Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking

Burkeman takes the reader easily and satisfyingly through his thoughts about how to live a good life, and indeed about whether or not we have a 'self'. He is up front about his reactions to his ideas, and self deprecating about his very human inability to live with his conclusions. This is an enjoyable and believable account, and as a result of reading the book I subscribe to his blog.

I hesitate to call any book life-changing, but this book comes close. Being an overly goal-oriented person, I really needed to read this book--In fact I'm rereading at this point. Luckily this is a pleasure, because the book is not only full of some real wisdom (in my opinion) but also well written and hilarious. I really do highly recommend it.

I always hated self help books, just because they break you and then build you back the way the "technique" is supposed to go. As I've noticed and learned from this book is that we are not created equal, so most self help books are not the right fit, even if we strictly follow them. Some of us just can't take positive thinking the way we are "supposed" to, some of us know from the beginning that even if we expect the best, we have to always prepare for the worst. What's different about this book it's that it really teaches to "go with the flow" and to accept life as a fluid continuos process, not as a step by step kind of thing. And that goals don't bring happiness, effort and focus do, as long as you accept your limitations. I would recommend this book to the generation that was taught that if you want it, you can have it, just because you're special.

What's is life all about? Don't know, still looking. Still reading and so far I think Oliver Burkeman may be on to something significant. (Within a few pages he had me thinking about white bears; no matter how hard I tried could not stop thinking about white bears; I'm thinking about white bears right now.)

This book is not so much about a terrible disease as it is about the perseverance of human spirit in the face of the disease and death. Being thankful for small miracles and genuine joie de vivre. It is sad and tragic but it is also warm and hopefull at the same time. This book made me rethink my priorities and outlook on life.

This is one of the best books I've ever read. I'm not a giddy joyful person and am so sick of books on the benefits of a positive attitude. Life happens and sometimes you can't make lemonade out of all the lemons. This book is fabulous. It explains that you don't have to keep trying to be so darn happy all the time. It's ok to just "be." The author is very funny and touches on religion without offending those who aren't Christian. I am Christian and can appreciate the few times it comes up. Read this book if you are tired of trying to be perfect and happy all the time. You will learn that life is so much more when you can just enjoy ring who you are, right now, without skipping around loving everyone and everything.

This was such an eye-opening book to me, and very inspirational. The great insight I had while reading it was about how we completely associate ourselves with our thoughts and ideas about happiness, and also I was so impressed with the book's premise that these thoughts and ideas seem to be our ever-changing "emotional weather", and I loved the talk about how it's rather unwise to believe that this emotional weather is something so permanent as to be taken so seriously. I'm 34 and I've read tons of literature like this, and never did I expect such unexpected insights. Thanks, author!

I have always been a little uncomfortable with positive thinking and the people who push it. I have read some blogs from Burkeman and was looking forward to this book. Simply put the book explores the use of positive thinking and the problems it can create for those who rely on it. But instead of simply leaving the book at that, Burkeman gives some interesting alternatives to positive thinking. The book does go into some incredible detail and at times a little hard to read. Also after reading all the detail it seems the book wraps up a bit abruptly. Still I found it an interesting and amusing read.

An easy to read introduction/reminder of ancient, well vetted ways to handle stress, worry and life's disasters.The reader joins the author on visits to various contemporary wise men with an open mind, health scepticism, and some awe.

Enlightening perspectives about how to think about life, but the human experience transcends thought, especially when seeking hope beyond this world. This book is refreshingly helpful, but disturbingly void of ultimate hope.

I volunteer at the Red Cross in the book section. We have stacks of self help books and I have often wondered if they have worked for people . Personally I cannot do affirmations - just emphasises my self doubts. I did once pick up a book on Positive thinking and then put it down, stating - no I won't read it. so this book title appealed to me and I was not disappointed. I could also relate to our attitude death.

It's worth noting that reviews for this book might be artificially low, as many of the purchasers are likely to be pessimists.

Kidding aside, the premise is good, and the book is well-written. I found the first few chapters to be much clearer than later chapters, but either way, if you find mindless positive thinking frustrating, this book is a reminder that your frustration is well-justified.

I'll keep this short. The only real flaw is that it's a bit anecdotal at times. Overall, I see this book as an explanation of purpose for emotions and affects we typically associate with ONLY negativity. All emotions and bad moments in our lives have purpose -just like the good ones.

I was expecting this book to glorify the view that life it's what it is and nothing more. However, while the author gets rid o of the sunshine, he doesn't remove the light. The processes of meditation, mindfulness, and goals still exist to provide a mechanism to move through life and manage your reaction to events.
It is the process and the mechanisms that are important, not necessarily the affirmations.

Happiness is truly found in loving what is in your life and not seeking some outside fleeting and superficial goal. Confronting fears and overcoming challenges that life inevitably brings is where authentic happiness really takes root. This book takes an honest look at our culture's obsession with positive thinking and some of the destructiveness caused by it .

This was a solid survey that wa well-researched and filled with personal explorations that th autho took to pursue his concept. Definitely, this book was more philosophical in its discourse as the title implies.

As someone who doesn't lean towards an optimistic view on life, it was really helpful. Made me feel normal and with a few new strategies to make more out of life - without having to resort to inane and meaningless 'positive thinking' tactics.

I like the way this book unfolds; lots of simple reminders that life is messy, often uncontrollable despite our best anxious efforts, and something to embrace while we have the chance. Definitely recommended as a quick easy read and straightforward flow.

This book may have been written with me in mind. The irritating barrenness of most positive thinking and self-help hogwash has always seemed not just banal but actively damaging. This book beats all hell out of that trap!

This book worth 5-Stars, because I feel it is real and talks about the truth about this life. It is not like other books like the Secret, the happiness project or others alike written by charlatans. This book worth a read a few times. I highly recommend this book. I picked up this book because I saw Daniel H. Pink recommended. Thanks Oliver for writing such a beautiful book.

We are surrounded by the attitudes of success and desires for certainty. "The Antidote" is a much needed counter that faces the reality of life as it is. The extent of background research was very evident.

It's always great to read a book that confirms your ideas - and when it's written, so that you most of the time just sit there laughing out loud - what's not to like?
Oliver Burkeman is a great writer and this book is more like a real book than his first that suffered from the confusion that most collections of blogposts do. The Antidote is a more coherent book - but this also has its problems.
Over time it looses some of its momentum and its ironic humor. This is of course necessary to a certain extent, as he wishes not only to critizise Positive Thinking and self help litterature, but to present a solution for the rest of us.
This doesn't mean that you shouldn't read it - please do! Everybody should (especially my boss!!)- I just can't give it five stars.
So read the book and memento mori!

It offers great insights, different points of view, and good references. I love the fact that the writer when in a journey himself to be able to write in first person, about the experience. Great reading.

