There’s a whole series on the mistakes unhappy people make – mistakes that keep them unhappy. Read more at How NOT to be happy.

Plus I’ve just begun a new series on the lessons of positive psychology and how you can use them in your own life to be happier. That’s at 101 Happiness Strategies.

So come on over and sign up to the RSS feed or posts by email, as well as the monthly update – The Happy Times.

And please subscribe at http://www.HappinessStrategies.com/blog/feed/.

See you over there.

Here’s what the study did.

• Depressed and non-depressed people were shown unpleasant images such as car accidents in order to induce negative feelings.
• They were then asked to consciously ‘re-frame’ the situations – to imagine a more positive outcome than the one implied in the image, or to imagine it was acted rather than real. The idea was to use cognitive skills to reduce the negative feelings. 

Here’s what the study found.

• Everyone showed increased brain activity relating to emotional regulation.
• In the non-depressed people this was accompanied by low activity in the amygdala, which is the centre of fear and anxiety.
• But in the depressed people, amygdala activity remained strong, suggesting their attempts at emotional regulation didn’t work so well.

Although both depressed and non-depressed people made the cognitive effort to re-interpret upsetting situations, the researchers concluded that clinically depressed people may have had dysfunctional brain circuits that undermined their efforts.

Now before you dismiss the power of thinking on your happiness, consider how those ’dysfunctional brain circuits’ might have dysfunced to begin with. Here’s one scenario:  you start to feel down, you think sad thoughts, you feel even worse. It’s a classic downward spiral. Once you’re down there, snapping out of it does seem impossible.

I hear alarm bells (there goes my amygdala) whenever someone suggests your level of happiness reflects how your brain is wired. Brain wiring isn’t set in stone; how you think can change your brain.

For instance, in London taxi drivers the hippocampus – the part of the brain associated with navigation in birds and animals – is larger than in the rest of us. And the more they drive around, the bigger it grows. Think a certain way long enough, and you create new wiring.

Maybe consciously focussing your thoughts isn’t effective once you’re deep in clinical depression. But it might just stop you getting there in the first place.

The Dalai Lama’s characteristic wisdom, humour and humility shone trough (how many people are so willing to say ‘I don’t know’?). In terms of the other panelists, I thought the star was Madga Szubanski — she was warm, intelligent and insightful.

**Compass Program on Happiness & Its Causes 2007 – Sunday 19 August, ABC TV, 10.05pm**

“Everyone wants to be happy, but why is it a state of being that is so hard to obtain? There is little understanding of what actually leads to happiness, and in tonight’s special episode of Compass, we explore the latest thinking on how it can be achieved. Compass host Geraldine Doogue heads a panel discussion during His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s recent visit to Australia for the 2nd Annual Happiness And Its Causes Conference at Sydney’s Darling Harbour. As one of the world’s most notable and sought-after religious leaders, and winner of the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize, the Dalai Lama has spent years preaching the path to peace and happiness, attracting thousands of people from different denominations all over the world.

“Joining His Holiness are guest panellists: actor/comedian Magda Szubanski; Author and Executive Director of The Australia Institute Clive Hamilton; Canterbury MP and first Indigenous women elected to NSW Parliament Linda Burney; and Executive Director of the Black Dog Institute Professor Gordon Parker.Just how much can material possessions and wealth make you happy? Can ambition and success be the solution to a fulfilling life? How can parents raise happy children? Can pain and tragedy actually put you on the path to happiness? An episode that no-one should miss, this intriguing discussion is interwoven with thought-provoking insight and potentially life-changing ideals to live by that may leave you inspired and motivated to put yourself on the path to greater peace and contentment for years to come.”

There are so few good movies around that it seemed OK to add this little retrospective.

Check out Read Listen Watch: DVDs if you’re looking for some advice on the weeklies at your video store.

Being grateful makes you focus on the positives in your life – you feel good about something you have, or something someone does for you. Woe-foes are forever thinking about what they can be grateful for; they let these thoughts cast a deep and daily shadow of joy over their lives. Don’t fall for it. Once you start becoming aware of good things in your life, it’s sayonara sorrow. That’s why adopting an ingratitude attitude is one of the surest paths to lasting despondency.

Now the idea of ingratitude may sound simple in principle, but in practice it requires a complex juggling of mutually inconsistent mindsets.

On the one hand, you need to adhere to a strict policy of looking every gift horse in the mouth. This applies to good luck, compliments, presents and any form of beneficence that threatens to brighten your doorstep. Here’s how it works.

Won the lottery?
What a pain – bet this brings all my low-life relatives out of the woodwork.

Got a promotion?
Great. Now I get to work longer hours under more stress.

