The Art of Manliness - #204： How to Be Miserable

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast so there are tons

00:00:18.560 of books out there about how to improve yourself how to be happier how to be more productive

00:00:22.940 how to be less angry etc but often these books they offer prescriptive advice on things you

00:00:29.160 should add to your life or things you need to do more in your life to get to the goal you want but

00:00:33.880 sometimes the best way to achieve a goal is to subtract from your life and stop doing the things

00:00:39.740 that are making you miserable well that's the approach my guest today took in his latest book

00:00:43.860 how to be miserable 40 strategies you are already using his name is randy patterson he's a psychologist

00:00:49.420 today on the show randy and i discuss the things that he's seen with his uh his patients that the

00:00:55.920 common lifestyle choices they make thinking patterns that they take part in that make them

00:01:01.100 miserable and what that you can do to eliminate those from your life so if you suffer from depression

00:01:07.140 or know someone who suffers depression you'll get a lot of insight from the show we also just tackle

00:01:11.360 anger we discuss how this you know a focus on self-improvement can actually backfire like make

00:01:17.700 your life more miserable and we also discuss assertiveness randy wrote a great book that i

00:01:22.540 referenced in an article about assertiveness a few years ago so if you have problems telling people

00:01:26.900 no or asking for things that you want without having a panic attack you'll find that part of the podcast

00:01:33.760 useful as well make sure to check out the show notes after you listen at aom.is

00:01:39.200 slash miserable where you can find links to resources we mentioned throughout the show

00:01:43.140 so without further ado randy patterson and how to be miserable

00:01:47.020 dr randy patterson welcome to the show well i'm glad to be here uh so you're a psychologist and

00:01:57.540 you've got a new book out and it's called how to be miserable 40 strategies that you're probably

00:02:02.840 already using um and i love the the title of the book because it's inspired by a question that you

00:02:09.920 asked in a discussion group for patients you were treating with mood disorders and instead of asking

00:02:16.540 them what they could do to be happier which would you think would be the normal question you'd ask

00:02:20.600 people who were suffering depression or anxiety uh you asked them what they could do to make

00:02:25.260 themselves feel even worse so why ask that question and what insights did your patients and you get from

00:02:33.520 the the subsequent discussion well the patients in that group uh were just out of hospitalized care

00:02:41.400 for depression and the average number of hospitalizations with two but it went up to

00:02:47.000 into the 30s for a couple of them and so they've been through a lot of treatment they've been through

00:02:53.900 a lot of depression and depression have been with them for a long period of time and so they were kind

00:02:58.700 of understandably skeptical they didn't want to be sold on something people have been said oh this is

00:03:04.300 this is the wonderful cure and then that didn't work and then somebody said well this is the wonderful

00:03:09.240 cure and then that didn't work uh and so they didn't need somebody else doing that uh the longer

00:03:15.440 somebody's been in mental health the less susceptible they are to cheerleading and cheerleading for for

00:03:20.840 clients like that where you're saying oh look here's the research i'll show you this article that proves

00:03:26.820 that cognitive behavior therapy works brilliantly blah blah blah it tends not to work very well

00:03:32.360 so we had to find some way of getting around that skepticism and we wanted to do it right off the bat

00:03:38.720 in session one and i knew that trying to you know indoctrinate them and the wonders of cbt wasn't

00:03:46.520 going to work so uh i thought well let's try something a little bit different and i've always found that one

00:03:53.040 way of enhancing clients receptivity and and having people actually remember what you do between sessions

00:04:00.480 is in effect to act strangely uh because people will then say you never believe what this weirdo i saw

00:04:06.780 uh just did anyway uh so i would say point to the middle of the table because we met around a large table

00:04:13.600 and and said well i imagine most of you have noticed the 10 million dollars sitting there which of course

00:04:20.720 there wasn't 10 million dollars sitting there imagine that you could win all of that money

00:04:26.400 by making yourself feel even worse than you do right now maybe tomorrow maybe between 11 and 11 30

00:04:34.920 you know for just half an hour if you can make yourself feel worse than you do now you get the

