What can you do to make yourself really unhappy?

lots of articles about happiness. In fact, it could be said that there's a growing science of happiness because so much research is being done into it. But what about the flip side unhappiness? How do you make yourself really unhappy? And the idea is that if you know how to make yourself unhappy, you could avoid those things, flip it around and find happiness by undoing unhappiness. It turns out that there's at least three ways to make yourself unhappy

fairly quickly. The first way is through health problems. Somebody who's sick generally is not happy. Now. A lot of health problems you have no control over. For example, if you fall off a ladder and break your hip, you don't have a lot of control over that, except not getting up on ladders. Another thing would be cancer. If you get cancer, a lot of times you don't have control over that. But there are many health issues where you do have a lot of control. And one of

those health issues is obesity. So if you want to make yourself unhappy, you would become a couch potato. You would get obese, you would start having all the problems that go with obesity, high blood pressure, heart problems, diabetes potentially, and through that process you could make yourself really unhappy. So if you want to be happy, you would probably avoid lifestyle choices that lead to unhealthiness. Another way to

make yourself unhappy, surprisingly has to do with work. It turns out that a lot of people right now are not happy because they don't have enough work to do. And it goes both ways. You can get unhappy by overworking, by doing too much work, a lot more than you want to be doing. But you can also be unhappy

by doing too little work, by being underutilized. And here the solution is not necessarily quite so easy, because you know there are big box retailers who are posting jobs right now and getting two thousand applicants for a single job. Things like that, there isn't enough work to go around. But if you are finding yourself in an underwork situation, one possibility might be volunteering somewhere. Maybe helping others to help yourself would be the philosophy. It might lead to

more happiness, not necessarily ecstasy. But what if you want to be really unhappy? There's an article out recently called German Studies finds happiness is based on choices, not genes, and it offers this tip quote. Relationships are very important, But according to Wagner and his colleagues, choosing a neurotic partner is a sure fire way to be unhappy. This brings up the obvious question what is neurotic means? So I went to a place called psychology World dot com

and looked it up. Here's their definition. They respond emotionally to events that would not affect most people, and their reactions tend to be more intense than normal. They are more likely to interpret ordinary situations is threatening and minor frustrations as hopelessly difficult. Their negative emotional reactions tend to persist for unusually long periods of time, which means they

are often in a bad mood. These problems in emotional regulation can diminish a neurotics ability to think clearly, make decisions, and cope effectively with stress. Well, you can look at that definition and you can see why that would make someone unhappy. You may have heard the description drama queen or drama king. Yes, it's easy to see how a

partner like that would drag you down. If you want to be unhappy, hook up with a neurotic person who's unable to think clearly, make decisions, and cope effectively with stress. That does seem like a good recipe for disaster. If you'd like to perform a trifecta of unhappiness, you can put all three of these together. You could make choices that make you unhealthy, you could work too much or too little, and simultaneously, you could hook up with someone

who's neurotic. Putting those three things together would be a surefire way to have a bad day for more illness and thousands of other topics. Does that how stuff works dot com and don't forget to check out the brain stuff blog on the house stuff works dot com home page. You can also follow brain stuff on Facebook or Twitter at brain stuff HSW. This episode of brain Stuff is

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