Very interesting and enjoyable book. The cure for obsessive optimism. ( )

Another thought provoking read by Oliver Burkeman. I really appreciate his willingness to explore a topic in a very different way, here the positive thinking to happiness self-help world. I have fallen into the self-help books trap at times and I know how enticing it can be. "This Book Will Change Your Life". Burkeman's approach isn't to debunk but to use the idea of making change as a launch pad to explore philosophical and other modes of thought and apply those to life change. It is the opposite of a self-help, there are not 10 rules to follow or 7 personality types or whatever. Rather a new way to think about what change you might want and how you can explore it or perhaps how he chooses to explore it and what spaces that might open for the reader. Just a really refreshing read that will stick with me.

This brought to mind a bit by Louis CK where he says «You gotta be optimistic [...]. Stupid. You have to be stupid. That's what "optimistic" means, you know... It means stupid. “Hey, maybe something nice will happen.” Why the f*** would anything nice ever happen? What are you, stupid?» Haha.
I'm not saying I'm a pessimist, but rather a realist who can't stand positive thinking and the self-help rubbish. ( )

Stoicism teaches us that how we feel about a thing is not the same as the thing itself. Traffic may be bad but I don’t have to feel bad about traffic. I can choose how I feel about a thing, a decision which can foster peace or chaos, depending on the choice. But acceptance does not mean resignation.

From the Buddhists, “I” and my thoughts are not the same. Observing my thoughts can lead to a healthy detachment from them, leading to greater clarity of action - I do not have to feel like doing a thing to do that thing.

Slow down.

Safety, comfort, control, security are impermanent. Life includes risk, discomfort, chaos, vulnerability, failure, and eventually death. The negative capacity is a skill that doesn’t avoid the difficult aspects of life, neither does it seek them out. But when they come, it embraces them for what they are.

Happiness is not measured by one’s success in the relentless pursuit of the positive; it is a clear eyed, curious (awe and wonder), open embrace of all the mysteries of life. ( )

The name says it all! If, like me, you have sat stone-faced opposite someone telling you people bring cancer upon themselves through negative thinking, then you'll see why the title suggests that the positive thinking movement is some kind of poison.

The Antidote has some nice practical ideas about stoicism, mindfulness meditation, the darker side of goal-setting, thinking about failure, and a brief introduction to some of the key ideas in CBT. If you forget all of it or it isn't for you at least the book will have made you laugh.

In the footnotes he mentions that there are some exceptions to the fact that self-help books are useless, one such exception being Feeling Good by David D. Burns. If you are going through a crisis or want to prepare yourself to deal with one in the future that is the book to read. The Antidote is an entertaining book about getting through the supermarket and the working day. ( )