Quote: (07-10-2013 11:51 PM)nek Wrote:
I have this horrible problem where I tend to dwell on the negative of things. As in, I'll dwell on how a situation I've been in could've gone very bad. To a degree I also dwell on future bad shit happening. Does anyone else have this? How do you deal with it?
I was similar at one point and still have attacks of gloom.
But from personal experience:
- Stop watching television
- Stop reading/watching the news
- Stop eating sugar
- Stop eating salt
- In general, avoid advertising and mass media
The first step is take back control of your mind and body.
I found that I became much happier just by not consuming mind-junk and body-junk.
Start of rant:
Much of society is now subtly designed to make you feel bad, and in response to those bad feeling various products and pills are provided to make you feel better. The current culture of consumption relies on brainwashing you to be uncontent. And the foods we are encouraged to eat through advertising are designed to poison us, make us feel even more insecure, so that we have to comfort ourselves by buying more poison to eat.
For coke to convince you to open happiness, you have to accept the underlying propaganda that you are unhappy to begin with. Then you drink a coke and the sugar upsets your hormonal balance and you are even unhappier and then you end up drinking more coke to be happy.
For a deodorant to convince you to become a babe magnet by buying a deodarant, it has has to convince that you are unsociable scum to begin with.
McDonald's ads implies that without a happy meal, you are unhappy.
I could go on and on with endless examples - pretty much all advertising works on playing and strengthening insecurities in people.
I didn't realise how advertising tries to tear one down until I withdrew from mass media. On a deep level, subconscious or even unconscious level, much of mass media is designed to make you feel inadequate and then it offers up the option of filling up the hole in your soul with an iphone. Withdrawing from mass media made me a happier person. Whenever I start reading newspapers or listening to radio stations I start getting grumpy again. It's because the underlying assumptions of mass media are to tear people down, not to build them up.
:End of rant.
BTW, hanging around happy and optimistic people also helps.