For those interested in self evaluation and personal growth, I highly recommend it. The key to self realization and fulfillment starts with understanding why you think and act a certain way. I enjoyed this read very much!

Surprising the twists this book took. Some of it went over my head because the authors internal processing got in the way but occasionally a big idea would jump out "negative capability" I will never forget

I really rather quite despise self-help books :) and I was not eager to read it but it was recommended to me by someone who knows what to read. And I am glad I did it, as a non-optimist. It is interesting to learn how the positive-thinking and goal-oriented world is wrong when it is explained with the help of scientific research... This book contains no revelations per se but it makes suprising connections between different aspects of life. And it is informative. I certainly hope a lot of people will read it and dwell on it.

I have studied the positive movement and other new age things for the last 5 years, while some things definitely work, some definitely are crazy delusions and this book is a fascinating journey into how we can conquer those frustrations. I appreciate the author for this research and immense work to make this book available to the world

I was a bit tentative about getting this book, never mind reading it. But once I started through the first few
pages I was very much getting into his viewpoint and well thought out and documented reasoning.
Definitely recommend this book!

Instead, it is a fascinating look at the idea of happiness and the different ways people seek and sometimes find contentment. The author is witty and willing to give lots of ideas a try himself. Thoroughly readable.

I read a lot of books. I really like books and since I choose them fairly carefully I generally enjoy to some degree most of the books I read. This book is really well done. The longer I read it the more I liked it. There is no guide to happiness to be found in this book as much as a lot of thoughtful analysis of what is wrong with the approach most people take and some very good discussion on what might be a better approach.

The author is an engaging writer and doesn't take himself too seriously, but he approaches the subject seriously. The main idea is that embracing negative thoughts, uncertainty, insecurity, etc. is a better approach to happiness than positive thinking. The author doesn't really define happiness but you get the point.

This is not a light and breezy read but it is not difficult either. You will benefit to the extent you think deeply while reading it. I loved it.

You can see the chapters and preview text by taking advantage of the store's "Search Inside" feature which this book has. I highly recommend this thoughtful and well-written work.

A very insightful and thought provoking disourse on why motivational coaches and self help courses fail. Consider the virtues of stoicism and zen philosophy and you are well on your way to being right with the world.

This read simply provides a much needed perspective on the contemporary persuit of ”happiness”, whatever that actually is, being properly watered down throughout these times. You may not indeed be able to change the outer things bothering you in life, but there are surely other ways to approach them than utter negativity or its much scarier counterpart.

I wasted a lot of time on positive thinking, visualization and all the other self-help material down through the years. This book pokes holes in all of it and can free up your thinking in a lot of ways. Highly reccommended.

I loved this book and the experience of reading it through the holidays surrounded by family of different faiths and perspectives on "happiness." Never before have I found a book that sums up all the thoughts I've had about "the cult of optimism" and that gives you practical and concise ideas of how to be different but have the same goal of being happy.

If you have ever wondered why you are not moved to participate in the Harvard Business School movement that has swept across the Western world and permeated almost all workplaces, this book explains it all and your own innate distrust of KPI's and alike!

This is a great overview of some more realistic theories of happiness. I am enjoying it thoroughly and recommending it widely. Just bought copies for my parents. I even have my kids saying "what's the worst case scenario?" Worth yourntime and $$.

This book is straight to the point and pokes holes in the whole self improvement industry approach. To come to terms with our own idiosyncrasies and to be honest with ourselves is the best advice that this plain speaking and common sense book gives. A delightful read.

Good read. Each topic take. On its own is nothing particularly new but as a whole it gives you new insight into the negative parh to happiness. I relly liked it and hope to include some of the suggestions into my daily life.

Having read many books about how to use positive thinking and attended lectures and seminars etc. over a number of years I found this book to be refreshing and in tune with real life. A positive outlook can work to a point in many situations but can become a stumbling block to real growth in the form of denial which this book illustrates very well.

This book really is an antidote to all the self-help gurus and their inane platitudes. At the same time it's a great look at life and all its foibles for those with intelligence and commonsense. Never dull and full of insights, this is a fresh new look at human nature for all of us. I loved every word of it.

Interesting and amusingly much more fun to read than most of the products of the culture of positivity that it critiques. The book does well exploring alternative routes to having a better life (including a discussion about whether "Happiness" and "Success" are really what improves our life). Some of the international tourism was a bit questionable, but overall I really enjoyed the study and particularly (for this book at least) the author follows the core message and never takes himself or his material too seriously.

Great literature review of the philosophy and psychology of negative thinking and negative capability. If you interested in caring more about the day to day by contemplating everything that could go wrong, but thankfully hasn't, this is a great book. Or if you're just interested in contrary viewpoints in psychology and the thinkers who wield them :)

Someone who buys "self-help" books based on glossy title and back-cover frequently, this book was a real eye opener. Made sense on a lot of issues, sometimes controversial, but nevertheless very helpful. What I learned life is too short, so don't try to be perfect, accept it as it is. A must read.

I had great hopes for this book, but then started reading it and realized that it simply replaces overachieving obnoxiousness with masochistic nihilism, aka Buddhism and the like.

Instead of the "beauty" of emptiness and unfulfillment, what's wrong with the excluded middle option of "good enough imperfection" -- or, as the Japanese call it, shibusa? Google it sometime and see why it's a definite improvement over what this book is pushing.

The book starts very well, undermining so many myths about mental ill health. For example, it shows that ironical processes are dominant in metacognitive processes, so that trying to eliminate negative emotions simply reinforces them. But then, everything is reversed in the second chapter onward, the author adopting the creeds of cognitive therapy, such as the mistaken belief that one can alter the way one feels simply by changing one's beliefs. So the book takes us from showing how basic thoughts and emotions cannot be easily altered to the proposition that it is possible to do so. That kind of confusion pervades the general positions of current theories of emotional processing.

I really enjoyed reading this book. As a pessimist, I always thought that most of my ideas about life were not shared with mankind. The book showed me that some of my personal strategies are in fact quite common and proved effective also by others.

If you hate self-help books I am sure that you will love reading this book, if you love them you SHOULD read this book.

I enjoyed the author's humorous writing style, but his anglicized interpretations of Buddhism & Stoicism are boring and steeped in pompous false assumptions. Despite its name, this is really just another run of the mill self help book. You would be better off reading actual Rational Emotive Therapy books by Albert Ellis or Dialectical Behavioral Therapy Books by Marsha Linehan than wasting your time with this cutesy fluff piece.

