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sumatra_squall 's review for:
The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking
by Oliver Burkeman
In The Antidote, Oliver Burkeman makes the argument that the path to happiness entails "learning to enjoy uncertainty, embracing insecurity, stopping trying to think positively, becoming familiar with failure, even learning to value death". This runs counter to conventional modern strategies for happiness that emphasise positive thinking. Instead, Burkeman suggests that we pursue the "negative path" - to develop skills of "not doing" (specifically not chasing positive feelings so aggressively) and also be willing to experience more negative emotions, or at least stop avoiding such emotions.
It's a tough argument to swallow. Partly because the positive thinking mantra is so ubiquitous and partly because it's difficult to imagine how "embracing insecurity…[and] learning to value death" can lead to happiness. But Burkeman points out that fixating on positive thinking can lead to irrational optimism (and ultimately disappointment) and in cases where people suffer from low self-esteem, the gap between their self-image and positive self-talk might worsen their negative self-image.
Burkeman shares with us the philosophy of the Stoics (so named because the first known Stoic, Zeno of Citium, taught under the stoa poikile or "painted porch" on the north side of the ancient agora of Athens). (Aside: Now I know why Ryan Holiday's book store is called The Painted Porch). For the Stoics, the ideal state of mind is tranquility resulting from "cultivating a…calm indifference towards one's circumstances….by turning towards negative emotions and experiences; not shunning them, but examining them closely instead." The Stoics argue that it is not circumstances, events or people that make us happy, sad or angry. Rather, is it our beliefs that shape our emotions. If we feel annoyed by a colleague's actions, Burkeman argues, it is not that colleague is annoying per se but that we believe that the colleague should not be behaving in that way. If our relative is ill, we feel sad because we believe it's a good thing for our relatives not to be ill (while being indifferent to the health of millions of others we have no connection with). Stoic scholar AA Long points out that in the case of road rage, is it that other drivers were really behaving badly, or is it more accurate to say that it is our belief that they should behave differently that drives our anger. Reframing is key.
And instead of being anxious about the possibility of things going wrong, the Stoics advocate actively dwelling on the worst case scenario and confronting it head on, so-called "negative visualisation". The idea is that if we spend time vividly imagining how things could go wrong in reality, we might come to the conclusion that our fears are exaggerated. Sure, it is terrible to lose one's job or to break up with your partner, but this is unlikely to lead to the end of life as you know it. You can find ways to move on, to find a new job, to find other sources of happiness. Go one step further and set aside some days to live on the bare minimum; it won't be fun but again, it will demonstrate what it means to cope when poor. By focussing on the worst case scenario and distinguishing between very bad and completely terrible events, we can turn "infinite fears into finite ones".
Third, understand the limits of what we can control. Consider this:
"we habitually act as if our control over the world were much greater than it really is. Even such personal matters as our health, our finances, and our reputations are ultimately beyond our control; we can try to influence them, of course, but frequently things won't go our way. And the behaviour of other people is even further beyond our control. For most conventional notions of happiness - which consist in making things the way you want them to be - this poses a big problem. In better times, it's easy to forget how little we control: we can usually manage to convince ourselves that we attained the promotion at work, or the new relationship, or the Nobel Prize, thanks solely to our own brilliance and effort. But unhappy times bring home the truth of the matter. If your strategy for happiness depends on bending circumstances to your will, this is terrible news: the best you can do is to pray that not all that much will go wrong, and try to distract yourself when it does. For the Stoics, however, tranquility entails confronting the reality of your limited control….The only things we truly control, the Stoics argue, are our judgments - what we believe - about our circumstances."
Burkeman then moves to Buddhist philosophy, which emphasises non-attachment - this means "feel[ing] impulses, think[ing] thoughts, and experience[ing] life without becoming hooked by mental narratives about how things 'should' be, or should never be, or should remain forever". So we can enjoy pleasurable things in the moment - like beauty - but accept that they are non permanent and may disappear instead of rejecting this possibility and experiencing pain and loss when they do. Conversely, when there are unpleasant things, we can experience and bear them in the moment and not create anxiety and fear in trying to avoid them.
