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Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff from house stuff works dot com where
Speaker 1: smart happens. Hi Marshall Brain with today's question, what can
Speaker 1: you do to make yourself really unhappy? There have been
Speaker 1: lots of articles about happiness. In fact, it could be
Speaker 1: said that there's a growing science of happiness because so
Speaker 1: much research is being done into it. But what about
Speaker 1: the flip side unhappiness? How do you make yourself really unhappy?
Speaker 1: And the idea is that if you know how to
Speaker 1: make yourself unhappy, you could avoid those things, flip it
Speaker 1: around and find happiness by undoing unhappiness. It turns out
Speaker 1: that there's at least three ways to make yourself unhappy
Speaker 1: fairly quickly. The first way is through health problems. Somebody
Speaker 1: who's sick generally is not happy. Now. A lot of
Speaker 1: health problems you have no control over. For example, if
Speaker 1: you fall off a ladder and break your hip, you
Speaker 1: don't have a lot of control over that, except not
Speaker 1: getting up on ladders. Another thing would be cancer. If
Speaker 1: you get cancer, a lot of times you don't have
Speaker 1: control over that. But there are many health issues where
Speaker 1: you do have a lot of control. And one of
Speaker 1: those health issues is obesity. So if you want to
Speaker 1: make yourself unhappy, you would become a couch potato. You
Speaker 1: would get obese, you would start having all the problems
Speaker 1: that go with obesity, high blood pressure, heart problems, diabetes potentially,
Speaker 1: and through that process you could make yourself really unhappy.
Speaker 1: So if you want to be happy, you would probably
Speaker 1: avoid lifestyle choices that lead to unhealthiness. Another way to
Speaker 1: make yourself unhappy, surprisingly has to do with work. It
Speaker 1: turns out that a lot of people right now are
Speaker 1: not happy because they don't have enough work to do.
Speaker 1: And it goes both ways. You can get unhappy by overworking,
Speaker 1: by doing too much work, a lot more than you
Speaker 1: want to be doing. But you can also be unhappy
Speaker 1: by doing too little work, by being underutilized. And here
Speaker 1: the solution is not necessarily quite so easy, because you
Speaker 1: know there are big box retailers who are posting jobs
Speaker 1: right now and getting two thousand applicants for a single job.
Speaker 1: Things like that, there isn't enough work to go around.
Speaker 1: But if you are finding yourself in an underwork situation,
Speaker 1: one possibility might be volunteering somewhere. Maybe helping others to
Speaker 1: help yourself would be the philosophy. It might lead to
Speaker 1: more happiness, not necessarily ecstasy. But what if you want
Speaker 1: to be really unhappy? There's an article out recently called
Speaker 1: German Studies finds happiness is based on choices, not genes,
Speaker 1: and it offers this tip quote. Relationships are very important,
Speaker 1: But according to Wagner and his colleagues, choosing a neurotic
Speaker 1: partner is a sure fire way to be unhappy. This
Speaker 1: brings up the obvious question what is neurotic means? So
Speaker 1: I went to a place called psychology World dot com
Speaker 1: and looked it up. Here's their definition. They respond emotionally
Speaker 1: to events that would not affect most people, and their
Speaker 1: reactions tend to be more intense than normal. They are
Speaker 1: more likely to interpret ordinary situations is threatening and minor
Speaker 1: frustrations as hopelessly difficult. Their negative emotional reactions tend to
Speaker 1: persist for unusually long periods of time, which means they
Speaker 1: are often in a bad mood. These problems in emotional
Speaker 1: regulation can diminish a neurotics ability to think clearly, make decisions,
Speaker 1: and cope effectively with stress. Well, you can look at
Speaker 1: that definition and you can see why that would make
Speaker 1: someone unhappy. You may have heard the description drama queen
Speaker 1: or drama king. Yes, it's easy to see how a
Speaker 1: partner like that would drag you down. If you want
Speaker 1: to be unhappy, hook up with a neurotic person who's
Speaker 1: unable to think clearly, make decisions, and cope effectively with stress.
Speaker 1: That does seem like a good recipe for disaster. If
Speaker 1: you'd like to perform a trifecta of unhappiness, you can
Speaker 1: put all three of these together. You could make choices
Speaker 1: that make you unhealthy, you could work too much or
Speaker 1: too little, and simultaneously, you could hook up with someone
Speaker 1: who's neurotic. Putting those three things together would be a
Speaker 1: surefire way to have a bad day for more illness
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Does that how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com and don't forget to check out the brain
Speaker 1: stuff blog on the house stuff works dot com home page.
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Speaker 1: at brain stuff HSW. This episode of brain Stuff is
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