Bonus fiction recommendation:

The Way of Kings. I just got finished reading this last night, and oh boy was it good. It's an absolute tome at 1200 pages, but it's a proper un-put-down-able. Really great work of fantasy, with some outstanding worldbuilding, fascinating characters, and one of the best climaxes I've read in years.

The video is based off How to be Miserable: 40 Strategies You Already Use.

Yeah, I was reading the book "How to be miserable" and I there was a line that said something to the equivalent of "you're "paying" people to find the most upsetting and depressing information they can find and present it to you constantly and in real time all to keep yourself informed on things you can do nothing to change and which provides very little quantitative value in your life."

When you frame it like that, yeah, it's almost a complete waste of time. I think it's worth avoiding the news because it doesn't really make you well informed and what you do learn about isn't overly helpful or actionable. (Not to mention that mainsteam media is fodder for the masses anyway, nevermind what Marx said about religion.) If you want to be better informed then there are probably ways which help you understand the problems of the world better and what can be done to address it. (i.e. looking at data directly which is dry/unsexy/difficult but gives the highest returns for your intentions as far as I can see.)

P.S. I'd totally recommend that book to anyone who finds it interesting. It's both completely hilarious and a little scathing when it's suddenly talking about the stupid shit you do.

Quite a bit of that was drawn from this book and maybe this video as well.

I got into meditation some years ago while suffering from tension headaches as a way to bare the pain. I've found that meditating and exercising regularly prevents my headaches.

Lately I practice yoga as well which is of course synergistic to meditation, but I don't explicitly study meditation.

For me at least, I find meditation is better practiced than studied.

Nope that's a different book. This one was released this month.

Here's the link: http://www.amazon.com/How-Be-Miserable-Strategies-Already/dp/1626254060

[The power of Habit by Charles Duhigg] (https://www.amazon.com/Power-Habit-What-Life-Business/dp/081298160X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524254597&sr=1-1&keywords=the+power+of+habit)

[How to be Miserable by Randy Paterson] (https://www.amazon.com/How-Be-Miserable-Strategies-Already/dp/1626254060/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524254447&sr=1-1&keywords=how+to+be+miserable+40+strategies+you+already+use)

[Triggers by Mark Reiter] (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0804141231/?coliid=I1IO9M9EK6B817&colid=2ODOB46M901X0&psc=0)