I picked up this book at Carmichael Books in Louisville. It sat there, quite innocuous with a rather mundane title and a rather funny looking cover. I’d read about the book previously and the topic looked entertaining, so I bought it. Little did I know that this was going to change my world view completely.
The Antidote questions, in the first chapter, our obsession with being happy, and in so doing it also questions the underlying folk wisdom that we take for granted. Such things as our cult like adhesion to the western definition of happiness, our goal setting habit, our aversion to anything that smacks of negativity, our fear of failure, our discomfort with death, and our deep seated dread of uncertainty. In eight well researched and written chapters, Mr. Burkeman dives in and dives in deep. Unlike most books investigating a specific subject, Mr. Burkeman does not just cite and regurgitate academic research results, although he does a quite reasonable job of that. He dives into experiencing a number of topics that challenges the status quo and certainly places him into some uncomfortable situations, all in order to conduct research for the book. Some of the more satisfying portions of the book are his descriptions of his own feelings and mental states as he is conducting his research.
Another source of reading pleasure are his in depth interviews with people. Rather than just doing a cursory review and restatement of the salient points of the interviews, Mr. Burkeman goes into deeper descriptive elocution of the interviews, this part of the chapters were wonderful peeks into the conversation and gives the reader a snapshot of the discussion. His subjects were eclectic and representative of the fascinating world that he had jumped into with both feet.
The breadth of the book is broad, Mr. Burkeman discusses the Stoic philosophers and philosophy, the Buddhist philosophy and how the two correlate. He examines the impossible situation that we force ourselves into when we adapt the ubiquitous and pedantic habit of goal setting, and how our fear of uncertainty reinforces our grip onto that goal setting habit. He then delves into our fear of failure, and how some have embraced failure as a guide and utilize that examination of failure as the guiding principle towards achieving tranquility, in place of happiness. He invokes the Stoic practice of looking at the most negative possible outcome in order to gain perspective and alleviate fears, fear of uncertainty, and submitting to the Stoic practice of dichotomy of control. He also dives in on the Stoic practice of Memento Mori, which forces us to examine the role of death and dying in our culture and attempts to get our minds to accept the finality of death and to overcome our fear of death. I must admit that this part of the book was particularly difficult for me, yet this practice does allow me to understand this previously taboo subject. I am still working on this part of my own thoughts.
The Antidote is not an easy read, which s what makes it special. The integrity of Mr. Burkeman who made sure that he had skin in the game as he did research was a singular point of merit; it made me that much more interested because he made the effort. Mr. Burkeman’s epilogue in the Antidote was matter of fact and rational. It did not appeal to nostalgia nor emotional hysteria, instead he remained Stoic in his story telling, which is the very attractive quality that permeates the entire book.

I recently attended a two-day workshop on developing publicity for SMEs. The course was mainly about teaching you how to write a press release that would attract media attention and where to distribute it. It was an excellent, practical workshop but even it was permeated with a section on positive thinking. I am all for realistic goal setting and love quoting one of my first sales mentors that that the only thing more contagious than enthusiasm is the lack of it. However when someone starts quoting The Secret and the pseudo-scientific Law of Attraction my bulls*** monitor starts ringing alarm bells. Rhonda Byrne, the book’s author, claims to have never studied physics or science at school, and yet when she read complex books on quantum physics she understood them perfectly because she wanted to understand them. The wish is often father to the thought. I studied quantum physics at Cambridge. The desire to understand quantum physics burned within me but the reality is that the mathematics was beyond my understanding. So I switched to economics.

Thus when the store recommended the The Antidote and I read in the summary that it is our constant effort to be happy is what is making us miserable I decided to buy and read the book. My decision was reinforced that 209 of the 228 reviews were positive.

The key message from the book is 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. Burkeman writes well. The book begins by demonstrating why so many of the 'Positive Thinking' schemes fail. Burkeman then examines a diverse range of sources: Buddhism, stoicism, cognitive behavioural therapy, and doubts on the concept of the self to arrive at a philosophy that says authentic happiness is only achieved when we can confront our fears and overcome the challenges that life inevitably brings.

While a I am a great believer that nature is twice is important as nurture as fellow alumnus of Cambridge I think his study there has had major effect on Burkeman. He studied Social and Political Sciences matriculating in 1994. I was 30 years earlier but Cambridge still has the reputation of being the ultimate rationalist university. The common impression that Oxford is stronger in politics and the humanities, while Cambridge is stronger in the sciences and engineering. At Cambridge you are taught to doubt everything, and always seek rational basis for belief, particularly if it can be either be proven by experimental science or mathematics. Free and open debate that allowed differing opinions to finally reach a conclusion was another core principle. While he studied the “soft sciences” the Cambridge approach is definitely inculcated in this book. The other great benefit of Cambridge is the tutorial system. I had to write two essays a week and then defend them in an hour long session with my tutors. Under that discipline you learn to write and to think.

My guess is that many of the reviewers have not read many books based on this approach and it is another reason for its popularity. Unfortunately with the rise of political correctness and moral certainty by their students, universities (including Cambridge) are becoming places of censure and prohibition. Regrettably books like The Anecdote are going to become rarer.

I used to do the lab. work for a local group of oncologists, and one evening I heard someone crying in the waiting room. The rest of the staff had left and the doctors were doing rounds, so I went to see what was going on. I found a patient, sitting there, crying quietly. She had been in remission twice, but had recently relapsed. She said she needed to talk to one of the doctors because she didn't know what she was doing wrong. When we talked further, she said she had been using some visualization tapes, where you are directed to imagine that lasers or your vigilante white cells are killing your tumor. She had also been using some “positive thinking for cancer patients” tapes where you are told to repeat, “I am healthy” and “I am cancer-free.” She was incredibly upset, not so much by the cancer, but because she felt that her inability to cure herself with positive thinking meant that she was doing something wrong and it was her fault. For me, that moment confirmed that positive thinking, used in the wrong circumstances and for the wrong reasons, can do more harm than good. The Antidote explores that interesting idea.

Oliver Burkeman is not out to bash positive thinking, but rather to explore “the negative path”, the idea that the more we search for happiness and security, the less we achieve them. This is done through chapters on Stoicism, the ways goals can be counterproductive or destructive, insecurity, the nonattachment of Zen Buddhism, failure, and our fear of death. He presents ideas about what might make our lives less unhappy, but this isn't in the typical self-help form of strict rules or a program to be blindly followed.

The conclusions Burkeman seems to come to are to embrace insecurity, and stop searching for happiness and quick fixes. Rather than thinking about everything in a positive way, it is much better to see things realistically, accurately, and truthfully. That is a philosophy I wholeheartedly agree with.

Someone on Goodreads recommended me this book as tangentially related to my death project, and I vaguely remembered being interested in it when it came out. Except for a “Memento Mori” chapter on “death as a way of life,” it’s mostly about living well and not dying well – but the dichotomy is sort of a false one, and anyways we the living will have to deal with the deaths of many others prior to our own.

