*AUTHOR’S NOTE: This is intended to be a piece of satire. You should strive to rid these thoughts and habits from your daily routine if you truly want to lead a fulfilling life!
To be content is to be too comfortable. If you aren’t constantly waging an internal battle against yourself, then you must be doing something wrong! Here are some tips on ways you can fret over every facet of your life, whether it is in your control or not, and lead a life with as much stress and dissatisfaction as you can pack into it:
Obsess not only over your body, but over the bodies of others
Park yourself down on the Plex floor and compare yourself to every other girl on an elliptical. Think disparaging thoughts about those whose physiques are not as shapely as your own, inflating your self-assurance, and glower resentfully at those who appear to be in better shape. Say to yourself, “I bet those girls only eat chickpeas for dinner and spend all their time pouring over fitness magazines.” Eat a Hillside burger and then berate yourself for your repulsive gluttony. Return to your room to flip through Self and evaluate your reflection in the mirror, comparing your abdominals to those of the models in the magazine.
Base your sense of worth on what you own
Spend every dime you earned at your internship this summer on Free People crop tops and Tory Burch boots. Abandon any sense of personal style and adopt a look that will make you appear as affluent and homogenous as possible, believing that such a look will give you a feeling of belonging. Obsessively study the ensembles of your chicest classmates and bemoan the fact that you don’t own a J. Crew cardigan in every color of the rainbow and six pairs of Sperry’s. Wish not only that you looked wealthier, but that you were wealthier, and that you had a horse and a summer home in Maine and had been sent to a fancy private high school.
Dedicate hours a day to sitting on Facebook
Play sad background music, some Bon Iver perhaps, and click through albums of parties you weren’t invited to and events you didn’t attend. Weep silently as you stalk some photos from the girl in your Brit Lit class with the really sweet-looking boyfriend from home who came to visit her last weekend. Pour through the Facebook pages of exes, unrequited loves, friends you’ve drifted apart from, people you wish you could be friends with, people you envy. Get lost in the world of everyone’s perfectly constructed virtual lives until you are convinced your own life is a pathetic sham.
Make having a relationship your number one priority
Instead of seeing a night out as an opportunity to make new memories and connections, spend the evening hunting for an opportunity to hook up. Send a text to your crush and proceed to check your iPhone every ten minutes, desperately waiting for his or her affirming response to light up your screen. Allow yourself to spiral into unshakable despondency when your efforts are not reciprocated and retreat alone to a dark corner of the party. Convince yourself that no one will ever be capable of loving you and you will end up alone, eating microwavable dinners and stroking cats.
Deny yourself any real indulgence or pleasure
Though it may be a beautiful day for shopping and lunch on Newbury, lock yourself in O’Neill with a stack of books, as you feel a Sunday afternoon of idleness would be a waste of your time. When you’re out to dinner at Cityside, order a piece of dry chicken over romaine lettuce and enviously salivate over your friends’ heaping pasta dishes. Instead of spending a night in with your Netflix account, go to a party that you feel obligated to attend and fill your solo cup to the brim, hoping the right amount of alcohol will convince you that you are enjoying yourself. Maintain an impossible rigidity in your life, only broken up by impromptu bursts of wild intemperance when you feel you might crack.
Focus solely on yourself
Your body, your diet, your clothes, your appearance, your relationships, your life. You, you, you. Only ever look outside yourself when you’re comparing yourself to someone else, thinking about how much better you are than that person, or how much you wish to have his or her life. Forget that a world exists beyond you and your life, beyond Boston College. Invest so much time and effort into what you can do to improve yourself that you never stop to think what you can do to improve the world.
Photo Sources:
http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/Business_People_g201-Overworked_Businesswoman__p31899.html
http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/Gestures_g185-Depressed_Woman_Sitting_On_Floor__p99322.html
http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/Other_Health_and_Bea_g278-person_standing_on_Weight_Scale_p97302.html