Friends offered you their summerhouse for your holiday?
I hope the sea air doesn’t rust my car.

If someone’s generosity catches you off-guard and you’re stuck for an ungrateful retort at short notice, you can always fall back on saying nothing. Because the giver will be anticipating a thank you, your disquieting quiet will be quite enough.

For instance, say a co-worker who’s into scrap-booking has heard you say many times that you wish you could organise all the travel photos you keep strewn in your desk drawers.

Co-worker: ‘I put together a scrapbook for your birthday. It’s got all 3,862 shots you took on your Contiki trips in the 80s. I’ve crossed-referenced by city, year and number of people throwing up in the background.’

You: Silently place the album in your bag. Tumbleweed blows past. (For the quick thinkers, go for ‘I hope it doesn’t rip my bag’.)

The skilled happiness-hijacker can be simultaneously ungrateful and offensive:

‘Wow, you did this? You need to get a life.’

Sound easy? Nuh-uh. This is where the other hand comes in. While being ungrateful, and possibly also somewhat put out, you have to simultaneously act as though you are actually the one responsible for the kind act/good fortune, and wrest the credit for yourself.

For example:

‘Hey, I’m glad I could give you a project for your little hobby.’

(Good follow up: ‘I have a friend who takes ‘art house’ pictures of aspiring models – I bet he’d like one of these scrappy-books too.’)

As you can imagine, maintaining such tension is no easy task. But the confused looks on people’s faces and the smart happiness-circumvention that it achieves will make the effort well worth your while.

Remember too that an ingratitude attitude needn’t only apply to new turns of events. You can be ungrateful for what you were born with (‘Being ridiculously good-looking is so much pressure’); where you live (‘Earth is over-rated. Uranus sounds like where I should be’); and life in general (*Sigh*).

I hope you’ve found this a helpful tip.

What’s that? Only an idiot would think being ungrateful was a helpful tip? And anyway, you’ve been ungrateful since you invented it in the third grade?

Touché, little glum-ster, touché.

Other tips in this series of 10 tips for unwavering woe:
Tip 1: Take offense
Tip 2: Never take responsibility
Tip 3: Pity yourself
Tip 4: Be needy

This hit home for me the other day when I met up with an old gym buddy I hadn’t seen in years. She’s not a positive person, but she’s had some awful stuff happen in her life, so I’ve always thought her crappy outlook was understandable. But something happened to make me wonder about that.

We were in the gym café talking about a newly advertised class (‘Core’, for you gymbos out there) and decided to find out when it was starting at our club. As we headed over to the receptionist, my friend said, ‘Oh it’s her – she’s such a bitch’. 

Now in the six or so years I’d been going to this gym, I’d never seen the person in question be anything other than helpful and pleasant.

Anyway, I asked about the class. The receptionist said they didn’t have the new timetable yet, so to check again in a few days. This seemed a bit last-minute given all the advertising, but as the timetable wasn’t her responsibility, I thanked her and turned to leave.

My friend asked in a loud and irritated voice why the timetable wasn’t available. They should have it, she told the receptionist; it was ridiculous not to have the information when the class was promoted all over the gym.

To my surprise, the receptionist replied rudely, dismissing my friend and turning her back to deal with other members. I’d never see her like that before. It was Newton’s third law in action: an equal and opposite reaction.

I walked home that day thinking about how powerful we are in our worlds – how much influence we have on those around us, and through them, on the events of our lives. My friend lives in a world where people are rude – it’s true, I saw it for myself. And she helps to create that world every time she opens her mouth.

Self-fulfilling prophecies.

Psychologists call these interactions self-fulfilling prophecies. Your set of beliefs (schema) about a person colours the information you seek from them, the conclusions you draw about them, and even the behaviours you elicit from them. I think, therefore you are (a bitch, in the gym example).

This was beautifully demonstrated in a study by Snyder Tanke & Berscheid (1977)* where male college students were shown a (fake) photo of either an attractive or unattractive woman before chatting with her on the phone for 10 minutes.

Interesting result: the students chatting to ‘attractive’ women spoke more warmly than did those talking to ‘unattractive’ women (based on recordings heard later).

Fascinating result: students who hadn’t seen the photos judged the ‘attractive’ women to be more likeable. Being treated as if they were attractive seemed to make the women act attractive!

Such results have intriguing macro-implications for social stereotypes and prejudices, for international relations and world politics.

But think how much power it gives each of us, every day. How we think about people consciously and unconsciously affects how we act toward them, which in turn affects how they respond to us. That means if we change our thoughts, we can start to change our world.

Now that’s a lot of power.

* Snyder, M., Tanke, E. D., & Berscheid, E. (1977). Social perception and interpersonal behavior: On the self-fulfilling nature of social stereotypes. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 35, 656-666.