To make a long story short, The Antidote explains why most positivity practices don’t (and can’t) work reliably to enhance human happiness. Monitoring your effervescent, chattering internal monologue for evidence of happiness actually causes you to hone in on the negative emotions in there. Visualizing what can go wrong is often much more instructive than visualizing what can go right.

Goals don’t always make people motivated, they can easily make people stupid instead. True, full security in life is both impossible and undesirable to achieve, but that doesn’t stop people from trying (at great cost). Failure has become a little trendy since the book was published, but Burkeman is still right that many failures go regrettably unexamined and unlearned from.

At the highest level, failed happiness can result from a misunderstanding of what one’s “self” is in the first place. Since you are not your thoughts, there’s nothing wrong with you if you have thoughts you don’t like. A slim breezy volume like The Antidote is unlikely to convince you of a totally different theory of self than whatever one you already hold, but pushing back against positivity in all its forms does lead there. Planting intellectual seeds (like bits of Eckhart Tolle and Alan Watts) sometimes bears fruit only much later.

As much as I appreciated The Antidote, I do have 2 complaints about the book. The first regards a big fat hole in the story: if positive thinking doesn’t work, can’t work, then why on earth is it so popular? Negative thinking and mindfulness meditation may indeed provide a better path forward towards happiness broadly construed, or at least a life well-lived. But still my story-telling brain wants for an error theory about positive thinking.

The best I can muster right now is that people are aesthetically attracted to positive thinking, which enhances the perceived benefits of positive thinking. At the same time, this aesthetic appeal shields positivity believers from absorbing a gradually-unfolding truth: that positivity doesn’t quite work like it’s supposed to. Instead, positivity ratchets itself up – no matter how bad things get, no matter how little positivity practices help, their value remains unfalsified and the answer is always more cowbell. I don’t know where the original aesthetic judgment (or any aesthetic judgment…) comes from though.

My second complaint is a bit more specific to me. As Burkeman freely admits in the final pages of The Antidote, “I’m acutely aware that, during the time I spent exploring this perspective on life, no great tragedies befell me, and my family and friends largely thrived.” As it happens, my father has come down with a rare, incurable, aggressive brain cancer, so I enjoyed no such luxury in my exploration of the antidote.

So, when I ask the question “what is the worst that could happen?,” the answer seems rather close to what is in fact happening — closer than it might be for most. Sometimes this makes me feel bad, and especially unlucky. But at other times, I am forced to realize that you do survive even the worst-case scenarios (except for the ones that kill you, duh).

I don’t have to like or “accept” what happened in any strong sense, I don’t have to develop any sense of “closure” or come to see this thing as a “blessing in disguise.” I don’t have to jam my random thoughts and cycling emotions into any coherent narrative about what’s unfolding. I just have to keep living my life, which is what I was already doing and all anyone ever can do. The freedom afforded from revised standards is an antidote all its own.

I have many more book reviews at readaboutdeath dot com

I bought this book based on a WSJ excerpt/review and to be honest, I was quite disappointed. Not being a big fan of eternal optimism, I was intrigued by the concept of the book, unfotunately the concept is better than the execution. There are some useful insights sprinkled throughout but there is also a LOT of time spent exploring Buddahism, and other avenues of mystical nonsense (like "How do I Know That I Actually Exist?).

Give me more pragmatic ideas and skip the Eastern religion aspect (or be honest and let potential buyers know what's inside).

I've never been impressed by "Power of Positive Thinking" nonsense. So this seemed like my kind of book. And at first, I really enjoyed it.

But as I kept reading, I started getting more and more depressed. I may not buy into "think positively & achieve everything you want!" - but that doesn't mean I was ready to accept "don't dream, don't strive, don't think, don't believe, because you're unimportant, your individual existence is meaningless, and once you die it will be as if you never existed at all."

I can't judge anything after that, because I had to put it down or risk slitting my wrists.

I’ve never been one to read self help books (not that there’s anything wrong with those who do) it’s just never been my cup of tea. However, I’ve been in a funk lately after a family death and felt very lost and ended up searching for something? happiness? who knows? After reading several “finding happiness” books I was even more stressed out because I couldn’t follow 100 steps to happiness or only think positively, etc. Someone recommended this book in a negative review for another “happiness” book (thank God) and within the first chapter I felt relief! I’m not alone! I’m not the only skeptic or realist out there! I plan on doing more reading about stoism and some of the books referenced in this book (I tried eckart tolle’s book a while back before this one and although a lot of it made sense it was just too slow for me) I purchased the audible version and the narrator was great. I definitely recommend this book!!

Perhaps the most deflating thing you can do to a supposedly serious book of non-fiction is to describe it as 'journalism’, suggesting that, whatever its merits, the work is essentially ephemeral. Oliver Burkeman is a very accomplished journalist, and he even describes himself in The Antidote as 'a reporter’. Yet despite being highly entertaining (you can read it for its entertainment value alone) his book is eminently serious, tackling important issues like insecurity and the sense of self. Moreover, Burkeman’s argument that adopting a negative outlook has positive benefits is potentially life-enhancing. It’s an idea that’s pursued rigorously and it gives coherence to what could otherwise have read as little more than an episodic collection of feature articles.

The Antidote is intended to have a wider and more popular appeal than that of the average psychology text. In true investigative reporter style, Burkeman seeks out colourful, 'larger-than-life’, characters who embody attitudes, theories and beliefs, like Positive Thinking and Buddhism. So, for example, he seeks out a modern-day Seneca (enter Keith of Watford), or a mind-changing, bench-sleeping, drop-out (the Russell Square hermit, Ulrich Tolle). He visits a lawless and life-threatening part of Mexico which, infested with criminal gangs and with zero police presence, is home to a bizarre new religious cult devoted to Saint Death.

But there is purpose behind each 'journalistic’ foray. According to those quoted in the chapter entitled Who’s There?, for example, there may not be any such entity as the undivided self, and it may not even be meaningful to talk in terms of self and non-self (or the dividing line between one’s body and the space around it). But for me, if that’s a meaningful concept, this chapter is the most puzzling and rewarding of all. While the book as a whole is one you’ll probably want, or need, to revisit in order to puzzle over its implications. For despite its irreverent wit and often flippant prose, The Antidote is deceptively profound.

I picked up Antidote after hearing an interview with the author on Slate.com. The book is well-written, concise, interesting, and doesn't labor any point too much. The author clearly spent a lot of time researching the book, and some of his experiences were memorable, being presented in a witty, self-deprecating way.

The discussion presented in the book is more philosophical than of the self-help variety. Self-help books are traditionally positive thinking books while philosophy books are not, so it is a natural choice. That is not to say that the book is dense or inaccessible. It is highly accessible to any reader with copious examples to illustrate its points.

