The art of making life miserable according to Paul Watzlawick

The art of making life bittera literary work, brought international recognition to Paul Watzlawick, one of the key figures in psychology for his contribution to communication theory and psychotherapy.

This is a self-help book where the author makes a compilation of attitudes or behaviors that we frequently carry out without realizing it and that harm us.

The purpose of the work The art of making life bitter is invite r the reader to detect aspects of their daily life in which they may incuras the author points out unconsciously, and that they hinder us, slow down our personal growth.

In short, detect behaviors and attitudes in order to try to modify them, since just like says Watzlawick. There are unconscious attitudes that make our lives bitter.. In this article we highlight important aspects of his work.

Paul Watzlawick

Above all this: be true to yourself…

In this chapter of his work, Watzlawick places special emphasis on the importance of being true to yourself: doing what you really want to do in tune with what you think and feel about it.

As the author states, being faithful to one is fundamentally about the conviction that there is only one correct opinion: one’s own.

In this sense, being true to yourself means take responsibility for the decisions you make by listening to your inner voice; Pursue your dreams and your goals without caring what others may think.

Therefore, it is worth asking yourself, what do you need to achieve your own well-being? What are your dreams? Have you really chosen what you experience in your life or have they chosen it for you?

Self-fulfilling prophecies

Self-fulfilling prophecies, according to Watzlawick, create a certain reality almost by magic, since the prophecy (the belief about an event) leads to the event of the prophecy precisely.

For example, if I believe that I am going to fail an exam, it is likely that our behavior will be modified based on this belief, since beliefs greatly condition our behavior.

In other words, if you really believe that something is going to happen, it will probably happen, because you will end up acting that way. So making self-prophecies in a way of making life bitter, how can I not become “bitter” if I am anticipating and worrying about what is going to happen before it happens?

Be spontaneous

Watzlawick assures that demanding that something be remembered or forgotten spontaneously; wanting a gift and feeling frustrated at receiving it just because you have expressed the desire, pretending to love a person out of obligation; Specifically, trying to provoke a response through the effort of will precisely makes what we are trying to impossible: do we make our lives miserable trying to achieve a behavior that only appears spontaneously?

That is, demanding a behavior, attitude and/or emotion that necessarily has to be spontaneous causes it to end up not being, losing part of its nature and its consequences, due to the fact that it has been demanded.

Wouldn’t it be easier to allow the behavior and/or emotion to arise naturally without imposing something different on ourselves? For the author, This imposition that we fall into is a clear way to make life bitter.

If someone loves me, they are not in their right mind

The author relates in his work: “since we are talking about love, let’s start with an important warning. Dostoevsky said that the biblical text “love your neighbor as yourself” must surely be understood the other way around, that is, that You can only love your neighbor when you love yourself.“.

In other words, we often make our lives bitter by living focused on loving a person or doubting whether someone can love us without realizing that to love it is necessary to start from self-love, since it is the basis of all loves. How can I not doubt whether a person loves me… when I don’t love myself? When will I find reasons for others to love me if I don’t find reasons to appreciate myself?

To conclude, there are infinite ways to make life miserable. Most likely, many of these forms go unnoticed, since we are not even aware of them. Hence the emphasis placed by Paul Watzlawick, who provides a different vision on everyday situations that make us bitter and hinder personal growth and development.

In short, what if we stopped making life miserable with certain negative attitudes and beliefs and focused on what is really important and beneficial for our well-being?

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