How to Be Miserable: A Guide

 Some people, judging from their life choices, apparently enjoy being miserable, because they keep making the same choices that lead to misery.

If you're one of these folks who aspires to be miserable, I’ve put together a how-to guide so that you can easily achieve maximum misery.

This post will probably anger a few folks, because most of us, if not all of us, have made some of these choices. Make no mistake, though; I, too, have made plenty of these very choices over the years.

Now, this post is just for fun, and it’s often exaggerated for effect. But hopefully it will make us all think about our life choices and make better ones.

So let’s get started. Here’s your handy, ten-point guide on how to be miserable!

1. Disobey God

This one is the most important of all. God gave us instructions for our own good (Deut. 10:13), so obviously you must ignore those in order to be truly miserable.

If you find very plain instructions in God’s Word, ignore them. Tell yourself they don’t apply in this case. Clearly, your Creator hasn’t thought things through as well as you have.

One of the easiest ways to ignore God’s instructions is to tell yourself, and others, that God is leading you to do something contrary to what His Word says. You can use phrases like “the Holy Spirit is leading me,” “I feel in my heart,” or “God told me.”

If others wonder why God would tell you something contrary to what He already told you in His Word, brush them off. They’re clearly not as spiritual as you are.

You can also look for other passages in God’s Word that you can twist or manipulate to justify your actions. It doesn’t really matter how you do it, but if you want to be miserable, it’s absolutely vital that you disobey God’s Word!

2. Don’t Study God’s Word

But what better way to disobey God than to be ignorant of His Word? You can’t obey Him if you don’t know what He wants, right?

Don’t worry about your Creator’s instructions. There are always more important things to do than read God’s Word. Perhaps you’re just too tired.

If necessary, seek out distractions. That movie, TV show, or TikTok video won’t watch itself. Facebook and Instagram won’t absent-mindedly scroll through themselves. That video game won’t play itself. That novel won’t read itself.

On one hand, you’ve got eternal life; on the other, you’ve got instant gratification. Clearly, you should always choose instant gratification. Your quest for misery requires spending as much time as possible on things that cannot possibly improve your life.

3. Don’t Pray

Now if you’ve already mastered the first two, this one isn’t as important. Praying to God and asking Him to help you when you’ve got no intention of obeying Him is kinda pointless.

Still, if you really want to be miserable, you don’t want to take any chances! Make sure you have no relationship with God at all. Maximum misery requires going through life entirely on your own, with no help from a higher power.

Once you’ve mastered these first three steps to a miserable life, all the following ones will become much easier! They might naturally fall into place, because they all involve disobeying God and His Word.

4. Be Unthankful

Always dwell on the negative and ignore all your blessings. Tell yourself you deserve more than what you have, that it’s unfair you don’t have everything you want. Cultivate a “woe is me” attitude, a martyr complex.

If a friend gives you a gift or helps you in some way, it’s very important not to lose sight of your quest for misery. Whenever anything good happens to you, you’ve got to dig deep and muster all the unthankfulness you can. Tell yourself the gift is worthless or not the exact item you wanted. Tell yourself your friend should’ve done a lot more for you.

Also, make sure you do a lot of complaining. Not only will this verbalize and reinforce your unthankfulness, but it will also put others in a bad mood, and their bad mood will help sustain yours.

5. Worry

It’s very difficult to be miserable if you also have peace of mind. Therefore, you need to start worrying as much as possible.

Close your eyes and try to imagine everything that could go wrong, no matter how unlikely. You might get cancer, have a heart attack, lose your house, get in a car accident, fall into a sinkhole, or get bitten by a rabid raccoon. You just never know what could happen; danger might be lurking around every corner.

If you’re still having difficulty doing enough worrying, then spend more time watching CNN or Fox News. Whatever your political views might be, it’s vital to your misery that you fill your mind with all the bad news and hysteria you can.

6. Focus on Yourself

And by “focus on yourself,” I don’t mean focus on fixing yourself or your spiritual health. No indeed. That wouldn’t enhance your misery at all!

If you really want to be miserable, focus on your own wants and desires. This goes hand in hand with being unthankful.