Burkeman shares his experience going on a silent meditation retreat, where he realises just now noisy and constant his inner mental chatter is. We don't hear this mental chatter very much because it's drowned by the outer noise. Instead of trying to dampen this inner chatter or to stop thinking it altogether, Buddhist philosophy teaches that we accept it and "let the clamour be". By seeking to drive out the agitated and distracted mind, we create greater agitation.
Related to this, Burkeman points out that conventional advice to tackle procrastination often emphasises self-motivation, getting ourselves to feel ready to do stuff. But, Burkeman notes, "feeling like acting and actually acting are two different things. A person mired deep in procrastination might claim he is unable to work, but what he really means is that he is unable to make himself feel like working…most motivational techniques are really designed to change the way you feel. They're built, in other words, on a form of attachment - on strengthening your investment in a specific kind of emotion. Sometimes that can help. But sometimes you simply can't make yourself feel like acting. And in those situations, motivational advice risks making things worse, by surreptitiously strengthening your belief that you need to feel motivated before you can act. By encouraging an attachment to a particular emotional state, it actually inserts an additional hurdle between you and your goal….Taking a non-attached stance towards procrastination, by contrast, starts from a different question: who says you need to wait until you 'feel like' doing something in order to start doing it?" Just do it. Start a ritual, establish a rhythm. Don’t focus on your emotional state, focus on the process of actually doing the task.
On insecurity, Burkeman discusses how we might accept, even embrace insecurity. Our desire for a sense of security and safety, Burkeman argues, "leads us into irrationality". Yet, this quest for security seldom leads to actual security, much less happiness. Instead, we may spend our effort investing in the feeling of security, rather than security as a reality, e.g. opting to drive where we feel we have more control over the vehicle, instead of flying where we feel we have no control. (In our own ways, we invest in a form of "security theatre", just as aviation authorities did in the aftermath of 9-11). In the same way, like the Stoics, we can reframe how we respond to events and circumstances, might we reframe how we think about insecurity? Rather than pursue the illusion or feeling or security, might we instead recognise that vulnerability forces us to invest in strong social relationships (which bring happiness)? That "when you don't have don’t have access to the good clothes and the nice jobs….you have to let people know you through your way of being, not through what you're wearing, or your job title. You actually have to be kind to people if you want them to like you…You have to cut the crap".
On goal setting, Burkeman points out that downside of this is that we keep fixating on some point in the future that we forget to appreciate and enjoy the present. He discusses what former stockbroker turned organisational behaviour expert Chris Kayes calls "goalodicy", where the fixation on achieving a particular goal led people and organisations to keep investing more resources and effort into pursuing that goal even where it no longer made any sense. Burkeman suggests that "there is a good case to be made that many of us, and many of the organisations for which we work, would do better to spend less time on goalsetting, and, more generally, to focus with less intensity on planning for how we would like the future to turn out".
Burkeman ends off his book with the chapter "Memento Mori: Death as a Way of Life". Here, he refers to Ernest Becker's argument that we are able to stave off thoughts of our own mortality because "we possess both a physical self and a symbolic one. And while it is inevitable that the physical self will perish, the symbolic self - the one that exists in our minds - is quite capable of convincing itself that it is immortal." Yet, while one can imagine taking up the advice of the Stoics to imagine the worst case scenario and tackle it head on, how can one mentally prepare oneself for death, to confront it head on? Logically, fearing death itself makes no sense. One can fear a painful dying process, the pain of losing others to death. But if death spells the end of the experiencing self, what is there to fear? The fear is illogical but that doesn't make it any less real, the anxiety of losing all the benefits we enjoy as a result of living. Perhaps, Burkeman suggests, we need to learn to sit with the notion that that death is "something that there is no reason to fear, yet which is still bad because of what it brings to an end". We need to increase our "mortality awareness". And in recognising life's finitude, learning to cherish it and spend our time in ways we're less likely to come to regret (ref: Burkeman's other book, Four Thousand Weeks). Noting that "there is a positive correlation between the fear of death and the sense of unlived life", Burkeman suggests that living more meaningfully will reduce our anxiety about the possibility of future regret at not having lived meaningfully.