00:04:40.100 money how would you do that like what are the strategies that you would use to affect your mood

00:04:46.480 to change your mood in a negative direction and that people could buy into but they kind of thought

00:04:54.580 it was a bit weird but they could at least do it and i would go around the room because at that point

00:04:58.600 we were still in session one so we wanted everybody to talk you need to break the ice

00:05:02.920 and then i threw it open and people began talking over each other they began coming up with different

00:05:09.420 ideas and i was writing all of these on the board and and the main stopper of this thing was it was

00:05:15.480 you know that i couldn't actually write these things down fast enough listen to country music

00:05:22.020 curtain songs all kinds of stuff people would come up with and they would begin to laugh

00:05:26.920 which is very strange because you know you don't hear a lot of laughter in a building that has four

00:05:33.540 psychiatric wards so they kind of got into it which was lovely and it probably would have been good

00:05:41.040 enough just for that you know enough that we got them to laugh but there were two elements i think

00:05:47.460 really that uh that they got out of it one is that they realized they did have at least a little

00:05:54.340 bit of control over their mood they could make it worse if they wanted to now that's not hugely useful

00:06:01.500 but if you do have that little bit of control maybe you could get a little bit more so it sort of

00:06:06.520 cracks open that possibility the second thing that people got out of it is they realized something

00:06:12.580 wait a minute i'm already doing some of the things on this list i'm already binge eating ice cream i'm

00:06:19.400 already avoiding all exercise i'm already isolating i'm already closing the curtains and sitting in the

00:06:25.900 cart i'm already doing these things and so they began to recognize that possibly change wouldn't

00:06:33.680 involve taking on anything brand new they've never done before change might just mean stopping what

00:06:39.420 they were already doing at least in part yeah and i thought that was interesting because like you

00:06:46.300 said that second part a lot of the things that the people were the reason why they were miserable they

00:06:50.500 were already doing those things and you talk about in the book that i mean it's kind of bizarre that

00:06:56.640 you know not just uh individuals are with severe mood problems like severe depression or anxiety

00:07:03.460 requires them to be in a hospital but just everyone all human beings are really good at making

00:07:09.020 themselves so feel miserable um despite living in one of the safest most affluent times in human history

00:07:15.860 why are we so good at making ourselves feel terrible and miserable

00:07:20.840 partly i think it's the um it's the timeline that we look at if we look at okay i want to feel really

00:07:29.460 good and i want to have a good life and i want to be you know doing well a year from now i kind of know

00:07:35.660 what to do i know what to eat i know where to go i know that i need to build up my social network i

00:07:41.800 know i need to clean out that garage you know uh exercising would be a good idea that kind of thing

00:07:48.320 but if i'm particularly stressed out and i'm feeling overwhelmed by my life my time horizon

00:07:55.940 gets yanked inward and i begin thinking things like oh my gosh i just need to get through today

00:08:02.120 you know the heck with tomorrow tomorrow i will take that when it comes right now i just need to

00:08:07.840 get through today and if that means watching three hours of television then i will do that

00:08:12.400 and i do not have the energy to get myself out exercising or to plan this stuff for next week

00:08:18.100 i just want to do this so what often makes us happy in the short term or at least slightly less

00:08:25.840 miserable in the short term is what makes us more miserable in the long term so as our mood declines

00:08:33.060 our horizon tends to come in we start making these short-term decisions even more and i think there's

00:08:39.300 another fact and that is that our society kind of encourages us to make these choices our society

00:08:46.080 encourages us to be very competitive our society plants fast food places all around us you know that

00:08:52.600 are very very very flavorful but not very nutritious food we have cars parking lots everywhere valet

00:09:03.320 parking in front of a restaurant that you might want to go to or uh i've never actually used valet

00:09:10.880 parking but that's an example um and all of these things enable us to get absolutely no exercise we're

00:09:19.260 very much like a children's movie that came out a few years ago wall e where all of the population

00:09:25.240 was essentially in mobile uh day beds that allowed them to avoid all exercise but this is actually not

00:09:34.000 good for us this is not how we developed as a as a species to be able to um to be able to cope or