How many happy-but-needy people do you know? Not many, right? It seems most happy people spend time with company because they enjoy it, not because they fear annihilation without the succour of others.

Forget such woe-foes; fearing annihilation has its own rewards. In fact, neediness is such a powerful prophylactic against happiness that, although it has much in common with Tip 3: Pity yourself, it deserves its own tip in this series. And while both are enhanced by a good dollop of whining, being needy is, ironically, perfectly self-sufficient in forming a staunch barrier against happiness. 

So how do you create your own neediness condom? There are three easy steps:

1. Avoid being alone.
When alone, you have the opportunity to hear your own thoughts. This can lead to many worrying problems, including getting to know yourself better, being more in tune with what you like and think, and most alarmingly, having a stronger sense of yourself. These are dangerous and frightening outcomes. Wise woe-mongers ward off such perils early. They learn to lean exclusively on others for all their insights into who they are and what they like – and you can do the same.

2. Seek constant reassurance.
Regardless of the situation, think of yourself as needing an IV line of propping up. For instance, consider dinner with friends. Relentlessly check in with them about your outfit, the quantity of product in your hair, what you said to the waiter, your choice of dessert, the way you walked to the restroom, the amount of time you spent there, the size of your tip, the flourish of your signature. No matter is too small and no amount of convincing is too much. Such unrelenting poverty of self-respect takes endurance and imagination, but the resulting neediness is a shield that happiness simply cannot penetrate.

3. Rank everyone else’s opinion above your own.
Other people’s thoughts matter more than yours – which means you have to persistently badger them for their take on everything. This calls for endless questioning, repeated clarifying and cunning ground shifting.

“So you thought Bruce Willis was really alive! Yeah, I see that now. I thought he was a ghost but now that you’ve pointed out he wasn’t, I get it. Cool.”

You can see why being alone is such a trap – if no-one else is there, how do you know what you feel? Spooky, huh? It’s obvious now that you think about it, isnt it? Well, it is now that I’ve pointed it out. Because you needed that.

You might be wondering where to find the people to fill your grand canyon of emotional need. If you have any friends left, these are ideal candidates – if they’re still around they know what they’re in for and will have no recourse when you routinely call them at 2am. 

More likely, though, friends are long gone. But don’t fret; your options are limitless.

You can turn to a barely-known work colleague to discuss your doubts about your sexual skills.

You can ask the girl reading a magazine on the neighbouring bike at the gym to be your exercise partner and commit to your new two-year weight loss plan.

You can bang on the door of the guy who moved into your apartment block on Saturday and review what went wrong in your last relationship (did you mention it was in 1992?). He must have headphones on, because you just saw him go in through your peephole. (Note here that there’s no need to wait in order to redeem that kindness you did him in not pressing the door-close button as he tried to get all his stuff into the lift.)

Turning to strangers gives you a tremendous edge in being needy: general politeness will make them easy targets and you’ll get in a lot of neediness before they cut you off.

It’s a sad fact for every glum and glummer: everywhere you go, there you are. But if you nurture your neediness, and ramp up your reliance on others, this doesn’t have to be the case.

You can become so needy that no matter where you go, you have no idea where you are.

Other tips in this series of 10 tips for unwavering woe:
Tip 1: Take offense
Tip 2: Never take responsibility
Tip 3: Pity yourself
Tip 5: Be ungrateful

It’s a harsh reality that must be faced: ‘Other people’ simply do not appreciate how egregious things are. When you don’t get the expected promotion, you stay bitter for months because you care morethan those other under-achieving joes/jos. They might find the flu unpleasant, but with your sensitive disposition, it’s abysmal. And they just don’t get the torment of receiving the wrong meal – your higher standards make your disappointment that the sauce isn’t on the side far more hurtful.

Making peace with such things leads to a slippery slope – nay, a veritable sheer drop – toward a sense of acceptance that’s alarmingly conducive to happiness. Extracting maximum torment is vital to your ongoing tribulation.

But there’s a problem. The failure of others to appreciate the enormity of your pain puts the onus on you to play that tiny violin alone – there’s no other option but to pity yourself.

If the others in your life won’t come to the pity party, it’s up to you to get the DIY misery going. (Fortunately, your sensitive nature and high standards make this a breeze.) Pitying yourself is the only way to (a) get the pity you deserve (even if it is from yourself) and (b) demonstrate to others how massive a deal each teeny disappointment really, truly, is.

The elegant application of self pity requires you to abandon all subtlety – being vague only leaves room for those thick-headed philistines to miss the magnitude of the misery you’re compelled to endure.