I came to this book with previous experience with Buddhism, some knowledge of Stoicism, and a tendency to feel nauseous when encountering the positive thinking mantra. Before reading this book, I assumed that this made me a bad, "negative" person, but after reading it I realized that, if anything, my so-called negativity was more beneficial to me than the positivity that many people are desperate to cultivate in themselves. As the book explains, being "negative" doesn't mean harping on the downside of everything, but it does mean taking a path away from strict positivity. It explains that most people ignore the negative sides of life, trying to wish them away in rosy colored aphorisms and mantras. Those negative aspects, however, are part of life and being unable to confront them and help people accept them is a big part of why the positive thinking manuals fail.

Some of the best parts of the book:

- I found the idea that "you don't have to feel like doing something to do it" a relief. Of course, I knew this when it came to doing the dishes, but I'd never applied it to my workaday life, having had it drilled into me that you have to love your job every moment and jump out of bed with excitement to do it. Although sometimes your job is so bad you should quit. Everyone feels like not getting down to work sometimes, no matter what they do.

- The idea of living life with an awareness of death was something I'd heard about in the context of Steve Jobs and Buddhist philosophy, but I think that this book presents it in a more personal way that you don't have to be a successful CEO or a monk to practice it.

On the whole, I highly recommend this book at anyone who has failed to find what they're looking for in the self-help section and wants an easy introduction to a whole new perspective on life.

When journalists write psych books, they
have good research, good references, and
start out with a good premise.
Then they get lost and are unable to get to
the point of the issue. Lack of understanding.

This is not a self help book. In fact, the author (Burkeman) casually excoriates self-help books, positive thinking seminars and our culture (especially in the business world) of forced optimism. And yet, ironically, I found it quite helpful in thinking about ways to successfully navigate a world in which optimism is not only misplaced, but possibly — probably — damaging.

It’s a sticky semantic wicket. To resolve it, I categorize it as a “self-harm reduction” book chock full of melancholy insights and proven life strategies culled from all the gloomiest thinkers (like the Stoic philosophers – it can always be worse) and religions (like the Buddhists — all is transitory and it is only because we cleave to our own emotions, and judge, that life seems so challenging).

The author takes a droll, meandering, satisfyingly cynical stroll through the cult of optimism and points out why that mindset is so conducive to disappointment and dissatisfaction. As he explains it, we’ve come to think the power of positive thinking can change the universe, bend it to our liking — it can’t, won’t and doesn’t. To maintain the charade in the face of a constant stream of data to the contrary, we have to resort to extraordinary mental gymnastics, or drugs, or else it all comes crashing down into depression, paralysis and resentment.

It’s a topsy turvy world in which having high expectations ensures we will be chronically disappointed — either when we fail, as we are bound to, or by ultimately realizing we aren’t satisfied after achieving them — and setting goals blinds us to the possibilities of the unexpected and constantly craving happiness in a universe so filled with misery ensures we can’t take pleasure in the simple, glorious fact of our own existence.

It’s a somewhat harsh tour of the dark side of optimism, but it’s one well worth taking. You won’t be happier after reading it, but you will be better equipped to embrace your unhappiness.

The book was great. I read it very quickly. It was very accessible, cohesive, and didn't go overboard with personal asides and anecdotes. Don't let the subtitle throw you - I thought it was going to be very snarky, but in fact it's an honest examination of some approaches to "happiness" that simply go against the grain of "positive thinking." That's the end of my book review, and what follows is more my own personal critique of some of the philosophies it put forward.

The strongest chapter was the earliest, on Stoicism. This is a philosophy with which I am becoming very intrigued. I've ordered a layman's book on it, and will refrain from complaining that this book was not entirely about it. So definitely more to come from me on that in the future.

The next chapter, on Buddhism, managed to contain a kernel or two of helpful advice for me - not surprisingly, the parts where it overlapped with Stoicism. But my complaints about Buddhism as a philosophy were epitomized in the following chapter about Eckhart Tolle, who is apparently someone who literally sits on park benches staring into space all day, very likely with drool coming out of his mouth. This was always the caricature I held up as the logical extreme of where Buddhist philosophy takes you. Lo and behold, someone actually lives this way. This is "happiness"?

What really takes the cake is his foray into the slums of Nairobi. In a sense the weakest chapter is this one, ostensibly about security; he visits the slums to show us Exhibit A of people who live without security. Many of them are very obviously "happy", and he submits the theory that it is because they have looked into the very maw of deepest insecurity, and learned to embrace it. I have a better idea - let's look at an actual quote from someone born and raised in the slum: "So you take what you have and you get on with it. And you can be happy like that, because happiness comes from your family and other people, and in making something better of yourself, and in new horizons."

I think that's an EXCELLENT theory! I'd also like to propose that one reason the poverty-stricken Kenyans are pretty happy is that they sure as hell aren't sitting around practicing Buddhist meditation.

To answer my own question, I'd say YES the Antidote does provide a cure. If you view lofty, over-promising self help books as detrimental to your health, then The Antidote provides an alternate viewpoint that is grounded in the belief that things DO go wrong.

Author Oliver Burkeman shares his journey into the 'self help' world and what he finds a long the way. This book is greatly entertaining and Burkeman delivers it in a comical, self-depreciating manner that had me laughing as I read. However, I do have a few bones to pick with the author's unpacking of `self help' content; I mean isn't this book just another form of `self help' anyways?

Burkeman is attacking his idea of the self help industry and that is the (myopic) saccharine sweet "you can do anything, be anyone, achieve-it-all-just-by-being-you..." notion. Although Burkeman does some good surface research, there could have been a bit more depth and explanation into some of the self help methods that work. Mind you, that may have taken away from how much fun The Antidote is to read.

I think that there are many great life changing books and authors in this field that offer measurable tools to help folks change their lives for the better. Just think as Burkeman being opposed to the wishy-washy, crystal love, potpourri energy field kind of self help scene; a defender of false hope as it were, and you'll be fine.

I think where The Antidote shines is in delivering a balanced look at techniques from Buddhism and Stoicism that can help people balance the ups and downs in life. What I get from The Antidote is that if you have drank from the well of `nothing ever goes wrong' and are left feeling deflated when things do inevitably 'go wrong', The Antidote will give you a different perspective on how to manage expectations. Remember strive for the best and plan for the worst.

This book was a super fun read with many helpful insights. Great for those with a slightly cynical bend. Big thumbs up for entertainment!

Read it if... you hate self help fluff, but want to feel better when the s..t hits the fan.