00:09:40.240 designed for movement so a lot of that the elements of the design of our culture encourage us

00:09:46.600 uh into a lifestyle of passivity bad food isolation and so on that just wind up making us more miserable

00:09:54.840 yeah i thought that's interesting point um oftentimes individuals who are in a funk or who are suffering

00:10:00.540 severe depression like they know the thing they need to do to not be miserable um but instead there's that

00:10:10.140 tendency like you said because the the time frame collapses they just want to do what makes them feel

00:10:14.560 good now they do the thing that keeps them making keeps making them feel terrible yeah yeah and very

00:10:23.000 hard to resist one of the things that people often think is okay if if there are really only two paths

00:10:30.660 here there's there's eat the rest of the chocolate chip cookies or start an exercise program where i'm

00:10:37.800 doing it six times a week and eat properly i need a nutritious meal three times a day and do this and do that

00:10:43.420 and do that they think i do not have the energy for this revolution in my life uh maybe i'll have it

00:10:53.220 someday but i certainly don't have it now so i guess the only other path for me is to kind of give in

00:10:59.800 almost and what we try to do in therapy is is kill the revolution in effect that's like let's get rid of

00:11:07.840 that we'll forget that we're just going to work incrementally yeah i mean so is that the key of oh

00:11:12.880 you know getting killing that revolution is just being incremental about it not trying to get drastic

00:11:18.400 changes extremely fast because i think i think it's what people want they want the magic bullet they'll

00:11:23.120 make them feel better right now yeah if you go to the self-help bookshelves for example it's basically

00:11:28.580 the shelves of of magic bullets and the revolutions just tend not to work very well so what we need to do

00:11:37.240 is say okay well forget getting to the end of the trail let's uh let's see what's one step down the

00:11:43.120 trail and if you can work that way you begin setting up a bit of a positive spiral you know you exercise

00:11:50.320 a little and it gives you gram more energy it's just you know insignificant not very much but it enables

00:11:59.060 you to do one more thing and frankly that evening you sleep just well 10 minutes more which is not

00:12:05.160 very great but that little bit more sleep gives you just a little bit more focus at work almost

00:12:12.040 undetectable but that enables you to feel just a little bit more positive about your uh about your

00:12:19.580 life you know and that may give you the energy to say well maybe i'll go exercise one more time and

00:12:25.680 maybe walk another block and so on and that kind of spiral effect begins working in a positive direction

00:12:31.620 rather than in the negative direction so uh let's talk about some of the strategies that people

00:12:37.700 use to make themselves miserable and uh some folks who are listening are probably using some of these

00:12:42.780 strategies uh the first section of your book discusses lifestyle habits you mentioned a few

00:12:48.140 already um poor eating lack of exercise but are there any other lifestyle habits that people use or

00:12:56.440 have adopted that make themselves feel miserable yeah there are a number in the in the book and i

00:13:03.680 suspect i haven't exhausted the list but one of them is maximizing your screen time um there are

00:13:11.780 reasonable surveys now about the number of hours that people spend planted in front of a television set

00:13:17.280 or surfing the internet or playing video games and it's a mammoth proportion of a person's waking

00:13:24.380 hours uh i once did the math on this if you're a smoker uh we all know the 90 year old who's been

00:13:31.620 smoking since he was 10 uh and no no negative effects uh but on average uh if you're a smoker starting in

00:13:39.980 your teen years i think the figure is uh on average you can expect to lose about seven years of your life

00:13:46.060 but if you look at the waking hours the proportion of waking hours that people spend

00:13:51.560 just sort of sitting passively receiving entertainment or surfing randomly on the internet

00:13:57.980 uh we're talking about a reduction of possibly 20 years of your lifespan not that you'll die 20 years

00:14:05.360 earlier but 20 years of your life will be occupied doing that instead of the things that actually

00:14:10.940 sustain you the things you'll be glad to have done once you wind up on your deathbed

00:14:15.660 look back so maximizing screen time is definitely one of the strategies and minimizing social life

00:14:23.260 which frankly those two kind of go together yeah so those are two right it seems like the screen time

