Do you love being miserable?

I am sure each one of you is going to retort NO. But really speaking, don’t we love being miserable. We lament about the things we don’t have, especially people living in north America constantly complain about how things were so good back home with maids and chauffer and presswala and fresh vegetables. How here we are, stuck in this alien land and how we are under stress to make both ends meet and pay our mortgage and save for our retirement.

Then we go to India and after the first week of euphoria of meeting the family, we start complaining of how dirty India is, how much corruption there is, how people are so ill mannered. We fret about pollution is and compare how are lives ‘back home’ on north America is so convenient and how clean it is and how people are always so well behaved. Not to talk about the family politics.

There are other excuses we discover for being miserable. How somebody has a better job despite us being more qualified, how somebody has a bigger house and how he or she have a better circle. The list goes on. Whenever we meet, this misery creeps in and we take huge delight in being miserable.

Interestingly, then somebody from the groups says, ‘lets not become negative; you know negativity leads to all kind of ailments’. And the by a magic wand, everybody suddenly becomes positive for the next half an hour. Everyone quotes a motivational guru, a saint, a mystic. They talk about a seminar they attended, a new meditation they find very peaceful, a new holistic healing method they have discovered. How they do yoga every day, the new gym they have joined because exercise releases happiness hormones, and how they follow an exotic fitness regime.

Wow!!! Everyone is so positive!!! ‘See, we are not like others. But some people, OMG can be so negative’. And then they start talking about someone toxic at work, neighbourhood, or any other place and how one has to avoid such people. How they sap you of your energy. How you feel so tired after meeting them.

See, there we go again. The circle of misery starts all over again. It’s actually something we love.

Breaking free is difficult but not impossible. A simple first step: next time any negative thought comes to your mind, just say ‘thanks for coming but please leave now’. Believe me, it works. I know because that is how I controlled that negativity.

Second, any time you feel negative, take a salt bath. I talked about it in an earlier blog.

Stop being miserable, start feeling hopeful

So be it!!!