Success through failure, calm through embracing anxiety—a totally original approach to selfhelp Selfhelp books don’t seem to work. Few of the many advantages of modern life seem capable of lifting our collective mood. Wealth—even if you can get it—doesn’t necessarily lead to happiness. Romance, family life, and work often bring as much stress as joy. We can’t even agree on what “happiness” means. So are we engaged in a futile pursuit? Or are we just going about it the wrong way? Looking both east and west, in bulletins from the past and from far afield, Oliver Burkeman introduces us to an unusual group of people who share a single, surprising way of thinking about life. Whether experimental psychologists, terrorism experts, Buddhists, hardheaded business consultants, Greek philosophers, or modernday gurus, they argue that in our personal lives, and in society at large, it’s our constant effort to be happy that is making us miserable. And that there is an alternative path to happiness and success that involves embracing failure, pessimism, insecurity, and uncertainty—the very things we spend our lives trying to avoid. Thoughtprovoking, counterintuitive, and ultimately uplifting, The Antidote is the
[...]... self, therefore, are unsettling, and so we often reject them – even if they happen to be positive, and even if the source of the message is ourselves Wood’s hunch was that people who seek out affirmations would be, by definition, those with low self-esteem – but that, for that very same reason, they would end up reacting against the messages in the affirmations, because they conflicted with their self-images... convince themselves otherwise merely solidified their negativity Positive thinking had made them feel worse The arrival of George Bush on stage in San Antonio was heralded by the sudden appearance of his Secret Service detail These were men who would probably have stood out anywhere, in their dark suits and earpieces, but who stood out twice as prominently at Get Motivated! thanks to their rigid frowns The. .. conversation, and then cringe in horror as we blurt out exactly that thing We carefully cradle the glass across the room, all the while thinking “don’t spill”, and then juggle it onto the carpet under the gaze of our host.’ Far from representing an occasional divergence from our otherwise flawless self-control, the capacity for ironic error seems to lurk deep in the soul, close to the core of our characters... his efforts at escape, and by pushing his fingers further in, that he can widen the ends of the tube, whereupon it falls away, and he is free In the case of the Chinese finger trap, Hayes observes, ‘doing the presumably sensible thing is counterproductive’ Following the negative path to happiness is about doing the other thing – the presumably illogical thing – instead 2 What Would Seneca Do? The Stoic... in the carriage seems particularly interested in that, either 3 The Storm Before the Calm A Buddhist Guide to Not Thinking Positively You want it to be one way But it’s the other way – Marlo Stanfield in The Wire IN THE EARLY 1960s, Robert Aitken, an American Zen Buddhist living in Hawaii, began to notice something inexplicable and alarming Aitken was one of the pioneers in bringing Buddhism to the. .. tree, thereby becoming the Buddha, the one who woke up’ But it was those initial sights, according to the myth, that first awoke his understanding of impermanence Buddhism’s path to serenity began with a confrontation with the negative From Barry Magid’s Buddhist–Freudian point of view, then, most people who thought they were ‘seeking happiness were really running away from things of which they were... days of Fyodor Dostoevsky, who reputedly used it to torment his brother It takes the form of a challenge: can you – the victim is asked – succeed in not thinking about a white bear for one whole minute? You can guess the answer, of course, but it’s nonetheless instructive to make the attempt Why not try it now? Look at your watch, or find a clock with a second hand, and aim for a mere ten seconds of... of true happiness Perhaps the most vivid metaphor for this whole strange philosophy is a small children’s toy known as the ‘Chinese finger trap’, though the evidence suggests it is probably not Chinese in origin at all In his office at the University of Nevada, the psychologist Steven Hayes, an outspoken critic of counterproductive positive thinking, keeps a box of them on his desk; he uses them to... as if from nowhere, bumping across the heads of the crowd, who jiggled awkwardly as Wham! blared from the sound system The first prize of a free trip to Disney World, we were informed, awaited not the best dancer but the most motivated one, though the distinction made little difference to me: I found the whole thing too excruciating to do more than sway very slightly The prize was eventually awarded... had grounds for feeling ashamed When Zeno began to teach philosophy himself, he did so under the stoa poikile, the ‘painted porch’ on the north side of the ancient agora of Athens – hence the label ‘Stoic’ The school’s influence subsequently spread to Rome, and it is these later Roman Stoics – above all Epictetus, Seneca the Younger, and Marcus Aurelius – whose works have survived From their earliest . Burkeman, Oliver. Title: antidote : happiness for people who can’t stand positive thinking / Oliver Burkeman. ISBN: 9781921922671 (pbk.) ISBN: 9781921921483 (ebook : epub) Subjects: Happiness. Self-actualisation. of self, therefore, are unsettling, and so we often reject them – even if they happen to be positive, and even if the source of the message is ourselves. Wood’s hunch was that people who seek. The Stoic Art of Confronting the Worst-Case Scenario 3 The Storm Before the Calm A Buddhist Guide to Not Thinking Positively 4 Goal Crazy When Trying to Control the Future Doesn’t Work 5 Who s