00:14:29.000 is uh double whammy it hits a lot of other keeps you sedentary um keeps you isolated but that you told

00:14:35.740 you know solitude in moderation is actually good for you which you talk about in your book

00:14:39.160 um but then also you talk about um you know just you're constantly looking for information and

00:14:45.280 as you mentioned your book our brain is really uh keyed to negative information and so you probably

00:14:51.260 spend a lot of your time surfing the web looking at horrible stories that might not really affect you

00:14:56.720 personally and you don't really doesn't really i don't know there's nothing you can do with that

00:15:00.700 information but like you're keyed in on looking for that right we spend an awful lot of time you know

00:15:06.300 trying to find about to find out about the latest disaster that happened a continent away

00:15:12.380 and looking for the video of it and so on and if we don't really step back you know we sort of

00:15:17.600 justify it by saying well i should be informed you know if i'm going to donate money i need to know

00:15:22.660 what's actually happened but do we really need to see that video you know the 17th time uh there's

00:15:29.320 something in our brain that makes us want to do that and you can see it of course as you're driving in

00:15:34.220 any car accident virtually everybody slows down and we're all very so we're all very critical of

00:15:40.220 those people you know they slow down i just want to see the gore on the accident um but in fact we're

00:15:47.220 sort of wired for that we're wired to you know look at the bad stuff and um and the internet is a

00:15:54.380 lovely uh source of it you know and 24-hour news channels as well well i want to going back to that

00:16:01.760 screen time one interesting thing you mentioned in the book is that you know i always assume that

00:16:06.700 well yeah people screen times is the the same people are surfing the internet more so they're

00:16:12.100 replacing that with uh replacing television with surfing time on the computer but you show statistics

00:16:18.160 that people are actually know it's like they're still watching the same amount of tv as they were a

00:16:23.180 few years ago but they're just adding on computer time to that yes and that's even when you consider

00:16:29.280 the television that's sort of being transferred to to the uh to the computer so if you're watching

00:16:35.180 uh a streaming service for example some television show on a streaming service uh and consider that

00:16:41.880 score that if you like as television the uh additional time that you spend randomly uh surfing

00:16:49.840 is actually eating away the rest of the time so eating away meal times it's eating away social life

00:16:56.260 and so on it's not eating away the television programming i thought this is a really interesting

00:17:02.380 section in your book uh it's one of the ways you can make yourself miserable is setting what you call

00:17:07.940 vapid goals so i think uh people have heard of smart goals where you know they're specific miserable

00:17:13.780 attainable or achievable um i forget what the r means uh realistic realistic and have a time frame

00:17:21.580 um so how do vapid goals differ from smart goals well uh i essentially just took the smart goals and

00:17:29.380 and sort of flipped them on their hand and it sounds you know faintly ridiculous but in fact the vapid goals

00:17:35.020 are what we often said if we're not thinking about so v for vague in other words you have no idea how

00:17:41.520 you're going to do this you set a goal of accomplishing something but you're not entirely sure how you're going

00:17:46.180 to do it usually especially if you're not feeling that great that'll stop you amorphous uh so that

00:17:53.920 there's no finish line there's no sense of achievement one of the reasons that small goals

00:17:58.940 are a good thing to set small and achievable goals is you catch yourself passing finish lines it's like

00:18:05.700 okay well the entire house is not clean but that closet is now cleaned out that's done and that

00:18:12.520 done feeling you never get if the goals are amorphous pie in the sky so you want them to be

00:18:20.080 too ambitious so uh i haven't been exercising and following up maybe i've been sitting around

00:18:28.100 watching a lot of television or or serving the internet and my goal is to go in the uh the marathon

00:18:33.700 next month well guess what that's never going to happen that's a recipe for failure um irrelevant

00:18:40.640 you know so we'll try things that are kind of not really serving us in terms of our ultimate goals

00:18:47.840 uh so we'll try and find out everything that we can on some uh arcane topic rather than actually

00:18:54.960 targeting uh things that are really going to serve us and uh for time defined we switched it to

