There are too many people out there who just can’t seem to become and remain miserable.

It’s pathetic, really, how people can’t help but find lasting satisfaction, despite all their individual neuroses and external calamities. It seems these unfortunate people have no real focus or concept of what really makes them unhappy, which allows them to gradually slip into a pleasurable life. I, however, cannot count myself among these people; indeed, I have no difficulty being nihilistic and miserable.

So when a friend asked me, “How do you stay miserable so well?” I knew my insight into slumming needed to be shared.

Turning your life from a casual up-and-down ride in reality to a permanent post in Prozac hell is surprisingly simple. A life of endless despair is yours in just a few easy steps:

* Be selfish. This sounds simple, but the key is to allow your selfishness to overcome every part of your day. Selfishness goes beyond taking more than one complimentary food sample at Hy-Vee. Being selfish is all about attitude. It is not sufficient to be totally self-centered and egotistical. True selfishness means being unable to care about anything more than yourself and being totally imprisoned within your identity. Who cares about the rest of the world? Misery is close at hand when all you’ve got is yourself.

* But there is one thing you can love more than yourself: your possessions. Your car doesn’t care if you’re having a bad day or if you don’t have a job. Money is so much better than real people, right? A little dollar bill will never hurt you. Life is a lot safer and simpler when you don’t have to trust anyone. Because that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? The more things you own, the safer you’ll be, right? Just ask Martha Stewart, Michael Jackson and Vanilla Ice how cozy and happy their millions make them feel.

* Know that feeling you got when your dog/grandmother/cousin/friend/favorite celebrity died? Good. Hold onto that feeling nice and tight, and get to know it well. Cherish that feeling of grief, because like any good miserable person, you should be able to convince yourself that nothing ever changes. That’s right: Just keep repeating “nothing changes” in your head over and over. Any depressed dope worth his or her weight in Valium has developed the powerful self-delusion necessary to convince themselves that despite everything they see around them, nothing will change. If things do change, these champions of sadness always believe it will be for the worst. Hope is for the naive.

* Be shameful. Have you seen those adorable kids from “The O.C.”? Man, they’re exactly what everyone should look like! Forget the fact that they are anomalies hand-picked from around the world, and remember your unsightly moles. Remind yourself that only the sexy are allowed pride, and that includes Nobel Prize winners. “He won the physics prize, eh? Does he have a six-pack?” You should be embarrassed that you even exist. Who do you think you are, anyways?

* I’ve told you that in order to be miserable you have to remember certain things, and that is important because the truly morose never forget anything. The one thing a miserable person can never forget is when somebody has wronged him. And by wrong, I mean something heinous like somebody driving the speed limit in front of him after he woke up late for work. Every sin against the morose becomes another picture in a slideshow of hate and regret. “What about forgiveness?” you might ask. Forgiveness could bring the elaborate castle of personal spite tumbling down if it weren’t for the first lesson: selfishness. There is no better cure for nagging thoughts of “live and let live” than self-obsession.