The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking
Oliver Burkeman
Language: English
Pages: 256
ISBN: 0865478015
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Success through failure, calm through embracing anxiety―a totally original approach to self-help
Self-help 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 modern-day 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. Thought-provoking, counterintuitive, and ultimately uplifting, The Antidote is the intelligent person's guide to understanding the much-misunderstood idea of happiness.
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self-help book – one that evidently didn’t solve all their problems. When you look at the self-help shelves with a coldly impartial eye, this isn’t especially surprising. That we yearn for neat, book-sized solutions to the problem of being human is understandable, but strip away the packaging, and you’ll find that the messages of such works are frequently banal. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People essentially tells you to decide what matters most to you in life, and then do it; How to Win
Destructive Goal Pursuit: The Mount Everest Disaster, Chris Kayes relates Lester’s basic finding about the typical Everest climber: he was someone who demonstrated ‘considerable restlessness, dislike for routine, desire for autonomy, tendency to be dominant in personal relations, and a lack of interest in social interaction for its own sake. Their felt need for achievement and independence was very high.’ No surprises there: Lester had confirmed the truism that climbers tend to be domineering
these feelings and yet, paradoxically, experiencing no clearly identifiable, or at least any easily describable, emotion.’ Awe, he writes, ‘is like trying to assemble a complex jigsaw puzzle with pieces missing. There’s never any closure in an awe-inspired life, only constant acceptance of the mysteries of life. We’re never allowed to know when this fantastic voyage might end … but that’s part of the life- disorienting chaos that makes this choice so thrillingly difficult.’ Which seems, to me, as
‘eighteen-month rule’ Einstein, Albert Elenson, Paige Ellis, Albert Ending the Pursuit of Happiness (Magid) entrepreneurs Epictetus Epicurus ‘evils, premeditation of’ evolution failure confronting embracing Great Failure Millennium Dome product failures, museum of risk taking success ‘training to’ Fang, Christina Fast Company (magazine) Fast, Julie fear of death feelings feeling states safety and security Fish! (manual) ‘fixed theory’ ‘Four Sights’ Francis de Sales
match the facts. Unless you are an unusually unembarrassable person, you can probably empathise with the apprehension I am feeling – yet when you think about it, there’s something bizarre about having any negative feelings whatsoever in this situation. After all, I know nobody in the carriage personally, so I have nothing to lose from them thinking that I’m crazy. Moreover, I know from past experience on the Underground that when other people start talking out loud to themselves, I ignore them,