What’s more, body language research tells us that words alone contribute only around 7% of a message, so you need to draw upon a broad repertoire of non-verbal tools in order to hammer home your piteousness and milk each situation for its full pity potential.

Here are three tools you can use to augment your natural self-pitying nature and help keep happiness at bay.

1. Whine
Just as a good meal is enhanced by a fine wine, so too an exaggerated disappointment is seasoned by a sulky whine. Frankly, without the nasal, petulant tone, you leave too much room for people to think you’re being philosophical or, heavens forfend, upbeat.

Consider this: ’I’d rather not go back to that restaurant – last time I got food poisoning.’ [WRONG!]

Versus this: ‘Pleeease don’t make me go back there. I got soooo sick and I just know that waitress gave me a sneezer and no one even came over to look after me even though I rang you all many times and told you how unbelievably sick I was.’ [RIGHT!]

2. Look miserable
It’s wise to practice various facial and body gestures in the mirror so you can produce them at will. With time, you’ll be able to pull together a beautifully integrated look of lamentation to match the occasion – rather like having a personal stylist to assemble the ideal outfit from a wardrobe of woe. I call it having a certain sartorial sufferance (and a whine that’s almost of your own).

For example, if your friends meet you to see the movie you were desperate to see but now, on reading the poster, believe to be potentially worse than Battlefield Earth: The Gigli Years, then you might opt for a simple pout adorned with a tiny flourish of sigh. However, if someone just gave you a green iPod Nano for your birthday when you wanted a blue one, then a full-tilt drop of the shoulders, head to the side, and brave-but-sad, martyr-like smile might be just the ensemble to showcase your righteous distress.

As with most tips to avoid happiness, more is more, so don’t be afraid to go all out. With their lack of sensitivity and low standards, others are unlikely to notice anyway. Remember, they, poor things, don’t understand how bad it is. If they did, they’d feel awful for you too.

3. Be indirect
At the heart of self pity is maintaining a vice-like grip on who did you wrong/what should have happened/how you were mistreated, etc. Being prepared to move past this signals that you’ve had enough pity – and we all know there’s no such thing.

Under no circumstances should you say what you do want, or express what might make you feel better. The reason is twofold.

Fold 1: If you’re clear about what you want, you open the door to someone actually meeting the need. Where does that leave you? Without a leg to stand about feeling sorry for yourself on, that’s where.

Fold 2: By moving from pity to possibility, you lose the whole martyr mystique that’s so attractive to wretchedness. Remember: Martyrdom puts the pity in self-pity. Take away the martyrdom, and all you have is self.

And who wants that.

Other tips in this series of 10 tips for unwavering woe:
Tip 1: Take offense
Tip 2: Never take responsibility
Tip 4: Be needy
Tip 5: Be ungrateful

This is a big one. You can’t be truly out of the shadow of happiness until you master the art of responsibility-dodging. In essence, the challenge is to thwart all attempts by the universe to offer you self-knowledge. It involves deflecting each piece of negative information away from yourself with a laser-like beam of blame.

Relationship gone sour? It was so their fault. Your moods, personality and habits are beyond reproach.

String of disappointments behind you? It’s your star-sign, the economy, your mother was too strict, they want someone younger, you’re addicted to carbohydrates, your mother was too lenient, they want someone older – you get the idea.

Job that didn’t work out? The work was beneath you.

Note here the clever use of arrogance. While not essential to escaping self-knowledge, arrogance offers an effective all-purpose deflection system. Everything and everyone can be beneath you, saving you the trouble of finding individual points of blame for each new personal drama.

There’ll be times when you’re tempted to own up to your part in something that goes wrong in life: to wonder if throwing fewer missiles during arguments might communicate your point more effectively; to ponder whether a less pornographic tie might enhance your interview success. This is a mistake.

Many have come close to relinquishing happiness once and for all, yet, poised on the verge of true woe, have fallen prey to the dreaded reality check. Do not check reality. Leave reality alone. Stay oblivious and woe shall be yours.

At times of such temptation, you must remain strong and remind yourself that there’s nothing to be gained by an honest appraisal of your own weaknesses – nothing but pesky self awareness and an annoying insight into what you could do better next time. These things are overrated. They simply burden you with lifelong personal growth, wisdom, deeper and more honest relationships and – you guessed it, the possibility of happiness.

A woeful man once said, “‘Tis a far better thing to blame and be clueless, than to learn the dang lesson” (the man was a British hillbilly).

Learn the lesson and you just graduate to new and more challenging lessons – with greater self-knowledge.

Who wants that?

Other tips in this series of 10 tips for unwavering woe:
Tip 1: Take offense
Tip 3: Pity yourself
Tip 4: Be needy
Tip 5: Be ungrateful