Is it just me, or is it miserable in here?

Yes and no. It’s you. It’s me. It’s the guy sitting next to me – and everyone else who’s trying to get through life on this rock ball. If you read my recent article on fear-pheromones perpetuating pain, you might be remembering it now. But the yes-and to this that I just learned yesterday is that it’s also possibly… genetic.

We’re trapped by what’s called a “negativity bias”.

What that means is that as human people, our brains are hard wired to register the bad shiz faster, in a stronger way, and remember it for longer. Indeed, psychology says the frown is strong with us – so much so that it takes about five positive events to “happen to us” in order to counteract one negative one that happened. Jesus. That means that if you wake up in the red like me saying, “Aw, fcck. Not again,” you’ve gotta either really hope you stumble upon two five-good-thing four-leafed-clovers and a lotto ticket after your morning trek through dogshit, or… ugh… work really hard? To earn happiness?

I can Napoleon Dynamite exasperated-sigh about this all day long. But you know what they say: you can eye-roll in one hand and wish in the other and all you’ll have is… that demon from Pan’s Labyrinth.

Because nobody says that.

But my point remains: time to haul ass out of the lugubrious labyrinth we’re making worse through fear and laziness. You on board? Good. Let’s map out some steps can we take to avoid being eaten by the gloom gargoyle that’s apparently been squatting in our brains since birth and make an adventure outta escaping the misery maze.

1. Keep It Simple, Sucka

We’ll kick things off with my broken-record go-to’s that only work when you do them and don’t just hear me talk about them. We’re complicated creatures with complicated problems, so sometimes it’s hard to remember the solution’s so simple. Simple’s a whole different language we need a Rosetta course to understand. Like Meditation And Yoga 101, Intro To Jogging In Nature, Dog Walking In The Park II. The biggest joke of all is the lie we tell ourselves: “I don’t have time but I wish I did”. You just spent 15 minutes venting to no-end about not having time online or on the phone or on your blog (guilty). Is that working? Could that time be better spent fixing instead’a carping? I mean, at that rate, even a nice mindless sesh of fappery until you start to feel the familiar signs of premature carpal tunnel syndrome set in would be a better option.

Plus, it’s also free.

Unless your porn’s expensive.

Either way, you’ll be happier after with any of these options.

2. Hot then cold

When I was a kid, I’d do this thing in the winter where I’d run outside just before bed, wait until I was uncomfortably cold, then run back inside and head for under the warm covers. I was a bit young to understand why I was doing what I was doing back then, but it’s essentially the same thing as what I do now when I’m living life right and then self-sabotage by binging on dates or pointing what I like to call my “traffic mudra” at my yoga mat (looks a lot like a middler finger).

I wanted to enjoy the warmth all over again.

We tend to stray away from good habit changes, I suppose, both to remind us that we’re human and also to enjoy it as much as we did when it was new to us because we get to start all over again. Some yo-yo dieters will readily admit to this insane logic of theirs. It’s that whole thing about “no up without down” or “no summer without winter” (still have trouble accepting that one). Sometimes we need to go all the way down to remember why good’s worth keeping.

3. Other Humans

Oh, this one’s tough for me.

They say “getting out of your own head” is the best way to deal with the cycle of thoughts that eventually make you start developing alter identities like John Nash (Beautiful Mind) did while one of your eyes go wonky like Nietsche’s until you finally saunter off to some remote corner of the earth to let those morose ruminations spread like a virus from your mind to the rest of your body. If that sounds less good than your five-year plan, maybe that coffee date you’ve been putting off with your life-long friend you haven’t seen in years doesn’t sound so bad, after all.

And by you – I mean me.

4. Laughter

Listening to this Alan Watts piece the other day, I thought, “Bae, you cray”.

He started talking about waking up and starting your day with raucous laughter – even though you won’t likely have a clown standing in your room and waiting to educe chuckles from you the moment your eyes open. (And if you do, then I feel like laughter is the opposite of how you should react.) Nope – just a sans catalyst, fat man, guttural, two-minute long laugh.

Yeah. Not gonna do that.

But I do feel like I’d be remiss if I didn’t pass on having heard bout it. Who knows, one of you might really benefit from it. And if acting your way into happy’s intriguing but you’re wondering “What’s my motivation?”, just pretend that you’ve got a client you really need to keep happy at a lunch and he’s telling terrible jokes and you’re job depends on your supplication. Or the last joke you heard that was funny because it was un-funny – like the one your dad told that he needed cue cards for and STILL managed to bomb at delivering.

Or, if you have time, do what some of the smart people I know do:

put on something funny to get your chortle motor going as you get ready for your day.

5. Singing

This is actually my go-to shoe in for the above laughter thing.

I mean, if I pop on a sitcom, it’s a slippery slope that ends at 4 in the afternoon after a marathon of Big Bang Theory reruns at the bottom of a Ben and Jerry’s tub with a full needle of heroin sitting next to my passed out body that’s actually in a food coma because I never learned how to mainline smack.

Can’t be trusted with A.M. entertainment. Too addictive.