00:19:02.560 delayed in other words i will do it later or and especially the the real killer i'll do it when i

00:19:10.360 feel like it because i never feel like it maybe they're never going to get done right right and

00:19:16.440 i can see how yeah particularly if you're in a funk the temptation would be to set vapid goals and they

00:19:21.820 probably people who set vapid goals they feel like they're doing something right i'm setting goals

00:19:27.120 but uh setting goals you know get in shape eat well better see more people never seems to work out

00:19:36.720 though right right well before we continue on i think this is an important question to ask i mean

00:19:42.040 what is the opposite of miserable um because like you said the self-help books they sell this magic

00:19:49.240 bullet mentality and that if you do these things you're going to be happy and just joyful all the

00:19:54.800 time and feel i don't know just just glad to be alive and everything i mean what what are we aiming

00:20:02.180 for when we're not trying to be miserable i think what we're aiming for is a diverse appreciation of

00:20:10.240 all aspects of human experience which is not as satisfying a sounding thing as saying that what

00:20:17.860 we're after is happiness 24 hours a day one of the points that i make in the book is that

00:20:23.740 we are equipped with all kinds of emotions we're equipped with sadness with anxiety with happiness with

00:20:30.600 joy with love with disappointment um fear all of these emotions and they're essentially a behavioral

00:20:38.420 guidance system they're all there for a purpose and so this idea that to some extent psychology

00:20:45.020 is on the hook for that we've been promoting this idea that yeah you should be happy 24 hours a day

00:20:51.200 and partly what that's doing is that setting the bar so high unrealistically high that if you're not

00:20:59.120 doing that you feel like you failed so to some extent trying to be happy all the time serving them

00:21:04.680 serving the the goal of being more miserable because you feel like you're a complete failure

00:21:09.580 we've also been saying that if you're not you know pretty much unrelentingly happy there's something

00:21:15.440 wrong with you you know maybe you have a disorder of some kind maybe you should be swallowing a pill of

00:21:21.020 some kind so i think what we're after instead is uh yes being anxious yes being fearful at times yes

00:21:30.960 feeling sad and able to tolerate a sad morning and say yeah but you know i'm still gonna go do the

00:21:38.900 thing that i planned anyway i don't feel that enthusiastic at the moment that kind of thing you know to be able

00:21:45.980 to keep going um and i think the more accepting we are of negative emotional states the more the

00:21:54.560 less severe they are and the more the positive emotional states come in so uh sart the uh existential

00:22:02.000 novelist philosopher uh he famously said hell is other people um what do miserable people do

00:22:11.880 differently from not miserable people when it comes to dealing with other people out there so

00:22:19.280 you know other people aren't hell for them yeah yeah well well if you're feeling lousy the lousier you

00:22:27.700 feel the more likely you are to have a motivational shift away from hey wouldn't it be fun to go out

00:22:34.760 with those friends tonight toward a tendency to isolate some people go the other way but generally

00:22:41.220 speaking it's a tendency to isolate the more you isolate the more you begin to become a little

00:22:46.680 bit suspicious about what are they thinking about me do they think that i'm an interesting person

00:22:50.620 maybe not maybe i should isolate maybe i'm actually doing them a favor by isolating that kind of thing

00:22:56.680 so they kind of tend to uh move inward i keep saying they i would say we i'm not trying to

00:23:04.900 divide this away from the uh the clinically depressed people it's as we get more miserable

00:23:11.640 we're more likely to have a tendency to isolate but what about when we're around other people

00:23:17.400 uh one of the things that uh that we might do is downward comparisons which are very subtle but

00:23:25.900 they're amazing and most of us do it to at least some degree so the the example that i give in the

00:23:32.240 book is you go to a party and you'll look around and you find the one person who's really brilliantly

00:23:39.880 dressed you talk to them you don't know anything about them they're really great you know dressers

00:23:45.520 let's say and then you look down at what you put on you know very proudly in your own place and then

00:23:50.800 you realize oh yeah okay so i'm not nearly as well dressed as they are um and what you're doing is

00:23:59.300 you're comparing yourself to that one outlier then you listen to this one person talking about this