Burkeman ends off by noting that "negative capability need not involve embracing an ancient philosophical or religious tradition. It is also the skill you're exhibiting when you move forward with a project - or with life - in the absence of sharply defined goals; when you dare to inspect your failures; when you stop trying to eliminate feelings of insecurity; or when you put aside 'motivational' techniques in favour of actually getting things done.
A thought provoking read.
It's a tough argument to swallow. Partly because the positive thinking mantra is so ubiquitous and partly because it's difficult to imagine how "embracing insecurity…[and] learning to value death" can lead to happiness. But Burkeman points out that fixating on positive thinking can lead to irrational optimism (and ultimately disappointment) and in cases where people suffer from low self-esteem, the gap between their self-image and positive self-talk might worsen their negative self-image.
Burkeman shares with us the philosophy of the Stoics (so named because the first known Stoic, Zeno of Citium, taught under the stoa poikile or "painted porch" on the north side of the ancient agora of Athens). (Aside: Now I know why Ryan Holiday's book store is called The Painted Porch). For the Stoics, the ideal state of mind is tranquility resulting from "cultivating a…calm indifference towards one's circumstances….by turning towards negative emotions and experiences; not shunning them, but examining them closely instead." The Stoics argue that it is not circumstances, events or people that make us happy, sad or angry. Rather, is it our beliefs that shape our emotions. If we feel annoyed by a colleague's actions, Burkeman argues, it is not that colleague is annoying per se but that we believe that the colleague should not be behaving in that way. If our relative is ill, we feel sad because we believe it's a good thing for our relatives not to be ill (while being indifferent to the health of millions of others we have no connection with). Stoic scholar AA Long points out that in the case of road rage, is it that other drivers were really behaving badly, or is it more accurate to say that it is our belief that they should behave differently that drives our anger. Reframing is key.
And instead of being anxious about the possibility of things going wrong, the Stoics advocate actively dwelling on the worst case scenario and confronting it head on, so-called "negative visualisation". The idea is that if we spend time vividly imagining how things could go wrong in reality, we might come to the conclusion that our fears are exaggerated. Sure, it is terrible to lose one's job or to break up with your partner, but this is unlikely to lead to the end of life as you know it. You can find ways to move on, to find a new job, to find other sources of happiness. Go one step further and set aside some days to live on the bare minimum; it won't be fun but again, it will demonstrate what it means to cope when poor. By focussing on the worst case scenario and distinguishing between very bad and completely terrible events, we can turn "infinite fears into finite ones".
Third, understand the limits of what we can control. Consider this:
"we habitually act as if our control over the world were much greater than it really is. Even such personal matters as our health, our finances, and our reputations are ultimately beyond our control; we can try to influence them, of course, but frequently things won't go our way. And the behaviour of other people is even further beyond our control. For most conventional notions of happiness - which consist in making things the way you want them to be - this poses a big problem. In better times, it's easy to forget how little we control: we can usually manage to convince ourselves that we attained the promotion at work, or the new relationship, or the Nobel Prize, thanks solely to our own brilliance and effort. But unhappy times bring home the truth of the matter. If your strategy for happiness depends on bending circumstances to your will, this is terrible news: the best you can do is to pray that not all that much will go wrong, and try to distract yourself when it does. For the Stoics, however, tranquility entails confronting the reality of your limited control….The only things we truly control, the Stoics argue, are our judgments - what we believe - about our circumstances."
Burkeman then moves to Buddhist philosophy, which emphasises non-attachment - this means "feel[ing] impulses, think[ing] thoughts, and experience[ing] life without becoming hooked by mental narratives about how things 'should' be, or should never be, or should remain forever". So we can enjoy pleasurable things in the moment - like beauty - but accept that they are non permanent and may disappear instead of rejecting this possibility and experiencing pain and loss when they do. Conversely, when there are unpleasant things, we can experience and bear them in the moment and not create anxiety and fear in trying to avoid them.
Burkeman shares his experience going on a silent meditation retreat, where he realises just now noisy and constant his inner mental chatter is. We don't hear this mental chatter very much because it's drowned by the outer noise. Instead of trying to dampen this inner chatter or to stop thinking it altogether, Buddhist philosophy teaches that we accept it and "let the clamour be". By seeking to drive out the agitated and distracted mind, we create greater agitation.
