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Why Do We Make Ourselves Miserable?
Monday, 2004 March 29 - 1:47 am
Sometimes I find myself surrounded by people who are determined to make their own lives miserable; and in doing so, they make my life miserable, because they frustrate all my attempts to help them. Maybe I'm just too cheerful... or too helpful.

I wonder, sometimes, if I'm just a pollyanna. I try to see the bright side of things, I try to see good qualities in people, I try to enjoy things in my life. Ten years ago, I would have said, cynically, that such an approach to life is a recipe for disappointment. But here's what I've found: if you look for the worst things in life, you will find them. If you look for good things, then you'll find that good things are all around.

I used to have an unhappy love life. When I was alone, I thought that I was miserable because I was alone. As it turned out, I was alone because I was miserable. When I was in a relationship, I was terrified that I would do something to make the relationship fail. At it turned out, the relationships failed because of my insecurities.

I used to hate going to work, because I thought it sucked the life out of me. As it turned out, it only sucked the life out of me because I let it intrude upon my life to begin with.

I used to feel powerless. I would complain about things a lot, but never do anything about them. I would curse Fate and blame everyone else for things that went wrong. And so, I was miserable, and I carried a black cloud around everywhere I went.

So I'm keenly aware of people who do these things... I see it in my friends and co-workers all the time. I really want to help them. It's my nature to try to be helpful. But I remember, when I was like that, I didn't want to be helped, because I thought the problem was everyone else, not me. Now that I'm on the other side of that, I find it really frustrating.

Maybe it's just something people need to work out for themselves. That makes me a little sad. There are so many things that can go wrong in life already; why invent new reasons to make ourselves unhappy? Why not instead focus on the good things?

Good things happen to happy people. That's what I've found.
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Posted by Ken in: life

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