“Is this guy insane? I can barely get though the day without Xanax, and every night it takes copious amounts of booze and/or chronic to keep me from killing myself. Now he’s telling me to be more unhappy?”
Yes, and here’s why: You aren’t unhappy enough. You are content. Yes, I know you’re miserable but that doesn’t mean you aren’t content. If you aren’t working every day to make things better, you are in fact content with the way things are. Let me illustrate this with an example: When you feel a pebble or something in your shoe, do you keep walking? Do you just start walking with a limp or hop on one foot to your destination and keep on that way for the rest of the day? When you get to an important meeting do you hop in and proceed to deliver your presentation on one foot with the explanation that you have something stuck in your shoe? Would be idiotic and everyone would think you’re stupid, right? Then why do you do it in your life? The difference is, the shoe pebble is unbearable so you do something about it. Immediately. You don’t procrastinate, rationalize, complain or blame anyone. You just fix the problem.
You don’t do this in your life because you have found it easier, less unpleasant, to toke up, zone out, crank up the tunes, be angry, pop a pill, say “Someday . . .” or whatever gets you though the day. You believe that coping is easier than solving the problem. But in the long run, it isn’t.
I don’t pretend it’s easy or pleasant to make changes. Sometimes it’s incredibly hard, like when I had to evict a problem roommate my landlord saddled me with after he moved out. But you will actually face more pain in the long run if you don’t act now. I bought a shitbox, cop magnet of a car in 1985. I didn’t keep on top of the registration and maintenance. That failure destroyed my life. Had I dealt with that correctly a different chain of events would have been set in motion. I would never have had my nerves explode ten years later, a ruptured patella tendon thirteen years after that, or literally thousands of other painful experiences that were a product of my failure to deal with difficult problems. Had I not dealt with the difficulty of getting the surgery for my tendon, it would not have been done. I would not have ever been able to walk again.
“But my difficulty isn’t that dramatic”, you say. More’s the pity, youngster. Because if you see it as urgent you will act urgently. If you can get by, or think you can, you give yourself an out. Don’t do that. Don’t look for a temporary fix. Don’t seek to dull the emotional pain. Don’t have a glass of instant smile. Don’t tell yourself a band-aid will work when you really need an operation. Face the pain. Yes, it sucks. I know how hard it is. But if you want to be less unhappy in your life moving forward, you may need to give yourself less of a dose of painkiller right now. Don’t distract yourself. Don’t hit the bong every time you feel stressed. Don’t take the edge off. Instead, face the problem. It may be a lot bigger than you realize. It may be even harder to solve than you think. It may be impossible. Or you might solve the problem and be actually happier as a result.