Related to this, Burkeman points out that conventional advice to tackle procrastination often emphasises self-motivation, getting ourselves to feel ready to do stuff. But, Burkeman notes, "feeling like acting and actually acting are two different things. A person mired deep in procrastination might claim he is unable to work, but what he really means is that he is unable to make himself feel like working…most motivational techniques are really designed to change the way you feel. They're built, in other words, on a form of attachment - on strengthening your investment in a specific kind of emotion. Sometimes that can help. But sometimes you simply can't make yourself feel like acting. And in those situations, motivational advice risks making things worse, by surreptitiously strengthening your belief that you need to feel motivated before you can act. By encouraging an attachment to a particular emotional state, it actually inserts an additional hurdle between you and your goal….Taking a non-attached stance towards procrastination, by contrast, starts from a different question: who says you need to wait until you 'feel like' doing something in order to start doing it?" Just do it. Start a ritual, establish a rhythm. Don’t focus on your emotional state, focus on the process of actually doing the task.
On insecurity, Burkeman discusses how we might accept, even embrace insecurity. Our desire for a sense of security and safety, Burkeman argues, "leads us into irrationality". Yet, this quest for security seldom leads to actual security, much less happiness. Instead, we may spend our effort investing in the feeling of security, rather than security as a reality, e.g. opting to drive where we feel we have more control over the vehicle, instead of flying where we feel we have no control. (In our own ways, we invest in a form of "security theatre", just as aviation authorities did in the aftermath of 9-11). In the same way, like the Stoics, we can reframe how we respond to events and circumstances, might we reframe how we think about insecurity? Rather than pursue the illusion or feeling or security, might we instead recognise that vulnerability forces us to invest in strong social relationships (which bring happiness)? That "when you don't have don’t have access to the good clothes and the nice jobs….you have to let people know you through your way of being, not through what you're wearing, or your job title. You actually have to be kind to people if you want them to like you…You have to cut the crap".
On goal setting, Burkeman points out that downside of this is that we keep fixating on some point in the future that we forget to appreciate and enjoy the present. He discusses what former stockbroker turned organisational behaviour expert Chris Kayes calls "goalodicy", where the fixation on achieving a particular goal led people and organisations to keep investing more resources and effort into pursuing that goal even where it no longer made any sense. Burkeman suggests that "there is a good case to be made that many of us, and many of the organisations for which we work, would do better to spend less time on goalsetting, and, more generally, to focus with less intensity on planning for how we would like the future to turn out".
Burkeman ends off his book with the chapter "Memento Mori: Death as a Way of Life". Here, he refers to Ernest Becker's argument that we are able to stave off thoughts of our own mortality because "we possess both a physical self and a symbolic one. And while it is inevitable that the physical self will perish, the symbolic self - the one that exists in our minds - is quite capable of convincing itself that it is immortal." Yet, while one can imagine taking up the advice of the Stoics to imagine the worst case scenario and tackle it head on, how can one mentally prepare oneself for death, to confront it head on? Logically, fearing death itself makes no sense. One can fear a painful dying process, the pain of losing others to death. But if death spells the end of the experiencing self, what is there to fear? The fear is illogical but that doesn't make it any less real, the anxiety of losing all the benefits we enjoy as a result of living. Perhaps, Burkeman suggests, we need to learn to sit with the notion that that death is "something that there is no reason to fear, yet which is still bad because of what it brings to an end". We need to increase our "mortality awareness". And in recognising life's finitude, learning to cherish it and spend our time in ways we're less likely to come to regret (ref: Burkeman's other book, Four Thousand Weeks). Noting that "there is a positive correlation between the fear of death and the sense of unlived life", Burkeman suggests that living more meaningfully will reduce our anxiety about the possibility of future regret at not having lived meaningfully.
Burkeman ends off by noting that "negative capability need not involve embracing an ancient philosophical or religious tradition. It is also the skill you're exhibiting when you move forward with a project - or with life - in the absence of sharply defined goals; when you dare to inspect your failures; when you stop trying to eliminate feelings of insecurity; or when you put aside 'motivational' techniques in favour of actually getting things done.
A thought provoking read.