Don't read it if... you always look on the bright side and this works for you or you are well versed in Buddhism/Stoicism (as you will find these topics only scratching the surface)

I'm generally an upbeat kind of guy and consider myself a positive thinker . . . so when I came across THE ANTIDOTE: HAPPINESS FOR PEOPLE WHO CAN'T STAND POSITIVE THINKING (Canongate Books) by Oliver Burkeman, I was intrigued by the premise.The author contends that trying too hard to be happy is making us miserable. In fact, he presents many interesting examples in this book that may well be considered as a celebration of the power of negative thinking.
Among them:* [Attending a motivational seminar featuring Dr. Robert Schuler] *Here it is, then," Dr. Schuller declares, stiffly pacing the stage, which is decorated with two enormous banners reading "MOTIVATE" and "SUCCEED!", seventeen American flags, and a large number of potted plants. "Here's the thing that will change your life forever." Then he barks a single syllable-"Cut!"-and leaves a dramatic pause before completing his sentence: " . . . the word impossible out of your life! Cut it off! Cut it out forever!" . . .It is only months later, back at my home in New York, reading the headlines over morning coffee, that I learn the news that the largest church in the United States constructed entirely from glass has filed for bankruptcy, a word Dr. Schuller had apparently neglected to eliminate from his vocabulary.I also liked how he cited the work of Albert Ellis:* What Ellis had grasped about his unstated beliefs concerning conversation with women-an insight he would later extend to the beliefs that lie behind all instances of worry or anxiety-is that they were absolutist. To put it another way, it wasn't just that he wanted to be less shy, and that he wanted to be able to talk to women. Rather, he had been operating under the absolutist conviction that he needed their approval. Later, he would coin a name for this habit of mind: "musturbation." We elevate those things we want, those things we would prefer to have, into things we believe we must have; we feel we must perform well in certain circumstances, or that other people must treat us well. Because we think these things must occur, it follows that it would be an absolute catastrophe if they did not. No wonder we get anxious: we've decided that if we failed to meet our goal it wouldn't merely be bad, but completely bad-absolutely terrible.And Burkeman shared this neat way of behaving at funerals:* Francisco parked the van, and we walked into the cemetery. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to what I was seeing. Many of the gravestones were only rough concrete slabs, or stubby pieces of wood, but almost none were unattached. Next to each, sitting in folding chairs, or cross-legged on the ground, were groups of two, three, or four people, sometimes more, holding murmured conversations and drinking tequila from paper cups. In one corner, a mariachi band in full costume strolled from grave to grave, serenading every headstone in turn. I stopped a woman who was carrying armfuls of rugs and chairs towards a nearby headstone, and asked what she was doing. "Oh, it's my mother," she said brightly, gesturing at the grave. "We come every year."I don't think that THE ANTIDOTE has made me a negative thinker. However, it has made me open to the possibility that there are many different ways to look at happiness.

The extraordinary theme of this book, backed by the author's excellent elaboration through Stocism, Buddhism, medieval tradition of memento mori, New Age ideas particularly those of Eckhart Tolle, is as follows:-

The effort to try to feel happy is often precisely the thing that makes us miserable. And that it is our constant efforts to eliminate the negative - insecurity, uncertainty, failure or sadness - that is what causes us to feel so insecure, anxious, uncertain, or unhappy....an alternative approach, a "negative path" to happiness, that entailed taking a radically different stance toward those things that most of use spend our lives trying hard to avoid. It involved learning to enjoy uncertainty, embracing insecurity, stop trying to think positive, becoming familiar with failure, even learning to value death. To be truly happy, we might actually need to be willing to experience more negative emotions - or, at the very least, to learn to stop running quite so far from them.

As a realist who reads self help books often for motivation and inspiration, I appreciate much the author's strive to tell the other side of the "Positive Thinking" "hypothesis". His perspective on Stocism and Buddhism in the first half of the book really opened my mind, which had been far more insightful and interesting than the second one. Pity! In short, readable. Recommended for all self help book lovers, particularly who regard themselves followers of positive thinking.

p.s. Below please find some of my favorite passages for your reference.
The law of reversed effort, or the backwards law, the notion that in all sorts of contexts, from our personal lives t politics, all this trying to make everything right is a big part of what's wrong. When you try to stay on the surface of the water, you sink; but when you try to sink, you float and that insecurity is the result of trying to be secure. The harder we try with the conscious will to do something, the less we shall succeed. Pg9
Part of the problem with positive thinking, and many related approaches to happiness, is exactly this desire to reduce big questions to one size fits all self-help tricks or ten point plans. By contrast, the negative path offers no such single solution. Pg10
"The precisely counterintuitive error": is when we manage to do the worst possible thing, the blunder so outrageous that we think about it in advance and resolve not to let that happen. Pg13
Metacognition occurs when thought takes itself as an object. Mainly, it's an extremely useful skill: it is what enables us to recognize when we are being unreasonable, or sliding into depression, or being afflicted by anxiety, and then to do something about it. But when we use metacognitive thoughts directly to try to control our other, every day, object level thoughts, by suppressing images of white bears or replacing gloomy thoughts with happy ones - we run into trouble. When you try not to think of a white bear, you may experience some success in forcing alternative thoughts into your mind. At the same time though, a metacognitive monitoring process will crank into action, to scan your mind for evidence of whether you are succeeding or failing at the task. And this is where things get perilous, because if you try too hard, if you are tired, stressed, depressed, attempting to multi-task, or otherwise suffering from mental load - it will frequently go wrong. The monitoring process will start to occupy more than its fair share of limelight on the cognitive start. It will jump to the forefront of consciousness, and suddenly all you will be able to thin about is white bears, and how badly you rare doing at nothing thinking about them. Pg14-5
A person who has resolved to think positive must constantly scan his or her mind for negative thoughts - yet that scanning will draw attention to the presence of negative thoughts. Worse, if the negative thoughts start to predominate, a vicious spiral may kind in, since the failure to think positively may become the trigger for a new stream of self-berating thoughts, about not thinking positive enough. Pg16
We think of distress as a one-step procedure; something in the outside world causes distress in your interior world. In fact, it's a two-step procedure;: between the outside event and the inside emotion is a belief......This is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so. Shakespeare has Hamlet, say, very Stoically indeed. Pg31
Judgments are in our power, that our emotions are determined by our judgments, and that we can always step back and ask: "Is it other people that bother me? Or the judgment I make about other people?" pg31
One of the greatest enemies of human happiness is hedonic adaptation - the predictable and frustrating way in which any new source of pleasure we obtain, swiftly gets relegated to the backdrop of our lives. We grow accustomed to it, and so it ceases to deliver so much joy. It follows, then, that regularly reminding yourself that you might lose any f the things you currently enjoy - indeed, that you will definitely lose them all, in the end, when death catches up with you - would reverse the adaptation effect....remind yourself that you love a mortal, something not your own; it has been given to you for the present, nor inseparably nor forever, but like a fig, or a bunch of grapes a t a fixed seasons of the year. Pg33
As Seneca frequently observes, we habitually act as if our control over the world were much greater than it really is.....And the behavior of other people is even further beyond our control. For most conventional notions of happiness - which consists in making things the way you want them to be - this poses a big problem....The only things we can truly control, the Stoics argue, are our judgments, - what we believe - about our circumstances. Pg39
Premeditation of evils: what's the absolute worst that could happen as a result of this? Almost always, asking this question will reveal your judgments about the situation to have been exaggerated, and cutting them down to size will vastly increase your chances of replacing distress or annoyance with calm. Pg41
To live nonattachedly is to feel impulses, think thoughts, and experience life without becoming hooked by mental narratives about how things should be, or should never be, or should remain forever. The perfectly nonattached Buddhist would be simply, calmly present, and non-judgmentally aware. Pg54
The idea of using meditation to make your life better or happier in any conventional sense was a misunderstanding. The point, instead, was to learn how to stop trying to fix things, to stop being so preoccupied with trying to control one's experience of the world to give up trying to replace unpleasant thoughts and emotions with more pleasant ones, and to see that, through dropping the pursuit of happiness a more profound peach might result. Pg54
If you've ever gripped the arms of a dentist's chair, in expectation of imminent agony that never actually arrives, you'll know that a big part of the problem is attachment to thoughts about pain, the fear of its arrival, and the internal struggle to avoid it. Pg65
The routines of almost all famous writers, from Charles Darwin to John Grisham, similarly emphasize specific starting times, or number of hours worked, or words written. Such rituals provide a structure to work in, whether or not the feeling of motivation or inspiration happens to be present. The y let people work alongside negative or positive emotions, instead of getting distracted by the effort of cultivating only positive ones. Inspiration is for amateurs, The rest of us just show up and get to work. Pg69
Future: The period of time in which our affairs prosper, out friends are true and our happiness is assured. - Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary pg75
Why are you unhappy? Because 99.9% of everything you think, and of everything you do, is for yourself - and there isn't one. - Wei Wu Wei, Ask the Awakened pg101
Imagine, Descartes begins, an evil demon who is determined to paly as many tricks on you as possible - a demon "supremely powerful and cunning", who has devoted all his efforts to deceiving you. How far could the demon's deceptions go? Don't forget, Descartes points out, that you rely for your entire understanding of the external world on your fives sense; ....and so in principle everything you think you know about the world might in fact be a breathtakingly detailed and convincing illusion, concocted by the evil demon. Looking out from inside your head, Descartes asks, how could you every be completely certain that "the sky, the air, the earth,.....are not merely delusions, traps that the demon has laid for your credulity?....And yet despite all these possibilities for deception, there is exactly one thing and one thing only that cannot possibly be an illusion, Descartes maintains, and that is the fact that you are experiencing all this.......His proposition: "I think, therefore I am". Pg105-7

