The Antidote: Happiness for People who Can't Stand Positive Thinking - Oliver Burkeman.

Post date: Aug 6, 2013 5:31:16 PM

Book

Review

This book is intended as the 'antidote' to the positivity approach to achieving happiness in life – it makes extensive use of philosophy and scientific research to propose an alternative approach – the 'negative path' to happiness. Burkeman draws on the philosophy of the ancient Greeks and Romans, particularly the Stoics, and on life views like Buddhism that are less self-orientated than Western culture.

Burkeman's argument is really with unscientific approaches to happiness, rather than with positive psychology and its findings; he is very disparaging about 'banal' self-help books, singling out Fish! and 'The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People as examples, and about self-help gurus whose claims are not supported by reputable research. He invokes the White Bear effect (Wegner: when asked not to think about a white bear people find the task almost impossible) to illustrate 'the self-defeating nature of positive thinking' (p7).

“The 'negative path' is about rejecting this dichotomy, and seeking instead the happiness that arises through the negativity, rather than trying to drown out negativity with relentless good cheer. If a fixation on positivity is the disease, this approach is the antidote.” (p9).

Burkeman provides some convincing evidence for his concerns about the 'cult of optimism' and for its potential to cause damage to individuals and to society. One study he uses is from Barbara Ehrenreich (2010) who blames the global financial crisis on the 'cult of optimism' and the 'no bad news' approach which, she claims, led to an American business culture in which it was considered a 'faux pas' to think or talk about failure, leading to 'irrational optimism' in the financial sector.

Burkeman has found evidence from research that the judgement of happy people has been found to be unrealistic and overly optimistic compared to that of depressed people, that striving for goals can backfire, and that visualising things going well can make people less motivated to strive for them.

Irrational optimism, he argues, can lead to catastrophic failure. Another negative effect of 'ceaseless optimism about the future' is that we are al the more shocked and unprepared when things go wrong. Like the Stoics, people should seek serenity by facing (rather than trying to escape from) their lack of control over their lives:

'the only things we can truly control... are our judgements – what we believe – about our circumstances... our judgements are what cause our distress... and so they're all that we need to be able to control in order to substitute serenity for suffering.” (p40)

Over-optimism causes us to be less focused on the here-and-now: 'the 'cult of optimism' is all about looking forward to a happy or successful future, thereby reinforcing the message that happiness belongs to some other time than now' (p116). In its place, Burkeman proposes Buddhist meditation techniques, which can help people focus on the present (rather than the future), and accept 'outer events and circumstances', and their 'inner thoughts and emotions' without 'clinging or aversion': 'perfectly non-attached Buddhists would be simply, calmly present, and non-judgementally aware' (p54).

Burkeman's argument in this book, then, is that the real project of life is to be fully present in it, and striving for acceptance and serenity, rather than false positivity in pursuit of the goal of happiness. He describes his book as exploring 'the upsides of negativity, uncertainty, failure and imperfection'.

Academic interest

A well structured and supported argument drawing on philosophy and on research, mainly in the field of psychology and neuroscience, to make an entertaining and challenging read, since Burkeman delights in challenging mainstream beliefs. He does so with good supporting evidence for his argument. He does not, however, incorporate the more recent findings of the positive psychology movement, and its position regarding negative thoughts.

Practitioners

This book is not designed for practitioners, though it does contain a number of interesting and useful views (with evidence) about alternative approaches for those who currently see themselves as 'failing' in their search for happiness.

Self-helpers

This book is not designed for self-helpers.

Best Bits

When explaining the 'White Bear' effect, and the problem with attempts to think positively, Burkeman puts it very succinctly:

'A person who has resolved to 'think positive' must constantly scan his or her mind for negative thoughts – there's no other way that the mind could ever gauge its success at the operation – yet that scanning will draw attention to the presence of negative thoughts.' (p16).

Burkeman explains the difference between 'optimism' and Stoicism':

'For the Stoics, the ideal state of mind was tranquility, not the exciteable cheer that positive thinkers usually seem to mean when they use the word 'happiness'. And tranquility was to be achieved not by strenuous chasing after enjoyable experiences, but by cultivating a kind of calm indifference towards one's circumstances. One way to do this, the Stoics argued, was by turning towards negative emotions and experiences; not shunning them, but examining them closely instead' (p28).

About meditation, and how it differs from mainstream approaches to managing our emotions, he writes:

'As the Buddhist teacher Steve Hagen says in his pithy guide-book Meditation: Now or Never, “we do not try to forcefully detach awareness from feelings, thoughts and expectations that arise in our mind. We don't try to force anything into or out of the mind. Rather, we let things rise and fall, come and go, and simply be... there will be times in meditation when we're relaxed, and times when our minds are agitated. We do not seek to attain a relaxed state, or to drive out our agitated and distracted mind. That is just more agitation.”'(p62)

Burkeman writes about the concept of 'goalodicy' (being too focused on goals an plans) and the damaging effects it can have:

'It is precisely this preoccupation [with plans] that the followers of the 'negative path' to happiness call into question because it turns out that setting and then chasing goals can often backfire in horrible ways. 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 goal setting and, more generally, to focus with less intensity on planning for how we would like the future to turn out.' (p85)

Burkeman writes a clear justification for focusing on the present moment:

'Instead of seeking ways to solve your problems in the future, it can be illuminating to try to ask yourself if you have any problems right now. The answer, unless you're currently in physical pain, is likely to be 'No'. Most problems, by definition, involve thoughts about how something might turn out badly in the future, whether in five minutes or five years, or thoughts about things that happened in the past.' (p116)

Quoting Thomas Merton (1949) The Seven Storey Mountain (p.91):

“The truth that many people never understand [-] is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt.” (p135).

About the author

Oliver Burkeman writes a weekly column in the Saturday Guardian (UK) called 'This Column Could Change Your Life...' in which he writes about 'social psychology, self-help culture, productivity and the science of happiness'. He is based in Brooklyn, New York and maintains a blog site (where I gleaned this bio) at www.oliverburkeman.com and has a twitter presence @oliverburkeman .