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commander_blop 's review for:
The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking
by Oliver Burkeman
This might be the only (so-called) self-help book that includes a quote from The Wire at the beginning of a chapter -- and surely that's a good sign.
I would have been content if this book had been what I expected: an acerbic expose of self-help hokum. Instead, it proved to be much more: a cogent synthesis of a number of philosophical and psychological notions and approaches that offer a healthier, more realistic, way of living a happier life. Drawing from Stoicism (the real thing, not the straw man version most of us hear about), Buddhism, and psychological studies that are critical of so-called positive thinking, what I found most striking about The Antidote was how often it seemed to articulate and complete my own half-formed ideas. Forcing yourself to "think positive" often makes failure that much more devastating; setting long-terms goals often means scuttling your well-being in the drive to achieve (and doubling down at the very moment it might make sense to abandon a bad idea); trying to feel motivated can create an extra thing to be frustrated and depressed about; there is comfort and relief to be found in contemplating worst-case-scenarios and even death itself rather than trying to emphasize the positive at all costs . . . and on and on.
To be clear: the approaches (note the plural) outlined in this book are not meant to help you achieve happiness in some defined, end-of-the-line, concrete sense. Instead it is a toolkit, a series of ways to approach life more realistically and genuinely. Somehow the positive-thought advocates have created the sense that their approach is about embracing life when, in fact, the opposite is true: their approach involves ignoring and denying much of what makes life what it is. What this book tries to do is offer some ways of finding happiness (rather than Being Happy) by taking in the totality of our lives rather than filtering out whatever we perceive as an obstacle to our goals.
I would have been content if this book had been what I expected: an acerbic expose of self-help hokum. Instead, it proved to be much more: a cogent synthesis of a number of philosophical and psychological notions and approaches that offer a healthier, more realistic, way of living a happier life. Drawing from Stoicism (the real thing, not the straw man version most of us hear about), Buddhism, and psychological studies that are critical of so-called positive thinking, what I found most striking about The Antidote was how often it seemed to articulate and complete my own half-formed ideas. Forcing yourself to "think positive" often makes failure that much more devastating; setting long-terms goals often means scuttling your well-being in the drive to achieve (and doubling down at the very moment it might make sense to abandon a bad idea); trying to feel motivated can create an extra thing to be frustrated and depressed about; there is comfort and relief to be found in contemplating worst-case-scenarios and even death itself rather than trying to emphasize the positive at all costs . . . and on and on.
To be clear: the approaches (note the plural) outlined in this book are not meant to help you achieve happiness in some defined, end-of-the-line, concrete sense. Instead it is a toolkit, a series of ways to approach life more realistically and genuinely. Somehow the positive-thought advocates have created the sense that their approach is about embracing life when, in fact, the opposite is true: their approach involves ignoring and denying much of what makes life what it is. What this book tries to do is offer some ways of finding happiness (rather than Being Happy) by taking in the totality of our lives rather than filtering out whatever we perceive as an obstacle to our goals.