Cultivate a strong sense of entitlement. Focus on what others aren’t doing for you, aren’t doing fast enough for you, or aren’t doing exactly the way you want.

Pursue your own happiness, not anyone else’s. Seek your own will, not God’s. Try to get your own way, no matter what it takes. There are few things more crucial to your misery than getting everything you want.

7. Focus on “Things”

“Things” can never make you happy or give you a meaningful life. Therefore, if you want to be miserable, focus all your time and efforts on accumulating as much stuff as you can. As a bonus, you’ll never be able to accumulate everything you want, which means you’ll constantly lust for what you don’t or can’t have.

Pursue wealth with all your might. No matter how much money you have, you could have more. Even if you have a mansion and nice cars, you could always have a bigger, better mansion and nicer cars.

In your obsessive pursuit of wealth and the finer things in life, sacrifice your relationships. Spend as little time with your spouse, kids, and friends as possible because you’re too busy.

Chances are high that you, like most people, will never become wealthy. But that doesn’t matter in your pursuit of misery. All that matters is that you sacrifice everything important to pursue things that couldn’t satisfy you, and that you’ll probably never get.

8. Dish Out Criticism Freely

It’s hard to stay miserable if you’re surrounded by friends and family you love, and who love you. Therefore, you’ve got to destroy these relationships to achieve maximum misery.

Nitpick everyone around you. Focus on the things you don’t like about other people, never the things you like about them. Everyone has flaws and bad habits. Look for those!

Once you find things to hate about the people around you, remind them as often as possible. Tell them what annoying, worthless people they are until they start avoiding you. 

Stick your nose in other people’s business and offer unsolicited advice whenever you can. Quarrel as often as possible and create constant drama. This will make you unpleasant to be around.

Bonus Points: When other people start avoiding you for being a nag and a busybody, play the victim. Pretend you don’t understand why nobody likes you anymore. Say you’re just a truth-teller and that other people can’t handle it. Claiming victim status will help you feel even more miserable.

9. Avoid Personal Responsibility

A healthy sense of victimhood is essential for a miserable life. Never accept responsibility for your own actions. Make excuses, both to yourself and to others.

It’s not your fault. You’ve got poor health. You had a bad childhood. One of your dead relatives was always this way, and therefore you have to be, too. You’ve always gotten a raw deal in life.

Using your health or your childhood are great weapons because they open up so many other options. If someone calls you out on your bad behavior, remind him that you’re in poor health or had a bad childhood, and accuse him of not caring about you.

There are so many other ways to use excuses, too. If someone forces you to acknowledge wrongdoing, simply tell that person he made you act that way. Voila! Like a matador, you’ve deftly dodged the charging bull of responsibility.

Remember, you’re only a helpless victim. Your own choices have nothing to do with your circumstances. If only you didn’t have health problems. If only you had more money. If only The Man wasn’t holding you down. If only people weren’t always out to get you.

If you ever took personal responsibility for your actions, you’d be able to repent, turn to God, and start trying to obey Him. And if you want to be as miserable as possible, it’s essential that you don’t do that!

10. Cultivate a Hot Temper

As noted already, one of the key ingredients of a miserable life is having no friends or meaningful relationships.

Now, chances are good that you’ll drive away most of your friends with your persistent negativity, nitpicking, and general unpleasantness. But just to be sure, you should also cultivate a violent, unbridled temper and a sharp tongue.

Your spouse squeezed the toothpaste tube in the wrong spot? Left some dirty socks on the floor? Get mad!

Someone forgot your birthday or expressed an opinion you didn’t like? Tell that person how offended you are!

Once you’ve destroyed all your relationships and everyone avoids you because of your sharp tongue and hot temper, you’ll finally have time and space to wallow in your misery.

That wraps up our guide on how to be miserable. By following these simple steps, you, too, can achieve maximum misery!

If, on the other hand, you’d like to live a happy, meaningful life, then disregard all the advice above.

Put God first, submit to Him in every area of your life, and dedicate yourself to seeking, obeying, and serving Him. Follow His two great commandments and all that they entail:

“Jesus said to him, ‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.’” (Mat. 22:37-40).