Yesterday I received The Situation is Hopeless, but not Serious by former Palo Alto Mental Research Institute scholar Dr. Paul Watzlawick. A pioneer in radical constructivism and communications theory as well as valued contributions to General Semantics, his amusing guide on how to create a constant state of unhappiness I found to be both eye opening and highly useful for guiding my own personal development.
The fundamental principle that many psychotherapies such as RET, Gestalt therapy and even Rogerian therapy base their treatments on is that people learn how to feel unhappy and repeat these thoughts and behaviors throughout their lives - sometimes never learning from them - creating their own unhappiness by doing more of the same.
Dr. Watzlawick's book tells the reader in no uncertain terms to repeat his exercises to be unhappy. Some games such as "self-fulfilling prophecies" or "why would anybody love me?" seem absurd, but are useful for therapy acting as a "symptom prescription" to break an ingrained cycle of unhappiness in a patient.
In the closing pages, he references Dostoyevsky's The Possessed with this line:
"Everything is good...everything. Man is unhappy because he doesn't know he's unhappy. It's only that. That's all. That's all! If one finds out, one will become happy at once, that minute."
While happiness may be a spontaneous condition, it can be hampered by thinking that restricts such feelings from occurring. Watzlawick's wisdom is something everyone can take heed of.