I’m addicted to addiction

I was in a room full of people not too long ago, where the well-known and, in many circles, well-respected speaker announced, “We are addicted to unhappiness,” and almost everyone in the room began nodding with a collective sigh.

Now, if you know me at all, you know that nodding is my cue to, instead, tilt my head and wonder, “Really?”

But before I could even contemplate this idea, while everyone was still silently bemoaning their addicted state, the speaker started to pitch his course for getting over this horrible  addiction.

For me, that was all I needed to know that “We are addicted to unhappiness” was, let’s see, what’s the Hindu term for it… ah… bullsh*t. (see http://sashen.com/blog/12/how-to-become-a-millionaire-self-help-guru-its-easy/)
“We’re addicted to unhappiness”… that’s like suggesting that, given the choice between a bowl of ice cream and a bowl of gasoline, we’d pretend we were an SUV, while crying that we really wanted more Chunky Monkey, but couldn’t help ourselves. Nonsense.

In fact, if anything, we’re addicted to happiness!  Look at how many things we do to be happy, even when we’ve experienced that they don’t reliably work (or only work for a short time):

Let’s see… trying to earn more money, sleeping with people we don’t want our friends to meet, trying to get our partners to change, trying to accept our partners as they are (“If I accept you as you are, THEN will you change?”), spending money on “how to get over your unhappiness addiction” workshops… add your favorites.

I mean, if we really look, almost every thought we have is about how to become happier in the future.

So… I’ll be teaching a workshop on “Overcoming your HAPPINESS addiction.” Sign up details coming soon.