Reading THE ANTIDOTE: HAPPINESS FOR PEOPLE WHO CAN'T STAND POSITIVE THINKING isn't a comfortable experience. I'd run into an excerpt in the online magazine BRAIN PICKINGS and was prepared for a snide, curmudgeonly critique of our be-happy-or-something's-wrong-with-you culture. And Burkeman certainly demonstrates many of the hallmarks of a grumpy old man. He's skeptical, judgmental, argumentative. He also seems to be onto something that most of us, in our rush to capture joy and fulfillment in a (recycled) bottle, never manage to grasp: prayers, wishes and abundance spells aside, things do not always work out for the best. Worse, as good as things might be at the moment, it'll all head downhill as we inevitably age and die.

One day the sun will rise without us.

That's the plain truth of the matter. It's also, according to Burkeman, why it's so important that we live our time here on earth with our eyes wide open. Even if it's hard. And scary.

Burkman gathers evidence from various schools of philosophy/religion/psychology. One of the most entertaining parts of the book is the chapter about his week in the forests of Massachusetts attempting Buddhist meditation. His evaluation of the power our momentary (and often inaccurate) thoughts/judgments have over our perception of our world is fascinating.

I also enjoyed his discussion of Stoicism, basically, the idea that emotional pain results not from outside events themselves, but from our judgement about those events. This isn't, as many people believe, an attitude of "life's terrible so deal with it." It's more "plan for the worst and hope it doesn't turn out quite so bad." Some would call this crass pessimism or even nihilism, the belief that life is essentially meaningless. I don't think this is Burkeman's contention at all. He seems to be prescribing an unsentimental common sense. Like, save for retirement because, though you may die before you need the money, it'll be worse to be old and destitute. Or, if your cholesterol is high, skip the fried food--sure, you're going to die anyway, but why rush into it?

According to the author, rather than being a depressing way to live, this close attention to reality, especially the reality of our own mortality, can actually lead to a meaningful and--dare we suggest--joyful life. So, in the end, THE ANTIDOTE isn't an argument against optimism and positive thinking. The question it addresses is far more basic and useful than that. Namely, does it really matter whether the glass is half full or half empty if you don't appreciate the contents?

Reading this book requires and open mind and some bravery, but it's worth the effort.

Yet another rehash compilation of self help. I think Oliver just wanted to make some money from the genre. There's not one substantive price of authorship, just rehash, retell, etc. Seneca, Stoicism, etc. Maybe Oliver is a mod over at r/GetDisciplined.

Our culture has been inundated with books, seminars, and self help programs centered around the power of positive thinking. And while positive thinking surely can help in many situations, if it were really the end all be all, shouldn't the world have a lot less problems than it does? If the secret to it all really was to positively envision ourselves as wealthy, shouldn't we all be rich by now? So, given that the power of positive thinking is not all encompassing, perhaps there are other paths to happiness, enlightenment, and success. And perhaps one of these paths is in the exact last place you would expect it to be, in pursing the things positive thought tells us to avoid.

While I generally consider myself a positive thinker, in all actuality, I am a realist. Having worked in a corporate culture where I was assured if I wanted the company's version of success bad enough I would get it, I personally hold little stock in the positive thought movement. No amount of thinking I am going to be a great salesperson is ever going to make me a great salesperson. I knew this, and accepted it, all the while continuing to do my best. No amount of arbitrary goal setting (sell enough to buy this car, and as motivation hang a picture of it at your desk!!!) was going to miraculously turn me into a top producer. Because I was honest about my inadequacy, not only was I failing at my job, in their mind I was failing at being a positive, motivated, goal oriented person (which is total crap). So, I am glad that someone is finally speaking out about the fact that positive thinking does not always work.

I like that this book points out a lot of the flaws in the whole self help culture. I found the book to be very well written, each chapter covering a different aspect of the pursuit of happiness. A lot of psychological and philosophical ideas are discussed throughout the text, making me wish I had a better background in philosophy. I did find it interesting to learn that apparently my approach to life is in line with Stoicism and the teachings of Albert Ellis. While I was previously aware of Ellis' teachings, I was not aware of the Stoic school of philosophical thought, so knowing I was following it without even trying to was a bit fascinating.