00:24:04.980 amazing achievement they had and then you look at yourself and you think oh i haven't done that

00:24:09.180 and you ignore the fact that neither is anybody else at the party so you go through the party and

00:24:15.820 you're looking for people who are outliers the extremes the on the positive end and we compare

00:24:23.720 ourselves downward against those people ignoring all of the others and then we switch to another

00:24:29.920 person who's an outlier on another characteristic and so what we wind up doing is feeling you know

00:24:36.280 uglier dowdy or uh stupider uh less socially fluent we we can find ourselves uh feeling negative about

00:24:47.400 every possible social characteristic and uh so downward comparisons are are a really interesting

00:24:55.400 thing that we tend to do i suspect that there's probably the odd person who doesn't do them i just

00:25:00.040 have never met them um it's another thing you talk about in the book that makes people miserable is um

00:25:07.000 not setting boundaries and uh your previous book uh that i'm a big fan of and we actually referenced in

00:25:13.320 an article i wrote a few years ago uh is the assertiveness workbook and it explores this whole

00:25:19.320 idea of boundary setting i think it's a big problem for a lot of people i think we often think of

00:25:24.500 assertiveness as i don't know i remember the trope from the 80s and 90s where women business women would

00:25:29.300 take assertiveness training so they could make it in the man's world of business whatever um but it seems

00:25:35.180 like i imagine it's a problem for men as well um before we delve into like how to set boundaries and

00:25:41.920 kind of be more assertive can you describe what is the difference between assertiveness and being

00:25:46.940 aggressive well in that book i use a stage metaphor and if you're being aggressive it's kind of like

00:25:55.460 you're allowed to be on stage and your mission is to essentially push everybody else off and everybody

00:26:00.720 else has to uh in effect be your audience uh another way of putting it is my way or the highway and a lot

00:26:08.000 of people imagine that's what assertiveness is all about assertiveness is about getting your own way

00:26:13.840 actually that's more the aggressive posture and it works you know if you're really pushy you can

00:26:20.100 pretty much get your own way once but then people don't show up for the follow-up they don't show up

00:26:25.660 you know more than once uh they start drifting away to the exits assertiveness is more about an

00:26:33.020 equality between you and other people you can't so do they and so the metaphor is that everybody is

00:26:39.840 loud on stage um the the third major style is the passive style where you appoint yourself audience to

00:26:47.500 the world and everybody else gets to you know call the shots and you don't the passive and aggressive

00:26:54.340 styles thinking about the behavior that's engaged in the passivity is really avoidance particularly of

00:26:59.940 conflict aggression is really about a kind of fight usually a verbal fight or a verbal uh trying to

00:27:07.740 establish dominance over someone else if you think about those words fight and flight they're both

00:27:13.640 related to the stress response so both of them are associated with an activation of the stress response

00:27:19.640 assertiveness is generally speaking a little bit more calm you're more relaxed you're more open

00:27:26.800 and it's about you and the other person coming to some um mutual uh goal sometimes if you're the boss or

00:27:36.520 if you really need something you might push the point but it's not necessarily about bulldozing your

00:27:43.540 way through the crowd which people often imagine that's what assertiveness is all about what are the the

00:27:49.860 biggest barriers uh that keep people from taking a more assertive approach i mean i guess i think a lot of

00:27:55.720 i think some men might not have a problem with the aggressive approach but i think there's a lot of

00:28:00.060 people who are maybe they're used to taking a more passive approach what keeps them from you know sort of

00:28:07.480 meeting people on on equal footing and and uh trying to work something out instead of just going along with

00:28:13.220 what everyone everyone else wants well part of it is um it depends on on which style you're more prone

00:28:21.600 to using if you're more on the passive style side often one of the big barriers for you is a fear of

00:28:28.120 conflict right if i try and push my point if i say actually i disagree with what the committee is doing

00:28:35.320 right now or whatever um i'm going to get attacked and i'm not sure i'm going to be able to handle the

00:28:43.180 attack uh i'd be able to say at once that if somebody comes back at me and you know argues against my

