Why Sometimes Being Miserable Is Actually A Good Thing (with Eamon Evans)

2026-02-03

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What if I told you that the secret to happiness was to pay more attention to the times when life absolutely sucks? How can that make sense? Everything I scroll past berates me with a message about finding happiness, treating myself, pushing me to constantly be seek out the good at all costs. While it’s absolutely important to discover and nurture those things that make life pleasurable and even tolerable, my guest today argues that we also need to also sit with and even embrace misery to truly appreciate what makes life g...

What if I told you that the secret to happiness was to pay more attention to the times when life absolutely sucks? How can that make sense?

Everything I scroll past berates me with a message about finding happiness, treating myself, pushing me to constantly be seek out the good at all costs. While it’s absolutely important to discover and nurture those things that make life pleasurable and even tolerable, my guest today argues that we also need to also sit with and even embrace misery to truly appreciate what makes life great.

Eamon Evans is a prolific author, writing 15 books on everything from sport to crime, urban legends and great Aussie scandals. His latest book, The Importance of Being Miserable: A Short History of Human Happiness, and Why Sometimes It's Good to Feel Bad, challenges the notion that life should always be good, happy and sparkly; and suggests that negative emotions have been historically important, and still are.

Today, Eamon unpacks the fantasy we’ve been sold over the years - that happiness is something you can achieve, lock in, and never lose, and argues that, ironically, chasing it might actually be what’s making us miserable. Fear not, Eamon is hilarious and delivers his message in a coating of laughter and delicious irony - so he’s able to get the idea across incredibly well.
He's even written a book about it, "The Importance of Being Miserable".

Now that I think about it, the title of the book might just be the closest thing that's ever got me to understanding why Morrissey exists.

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