Strategies for Unhappiness

Consider how many of the following strategies may have slipped into your own approach to life:

• Don't appreciate your achievements. Instead, regard them as things that anyone could do or which somehow occurred through no serious effort of your own.
• Keep raising the bar for satisfaction instead of celebrating when goals are achieved. 
• Chastise yourself for not being perfect.
• Compare yourself to others and believe that other people are much happier, more self-confident, and have fewer problems.
• Expect others to behave and think as you would behave and think.
• Expect others to know when you are upset. Regard their failure to notice as a sign that they are insensitive and uncaring.
• Link your success to achieving a particular job title or income level.
• Periodically re-open old wounds.
• Always be on the alert for any insults or slights.
• Give greater weight to criticism than to praise.
• Expect others to be angels and then condemn them when they fall short.
• Believe that anyone who has more took it from someone else.
• Worry about your failure to control things that are beyond your ability to control.
• Worry about things that are unlikely to happen.
• Always be wary of being hustled.
• Focus on getting others to understand you instead of first understanding others.
• Be harder on yourself that you would be on similarly situated others.
• Associate with people who have similar negative habits so you can reinforce one another's feelings.
• Tell yourself every day that you are an impostor who talks a good game but who really doesn't deserve to be in your job.
• Keep careful score on who gets what.
• Expect the world to be fair and always define fairness as you getting more rather than you getting less.
• Cultivate an attitude of entitlement.
• Define wants as needs and have plenty of wants.
• Seldom show gratitude.