Miserable people will stop at nothing to drag you down. Never let them win.
I’m not breaking any news by stating this obvious truth: Some miserable people just like to spread their unhappiness like a pandemic flu.
If you’re in spitting distance, watch out.
Instead of looking inward and examining why their default move is to spew venom at people trying to live their best lives, these purveyors of agony attempt to suck the happiness out of everybody around them. They can’t rise up, so they try to bring others down.
Too often, they win.
This has been a staple of mankind, of course. It’s why the phrase “misery loves company” dates back hundreds of years. There has never been a point in human history when miserable people didn’t try to punish those around them for their own sad state of affairs.
The worst part is that these folks are so stuck in and blinded by their own misery that they have no shame in the measures they use to drag the rest of us down.
Instead of taking steps to improve their own lives, they go to great lengths to decimate everybody else’s. And it’s often those closest to them who get hurt the most.
They forget that, as Barack Obama once said, “People will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.”
Still, it’s incredibly difficult to resist the negative pull this type of person has on our lives. It’s hard to not get sucked into the undertow, to not handcuff ourselves to these controlling happiness leeches and sink right to the bottom of the ocean with them.
But if we want a life of our own, then we must not validate this behavior. We have to stop letting these emotional demolition men (and women) run our lives simply because they don’t know the first thing about running theirs.
Yes, it’s okay to be sympathetic to the pain and anger that others are feeling, particularly if it’s a close friend or family member. But it isn’t okay to let it endlessly dictate and suffocate our lives.
That doesn’t just strangle our own happiness, but it stifles our future. It sets a dangerous personal precedent of writing our story based on what somebody else wants it to be.
The good news is that the secret to dealing with a person like this is pretty simple: You just don’t deal with them at all.
There is no rulebook out there that obligates any of us to negotiate our own happiness with emotional terrorists, whether it’s a family member or just a stranger in line next to us at Starbucks.
In fact, refusing to play ball with these people won’t just make your life better and happier and uniquely your own. It will help them, too.
Because the sure-fire way cure to a person pushing their own misery on everybody else is to isolate them. Let these people sit with themselves. Let them — not you — be the sole victim of their poor life choices and their general disdain for those who are trying to be the best version of themselves.
Let them roll around in their own filth for a while.
That’s the only way they’ll ever be forced to look inward and change what they see in the mirror, to realize that their misery is a one-bedroom house and the only name on the lease is theirs.
That’s when change happens.
There is no question that the path to individual happiness is a difficult one. I know my journey continues. But there is no chance that any of us reach that destination if we keep following someone else’s map.
Especially if that someone else has the selfish intention of wanting us to be just as miserable as they are.