00:28:49.520 position uh i'm just going to completely lose it uh either i'll be horribly humiliated or i just won't

00:28:56.840 be able to justify my position if you're uh more aggressive the theory is okay if i tone it down the

00:29:04.300 aggression and i stop all these dominance postures with these people i'm not going to get my own way

00:29:10.480 and everything's going to go astray there's not enough strength in my argument there's not enough

00:29:15.920 strength in my point to actually carry the day uh the only way i'm going to do this is by forcing

00:29:23.240 people and also you know if i'm a boss uh it might be the only way i get things done around here is by

00:29:29.900 lighting a fire under people those people often are not looking at their turnover rates

00:29:35.720 right yeah so i think that that's that's one thing is a fear that assertiveness simply will not

00:29:43.880 work one way or another another is your own history you know people are used to you they're used to you

00:29:52.460 being a certain way and when you change they're often thinking well what's going on like why are you

00:29:59.300 like that so if you've always been the person to say oh no any restaurant is absolutely fine with me

00:30:05.740 uh whatever you would like if one day you suddenly say well actually you know i'd kind of like to go

00:30:11.680 to a greek restaurant people will be thinking oh my gosh you must be furious like what must it have

00:30:17.240 taken for this person whose role in life is to go along to actually start standing up maybe maybe

00:30:24.800 maybe he or she is feeling hugely resentful and they make a big deal with it they also may not pay

00:30:32.280 attention because they're just used to you going along okay you said a greek restaurant big deal

00:30:37.060 right i know i can get my own way so i'll just bulldoze over you and ignore the fact that you even

00:30:41.560 said a greek restaurant um so that's part of it that's sort of the history problem gender is another

00:30:48.940 one um women genuinely genuinely do have more difficulty with this uh take a political battle

00:30:57.440 such as uh you know a presidential primary race um a male who says something in a certain tone

00:31:06.240 might be regarded as strong decisive or firm a woman who used exactly the same tone will be dismissed as

00:31:15.120 shrill that's sort of heredin uh figure um and so women often find it's much more difficult and the

00:31:24.540 amount of skill required is greater it shouldn't be but often it is yeah that's one yeah yeah um and so

00:31:35.520 i mean how do you and the way you describe it in the the assertiveness workbook it sounds like

00:31:40.340 assertiveness is a skill it's not sort of a mindset it's more of a skill that you

00:31:45.100 you practice to develop is that correct yeah i find that there's people who are saying like um oh

00:31:51.500 yeah i'm just not the assertive type and i point out that it's a little bit like saying you're not

00:31:55.880 the driving type you know maybe sure maybe you don't want to be a formula one driver you could

00:32:00.820 probably still learn to drive it is a set of skills it's not a personality yeah i mean it's it's

00:32:08.560 interesting too i remember um i interviewed another guest he talked about he had a friend who's this

00:32:13.540 champion boxer big bulking guy just demolished people um but he was this guy was afraid of

00:32:21.260 confronting his gardener who was overcharging him um and you think like wow you pummel people in the

00:32:28.180 ring but you can't just say hey i think you're overcharging me so it sounds like uh he needed to

00:32:33.520 practice in that area of being assertive um you might be assertive and i think it's even possibly

00:32:39.360 assertive in some aspects of your life but not in others correct yeah as a matter of fact that's a

00:32:44.760 great thing to do in therapy you know if i can find an area of a person's life where they're actually

00:32:49.800 already mastering and using certain skills like assertiveness and try and get them to in effect

00:32:56.260 channel themselves uh in this other area of their life in your marriage with your son that kind of

00:33:03.720 thing uh sometimes it doesn't transfer very well you know if you're a cop and bringing your home

00:33:08.360 your cop style to your family is not necessarily always the greatest idea but um if you've got the

00:33:15.280 skill in one area of your life often you can figure out how can i how can i access that part of myself

00:33:20.940 in another right so at the end of your book uh your latest book how to be miserable and we talked about

00:33:28.260 this a bit that you know the that pursuing happiness and self-improvement can actually backfire

00:33:33.340 and make us miserable um if that's the case what approach do we take with our lives if we want to

