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A review by vasta
The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking by Oliver Burkeman
3.0
I had a friend, once, who would spend her idle hours in bookstores, browsing the titles in the self-help section. Her interest was not necessarily in the content of the books—there was no rush for growth and betterment in her browsing—but instead in the delivery, in how self-help books, ostensibly, actually provide the help they claim.
The Antidote is exactly the kind of self-help book she'd enjoy. It bills itself as a guide for "happiness for people who can't stand positive thinking;" as such, it positions itself as a self-help book for people who don't necessarily believe they need help.
The message of The Antidote is simple enough: positive thinking can be a hindrance to achieving happiness. Instead, Oliver Burkeman focuses on seven other strategies, none of them groundbreaking, all of them self-evident but illuminating when put together.
I've been told that I come across as permanently-happy, and overly-positive. The truth is that my happiness and positivity aren't results of positive thinking, but instead of the same strategies Mr. Burkeman elucidates but that I had never named or thought of in a regimented fashion: stoicism (don't get bothered), Buddhism (feel and experience deeply), goal eradication (embrace uncertainty), self-release (you are not your mind), failure (don't hide your errors), and memento mori (contemplate mortality—something I do often, it seems).
The strategy of insecurity, that we should be comfortable with impermanence, is the one I struggle with most. Insecurity (particularly in the form of financial worrying) brings me anxiety; instead of embracing that insecurity, I fight that sentiment, much to my detriment. This is where I wish Mr. Burkeman's book was more than just a lit review. While The Antidote is excellent at positing theory and providing anecdotal and academic reference for those ideas, the information sits mostly at the surface level. There is a paucity of depth, and it is this reluctance to dive deeper that makes this self-help book feel like all the others, no matter what its claims.
Mr. Burkeman's "literature review" on happiness strategies pitches itself as just the kind of self-help book that would intrigue my friend, but fails to deliver on that pitch. There are some nuggets of goodness, but that is all they are: tasty morsels, but inherently not-filling. It's a book to pick off the shelf and peruse, but then return, fairly quickly, and continue browsing down the aisle.
(originally published on inthemargins.ca)
The Antidote is exactly the kind of self-help book she'd enjoy. It bills itself as a guide for "happiness for people who can't stand positive thinking;" as such, it positions itself as a self-help book for people who don't necessarily believe they need help.
The message of The Antidote is simple enough: positive thinking can be a hindrance to achieving happiness. Instead, Oliver Burkeman focuses on seven other strategies, none of them groundbreaking, all of them self-evident but illuminating when put together.
I've been told that I come across as permanently-happy, and overly-positive. The truth is that my happiness and positivity aren't results of positive thinking, but instead of the same strategies Mr. Burkeman elucidates but that I had never named or thought of in a regimented fashion: stoicism (don't get bothered), Buddhism (feel and experience deeply), goal eradication (embrace uncertainty), self-release (you are not your mind), failure (don't hide your errors), and memento mori (contemplate mortality—something I do often, it seems).
The strategy of insecurity, that we should be comfortable with impermanence, is the one I struggle with most. Insecurity (particularly in the form of financial worrying) brings me anxiety; instead of embracing that insecurity, I fight that sentiment, much to my detriment. This is where I wish Mr. Burkeman's book was more than just a lit review. While The Antidote is excellent at positing theory and providing anecdotal and academic reference for those ideas, the information sits mostly at the surface level. There is a paucity of depth, and it is this reluctance to dive deeper that makes this self-help book feel like all the others, no matter what its claims.
Mr. Burkeman's "literature review" on happiness strategies pitches itself as just the kind of self-help book that would intrigue my friend, but fails to deliver on that pitch. There are some nuggets of goodness, but that is all they are: tasty morsels, but inherently not-filling. It's a book to pick off the shelf and peruse, but then return, fairly quickly, and continue browsing down the aisle.
(originally published on inthemargins.ca)