Welcome back to The Renewal, where you learn how to live 1% better every week. So, if you’re reading this, keep it to yourself.
Happiness.
Many will advise you how to obtain it, but maybe you’re not trying to be happy.
You aim for the opposite. You want to be the depressed dingy sailing on the sea of sadness – much easier to achieve.
This newsletter has 7 tactics to get you started toward the dark currents, at least one of which you are already doing.
So let’s begin.
1. Stay still.
Remain indoors as much as possible, preferably in the same room.
Be the human equivalent of a pile of laundry.
Inert, unmoving. Don’t let a beautiful day tempt you for a walk.
Avoid anything vaguely similar to exercise. This keeps reward chemicals out of your brain which could diverge you.
And stillness guides you towards medical problems which will keep this wheel turning.
Make your bedroom your allroom. Live and work and play and sleep in the smallest radius you can.
2. Screw with your sleep.
The ghost of insomnia will be your co-captain on the sea of sadness.
Her mere presence is unpleasant, but she also helps confuse the productive part of your brain which might look to navigate you toward the islands of happiness on the horizon.
A regular sleep cycle is a fragile thing and takes at least three days to establish. Be sure then to vary your bedtime by several hours twice a week, at least.
Even better: vary your wake time.
Sleep in late, preferably very late, some but not all days. And tell yourself you’re making up for sleep to feel like you’re doing something healthy – even though you feel terrible when you wake up early and when you wake up late.
To never sleep or wake at the same time is the goal.
And to help in this…
3. Maximize your screen time.
Staying on-screen raises the sails on your depression dingy. Boredom could drive you to motion, so let the screen entertain you.
Tiredness can push you to sleep, so let the screen keep you awake, sort of, as long as possible.
Always fall asleep with a screen in your hand and put your eyes back on it as soon as you wake.
Every moment away from a screen is a moment you might notice the horizon.
Keep your head down, let the currents pull you. Here you have allies unknown.
Behind the screen are teams of the smartest people and brightest bots competing to hold your attention as long as possible.
Let them reach you to pull you back if you turn away.
Plus, screens help with #4.
4. Use your screen to stoke your negative emotions.
Doomscroll to feed your anger or anxiety about things over which you have no control or influence.
Be well-informed while doing nothing.
The things you care about could be navigational guides out of the sea, reasons to leave your allroom and take meaningful action with the humans around you.
Be strong. Only use the things you care about as further sources of misery. Focus on the bad to fuel your resentment or despair.
If you must contribute, do so only in meaningless token ways and be disappointed in the lack of change.
5. Set V.A.P.I.D. goals (vague, amorphous, pie in the sky, irrelevant, delayed)
We’re coming towards the end and if you’re doing it right, misery is descending.
But some part of your brain is rebelling, trying to turn the ship by setting a goal. If you’re not careful, that part of your brain just might save you, but luckily we can do more than just hobble it.
We can fool it to navigate deeper into the sea.
To reach goals, they must be specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and time bounded. SMART.
For example: I will turn the wheel one degree right now.
Instead, set the productive part of your brain on VAPID goals: vague, amorphous, pie-in-the-sky, irrelevant, delayed.
Make the target unclear and the path unclear.
If motivation strikes, aim ridiculously high to guarantee failure – I will clean the whole house today is much better than I will do the laundry in this pile.
Cleaning a whole house is impossible.
There’s always more to do, so you will always fail.
Now the VAPID goals you’ve set should distract the productive part of your brain, but if it still fights against you, direct it towards the mirage on the sea of sadness: the islands of happiness themselves.
6. Pursue happiness directly.
The human mind is such that by setting sail towards happiness, you will achieve the opposite.
Imagine happiness as a place where happy people are happy all the time. This turns happiness into an unreachable feeling of constant bliss that no one has.
True happiness is like a bird that you want to land on your ship. It will never come if you constantly stand guard to catch it. Instead, improve your ship and sail into warmer waters – the bird will land when you aren’t looking.
So, be sure never to do that.
Aim toward the mirage of happiness rather than improving the ship upon which you sail.
Last, but most important…
7. Follow your instincts.
Navigation deeper into the sea of sadness is quite easy, for there is a dark magnetic field that points the compass of your impulses towards the sadness.
You will want to stay indoors. You will want to not exercise. You will want to sleep in. You will want to do things that make you sadder after you’ve done it.
Your compass points the way, both in and out of the darkness, so follow the true north of your impulses and stay away from the pole of the long-term.
It’s all so simple.
Just get started with these tactics and let the sea carry you along.
Bonus. Spend as much time as possible reflecting on the past.
Look at the fun times you had in the past and think about how impossible they are now because your life has changed.
Look at the bad times you had in the past and try to work out how they were your fault or how they mark general trends in your life.
Below is the “May Contain Nuts” warning on a packet of peanuts.
It’s worth saying explicitly that the obvious actual goal is to achieve happiness, not misery.
But you, like me, might find the advice on happiness kind of tiresome.
Almost irritating.
So it might be more useful to think about how to achieve the opposite. And thus, to see how the actions we might take work against us.
And happiness is a topic that is unusually well-suited to this mental inversion.
My dear readers, do not take this as literal advice. I want all of you to find your own happiness.
And that’s why I made this newsletter.
Good luck.
This newsletter is an adaptation of How to Be Miserable by Dr. Randy J. Patterson.
Thinking about the opposite of your goal can help you achieve what you really want.