00:33:41.540 improve we want to get better but how do we do that without it hamstringing us to actually reaching

00:33:48.760 the goal we want well i guess uh i i would go to something that i often go to that feels vaguely

00:33:56.480 unsatisfying which is the middle path you know the mushy middle that fine it's okay for us to be doing

00:34:02.880 a little bit of uh work on ourselves i i for example uh my avocational period i'm growing peaches okay so

00:34:12.300 i'm not very good at it frankly okay i can read books and try and get better at that um but if you're

00:34:19.300 spending your entire life trying to improve yourself in effect making up for a deep perception

00:34:26.200 of inner faultiness and you're never actually getting to the point of living your life i see a

00:34:32.480 lot of people that are the only thing they ever read is self-help the only thing that they watch is

00:34:38.980 inspirational video and that kind of thing with the idea that i'm going to better myself

00:34:45.040 i can ask a person like that what would you do if you were already good enough let's accept for

00:34:51.360 the moment just for the sake of archment this idea that you have deeply deeply felt that you are not

00:34:57.740 good enough fair enough what if you were what would you be doing then what would you read what would

00:35:05.820 you be doing where would you go if you if it wasn't about curing yourself or something and and at that

00:35:13.560 point i can say well what if we were to leapfrog the problem and say what if you were just to

00:35:18.340 pretend you were good enough you know like let's not even argue the point let's just try and pretend

00:35:24.040 you're good enough and you know read dickens put away the self-help you know or read the murder

00:35:29.420 mysteries that you like at least some of the time even though you're not good enough and what would

00:35:35.380 happen possibly is that that perception of being good enough would begin to seep in it's not that we

00:35:42.300 would give up on self-improvement it's that we would um we would begin to actually live our lives

00:35:50.180 yeah and yeah that's what we're for that's what the self-improvement is for right i love that approach

00:35:56.420 because and i think the the weird thing is is that by doing the things you would have done if you were

00:36:02.140 good enough you're probably naturally going to do things that are going to improve your lot in life

00:36:07.080 so you can do those things that you enjoy or you would do if you were good enough yeah i think that

00:36:15.240 there's a part of our brain that's sort of planted in there and doesn't really know what's going on

00:36:20.400 it's almost like there's a martian in our head going i don't know who this person is or how i got here but

00:36:25.580 let's try and figure things out and it watches what we're doing and if all that we're doing is

00:36:31.460 improving ourselves you know i'm going to this therapy and i'm that therapy and i'm reading these

00:36:36.900 self-help books and i'm trying to make up for all of my flaws and errors and things like that

00:36:41.540 the the martian inside is going hmm this guy is spending an awful lot of time doing this

00:36:46.820 he must be terrible and we begin sort of reinforcing that sense of faultiness by trying to overcome our

00:36:53.940 sense of faultiness to some degree spending at least some of our time pretending that we're good enough and

00:37:01.460 saying right what would you do then in effect leapfropping the problem can actually help you

00:37:07.700 well randy we uh we this has been a great conversation um where can people learn more about

00:37:14.280 uh how to be miserable and your other work well uh the book is discussed at uh goodreads and is

00:37:22.780 available online but i've also got a lot of other stuff up my website which is randy patterson all one

00:37:28.680 word dot com and patterson annoyingly for my entire life is spelled with one t uh otherwise

00:37:38.180 you won't find it uh and on and there i have uh online courses uh information about my books my talks

00:37:45.360 that kind of thing great well randy patterson thank you so much for your time it's been a pleasure

00:37:49.580 well very much pleasure talking with you my guest there was randy patterson he's the author of the book

00:37:55.100 how to be miserable you can find that on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can also find out

00:37:59.440 more information about randy's work at randy patterson.com

00:38:02.360 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice

00:38:17.400 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com and if you enjoy this show and

00:38:21.960 have got something out of it i'd appreciate it if you give us a review on itunes or stitcher

00:38:25.400 help spread the word about the show as always i appreciate your continued support and until next

00:38:29.780 time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly

The Art of Manliness - May 26, 2016

#204： How to Be Miserable

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