MISERY LOVES COMPANY

This post is one of my favorite blog posts and merits re-posting. Join me and see if you find a reason to be positive instead of the pitfalls of attracting misery in your lives.

TODAY THE WORD is MISERY. Isn’t this a switcheroo? Miss Positive herself, is writing about misery. I was driving yesterday for several hours and this word came to mind about how people encourage misery in their lives. Why, you may ask, would anyone encourage misery since no one desires to be miserable? I don’t know if any of you watched the movie, Misery, with James Caan, Kathy Bates, that was filmed in 1990. It is a grueling story of how one fan became so obsessed with an author she kept him captive and made him write the next book. She subjected him to so much misery and pain. I see people who subjectively put themselves in misery and pain by the choices they make.

Life throws people enough curves on its own without us making it simpler for life to cheat us out of the blessings that are meant to come our way. How is this possible for one to encourage misery as it seems more natural for us to want happiness, peace and contentment? For some reason, and it may be subconsciously hidden, I think people who have low self esteem crave attention and that opens some doors that should remain shut. Any attention is better than none; and therefore the problem manifests itself. The victim status comes into play. No one likes me; I am not pretty enough; I can’t find a job; my spouse doesn’t treat me right; I am too fat or I am too skinny; and on and on until the person starts believing they are a victim. I am a compassionate person but I say do not encourage “playing victimitis” when you hear someone make the comments seeking attention. True hardships as I was speaking earlier warrant our compassion while at the same time, compassion given to the attention deprived victim is harmful. In place of the compassion, give encouragement in the good things about the person to build the self esteem is my philosophy.

Why add misery to misery by agreeing with a trivial whine? Could we try when someone says something negative, to say something positive? Misery loves company, so help that person out of their “misery status” to a more productive status. “I can’t find a job” may be an opening to “Where have you been looking” or “Have you tried there?” instead of “I know, you won’t be able to find a job in this town”. Happy people have bad days too: they just deal with them better. Don’t invite Misery in for dinner; it may never leave!