How to Get Sick

·       Don’t pay attention to your body. Eat plenty of junk food, drink too much, take drugs, have lots of unsafe sex with lots of different partners—and, above all, feel guilty about it. If you are overstressed and tired, ignore it and keep pushing yourself.

·       Cultivate the experience of your life as meaningless and of little value.

·       Do the things you don’t like, and avoid doing what you really want. Follow everyone else’s opinions and advice, while seeing yourself as miserable and “stuck.”

·       Be resentful and hypercritical, especially toward yourself.

·       Fill your mind with dreadful pictures, and then obsess over them. Worry most, if not all, of the time.

·       Avoid deep, lasting, intimate relationships.

·       Blame other people for all your problems.

·       Do not express your feelings and views openly and honestly. Other people wouldn’t appreciate it. If at all possible, do not even know what your feelings are.

·       Shun anything that resembles a sense of humor. Life is no laughing matter!

·       Avoid making any changes that would bring you greater satisfaction and joy.

 How to Get Sicker (If You’re Already Sick)

·       Think about all the awful things that could happen to you. Dwell upon negative, fearful images.

·       Be depressed, self-pitying, envious, and angry. Blame everyone and everything for your illness.

·       Read articles, books, and newspapers, watch TV programs, surf the net, and listen to people who reinforce the viewpoint that there is NO HOPE. You are powerless to influence your fate.

·       Cut yourself off from other people. Regard yourself as a pariah. Lock yourself up in your room and contemplate death.

·       Hate yourself for having destroyed your life. Blame yourself mercilessly and incessantly.

·       Go to see lots of different doctors. Run from one to another, spend half your time in waiting rooms, get lots of conflicting opinions and lots of experimental drugs, starting one program after another without sticking to any.

·       Quit your job, stop work on any projects, give up all activities that bring you a sense of purpose and fun. See your life as essentially pointless, and at an end.

·       Complain about your symptoms, and if you associate with anyone, do so exclusively with other people who are unhappy and embittered. Reinforce each other’s feelings of hopelessness.

·       Don’t take care of yourself. What’s the use? Try to get other people to do it for you, and then resent them for not doing a good job.

·       Think how awful life is, and how you might as well be dead. But make sure you are absolutely terrified of death, just to increase the pain.

·       Do things that bring you a sense of fulfillment, joy, and purpose, that validate your worth. See your life as your own creation and strive to make it a positive one.

·       Pay close and loving attention to yourself, tuning in to your needs on all levels. Take care of yourself, nourishing, supporting, and encouraging yourself.

·       Release all negative emotions—resentment, envy, fear, sadness, anger. Express your feelings appropriately; don’t hold onto them. Forgive yourself.

·       Hold positive images and goals in your mind, pictures of what you truly want in your life. When fearful images arise, refocus on images that evoke feelings of peace and joy.

·       Love yourself, and love everyone else. Make loving the purpose and primary expression of your life.

·       Create fun, loving, honest relationships, allowing for the expression and fulfillment of needs for intimacy and security. Try to heal any wounds in past relationships, as with old lovers, and with your mother and father.

·       Make a positive contribution to your community, through some form of work or service that you value and enjoy.

·       Make a commitment to health and well-being, and develop a belief in the possibility of wholeness. Develop your own healing program, drawing on the support and advice of experts without becoming enslaved to them.

·       Accept yourself and everything in your life as an opportunity for growth and learning. Be grateful. When you fuck up, forgive yourself, learn what you can from the experience, and then move on.

·       Keep a sense of humor.