Instead, I’ve found singing one of those annoying tunes taking up space in my brain helps jump start good breathing, for one. And much like I like to hear myself talk, I like to hear myself sing (#myownbiggestfan) except if I’m singing shitty. This becomes a nice auditory form of masturbation in that I’m feeling good because I’m forced to breathe right when whistling, then I think “damn I killed that” when I hit a sweet note, and then I give myself an internal handshake and pump copious oxygen ships through my blood waters like a fleet after Helen of Troy.

These feels are def of the happy genre.

6. Join a fight club

Just kidding, but not really.

Do do something cardio-wise every day. That fluttery chest anxiety is best dissipated by a nice jog or sparring session with a pal. Emphasis on the “pal” for the latter one. Like, don’t just run over to the guy at the gas station who parked his car next to me (blocking me in while his buddy went inside and vacillated over which slim jim would make him look most like the guy in the commercial) and rip open his door to spray his face with police grade pepper spray your friend gave you. No, never that. I mean – a nice kickboxing sesh with a like-minded friend. Once you’re focusing on your body, you’re not focusing on your negative mind.

This channel-changing moment and exercise endorphins create well-deserved happiness.

7. HELP

Did you know you release a hormone called Oxytocin when stressed out?

It demands of us: “Help or be helped!” If you’re too proud, like me, to be vulnerable and crumple up around others – you might try being the helper instead of the helpee. Whether it’s buying the homeless lady called Cathy in the parking lot a burger or relating to the dude in the AT&T store who hates his job, this has several benefits:

1. It puts your misery mind on pause (’cause it can’t easily do it’s thing while trying to learn about this other person’s problem).

2. If it shows that you care, they’ll like you better (popularity points are always an ego win for me, validated by their laughter at my obviously hilarious wit).

3. Sometimes the AT&T guy will give you stuff for free because you were the first customer all day to treat him like a person.

4. If you really listen, sometimes that negative thing banging around in your brain seems either trivial or less-bad in that – wait – there’s this whole other person in front of you (who you can relate to suddenly because they like you for caring about them), with problems just.like.yours.

5. The whole point: feeling less alone about our woes is def an excellent happy moment.

8. Fluffy love

Got a pet?

No?

Get one. Science says just holding, petting, or being around a cat or dog can boost those oxytocin levels. I myself treat my shih-tzu like a good luck troll, offering unexpected yet welcomed petting seshes when my creativity starts to falter and I need a break. And love.

Even though she usually makes like the duck above after all of five minutes.


9. I wanna be friends with your heiney

When was the last time you paid someone a compliment?

I’d be lying if I said this works solely because of some feel-good spirituality. Let’s face it. It feels good to watch Debbie Downer waiting for her pumpkin spiced latte and make her misery-scowl do a 180 degree because of the thing you said to her. The obvious thing to is to say you like the obvious stand-out stuff: her Tiffany’s trinkets. A dress. Artificial shade of blonde she’s donning. There’s a god-like quality feeling that washes over us when we feel like we’ve tuned someone’s frequency back to happy. But much better than these obvious compliments, I’ve found, is to thumbs-up the stuff they’d have if you took all’a that other shit away. A stunning smile. Beautiful hair (when you can tell they just rolled outta bed). Just make sure you’re not, ya know, creepy about it and they’ll remember you even longer – like when they go home and look in the mirror that night after washing off all that makeup and hair styled with product that they aren’t, underneath.

Bonus: you still feel all-powerful and thus… happy.

10. Thank you sir may I have another!

You don’t have to wait for a compliment to say thanks, though.

I remember seeing this thing on soul pancake, documenting volunteers who called up friends and family members to “thank” them for the kind of stuff we don’t think to thank people for. The result? They were visibly happier afterward. Obviously, I did my usual thing of judging it, throwing metaphorical popcorn at the screen, and saying “They totally staged this.” But there is this thing about gratitude that goes beyond waking up and thanking an imaginary bearded man on a cloud for being in the kind of neck, jaw, and back pain that’s the reason you keep a nice stack of razors within reach of your tub and a “goodbye cruel world” playlist on your ipod.

I do think you have to express gratitude only when you really mean it.

But I also think you have to find a way to mean it.

Which means you have to do the things that’ll make you really mean it – by looking for where you can find it. If you have trouble, try revisiting my hot-cold approach via thought-experiment. Did you wake up breathing today? Think about that one dude stuck in an iron lung and thank life for that. Do you have a home? Consider the homeless lady you helped and then be glad you’ve got the job you hate so you can keep it. Are your parents still alive? Imagine their funeral and then pop over for a visit with them now before that’s a reality and hindsight’s 20/20. ’cause gratitude’s not only about words. It’s a practice too. Ya know, I dunno where our negativity bias comes from – but maybe that’s why we haven’t evolved past it yet. Not a double-helix prison we’re powerless over. But because of our unwillingness to do the simple shiz like ask ourselves:

How come we’re willing to ask life “Why?!” for simple inconvenient things?

But we aren’t willing to say “Thanks!” for equally simple but amazing things?

So, these are the 10 happy-inducers I’ve come up with to counteract negativity bias.

There’s probably hundreds more.

Which five will you do today to battle your programmed cursed 5:1 odds?