I personally do not care for most self-help books, so this book was perfect for me. It is kind of the anti-self help book. And for people who typically love self help books, I think this book could have profound impact, much more that the plethora of books on their shelves already.

I received a review copy courtesy of the publicist in exchange for an honest review.

In this book, Oliver Burkeman Makes the case that the traditional ways of seeking happiness actually tend to backfire and offers counterintuitive alternatives. For example, affirmations don't work becuase they simultaneously evoke subconciously the emotion that is meant to be suppressed. Saying over and over "I am strong" induces the mind to search for the truth ("No I'm not.) Burkeman makes the case as well that if self-help books worked, there would not be so many of them coming out, year after year. Burkeman offers counterintuitive alternatives like, for example, taking the approach of the Stoics by meditationg on death and learning (ironically) to live with it and appreciate life more. Another suggestion is focusing on the present and removing regrets about the past and worries about the future. For each if his prescriptions, Burkeman visits experts or communities which reflect the specific teaching: Eckhrat Tolle on being in the now; Mexican Day of the Dead Celebrations on memento mori; a poor African neighborhood in Kenya on being happy without great wealth. If you've tried the traditional suggested route to happiness and that hasn't worked, you may want to give this book a shot.

The Antidote by Oliver Burkeman is subtitled, Happiness for People Who can’t stand Positive Thinking and this subtitle sums up the main idea of the book. The prevailing view is that positive thinking leads to success in life and happiness. What Burkeman shows is that the opposite is often the case. He begins with the example of Dr. Robert Schuller whose basic message is to cut out the word “impossible” from your life and who is one of the foremost advocates of the power of positive thinking.

The book contains a number of examples demonstrating the value of taking a negative path to happiness. Such ideas as enjoying uncertainty, becoming familiar with failure and valuing death are presented. Stoic and Buddhist perspectives are also described. Such favored approaches as positive affirmations are shown to be ineffective. The views of Albert Ellis, Alan Watts, Rema Chadron and Eckhart Tolle are presented. The collapse of your apparent security is shown as a good thing because it represents a chance to confront life as it really is. The idea that the only constant is change is made clear.

In sum this book enables the reader to think about life in a different way from the standard view of looking at things from a positive perspective. It provides a needed balance in our approach to living a happy life. I recommend this book for anyone who wants to have a better and happier life.

I really enjoyed this book. I've read my share of self-help books but not in this light. Burkeman tells us such things as; "I came to understand more deeply that happiness and vulnerability are often the same thing." He shows us how the people in the horrible slums in Kibera, Kenya - actually can be `happy' in poverty - in it's most distilled form.
At the end of the book he shares this; "A good traveler has no fixed plans", says the Chinese sage Lau Tzu, `and is not intent upon arriving.'
There could be no better way to make the journey.
As mentioned in another review, he does spend a lot of emphasis on philosophy, and not enough on how he employs his philosophy on a day-to-day basis. Over all, this book has helped me look at my problems and my outlook on life, much differently. And isn't getting out of our box of preconceived preceptions what we all should strive to do?

If you've ever been interested in "self improvement" but been disenchanted by the "always be positive" culture of the industry, this book is a good exploration of more useful (and realistic) approaches to life. I've continued to explore several of the ideas discussed in this book. Highly recommended!

If you have read my other reviews you will know I have read 100's of self help books over the years. I am a business consultant, peak performance expert, entrepreneur and University lecturer amongst other things. As such I read books in order to improve my knowledge and the advice I can give others. I ordered this book via the Vine programme in the hope I may end up learning something new about how the mind can create happiness without all the positive thinking garbage that some book push.

The saying, "A mind can make a heaven out of hell or a hell out of heaven" is something I strongly believe in. We are in fact masters of our own happiness through the way we view the world around us. I started reading about how cognitive belief systems can control the world we see many years ago when I read Psycho Cybernectics by Maxwell Maltz. The premise of this book is that the way a person sees themselves and so thinks, affects the self esteem and so affects every part of their life, including the ability to be happy. The problem with most motivational/self help books are that they assume that by setting goals, thinking positively and using mantra like affirmations people can achieve anything they want to achieve. The great falsehood with this, is that for many, past programming and the way people view their pasts is the critical block which goal setting does not address. Most people who are unsuccessful/depressed/going nowhere etc assume the problem is outside of them, so by using most motivational books they put the responsibility to be successful on somebody else's "system", without first realising how they are thinking is the cause of the dissatisfaction.

This book by Oliver Burkeman is very different, as the author clearly states from the outset that he is not offering the reader a foolproof way of becoming successful, what he offers is wise advice on the topics of "Happiness". The premise of the book is in order to become happier you must stop chasing happiness and embrace all the things that can go wrong in your life and just accept them. In essence it is very similar to Buddhist thinking of detachment of thought and becoming a mere observer of your thoughts...."What we resist we get more of in our lives...." is the idea. By embracing problems we in essence can detach ourselves from the self made negative connotations/interpretations of how WE see disasters in our own lives. Maltz in Psycho Cybernetics claimed that a damaged self image is the core reason for so much failure. By detaching from the negative thoughts/connotations of problems that affect the self image and so changing how we see ourselves, we in essence slowly embrace happiness by becoming less anxious about how we see past. Does it work? The author gives no promises but I think it will certainly help an individual find greater peace in their lives and so help repression of negativity, which is always a good thing.

This book is very different from most self help books. I think it should be read in conjunction with Psycho Cybernetics as this will give the reader a better understanding of how the mind can "Make a Hell out of Heaven and a Heaven out of Hell." It is a very motivating read and it should help the reader become happier with their lives by embracing problems.

Highly Recommended.

The problem with many self help books and the people that read them is that many people want a quick fix. I do not consider the Antidote to be a self help book but primarily a primer on alternative methods of thinking if the anxieties about your perceived changes in your life or not happening according to plan. From mental affirmations to The Secret to the Law of Attraction - this book is not in the same league as those. Those books offer lists, quizzes, and ways for you to measure your success (by accomplishing it). The Antidote is the Anti-self help book.

Many have stated that this book is all about being negative and doom and gloom. I have to disagree with that short sighted assessment. I find Burkeman's willingness to analyze different methods of realistic thinking to be refreshing. One of the most notable ones are his experiences at the meditation retreat. As a parent I can completely understand how your mind can get clouded with so many competing thoughts.

Burkeman goes on to discuss not just Buddhist meditation but also Stoicism, the teachings of Albert Ellis, A visit to an African slum and really getting to the meat of what our standards of "happiness" are. Happiness is subjective and basically this book reminds you about the basics in life. The extras are just additional noise or resources to get you to what your perceived version of happiness is.

Failure is the enemy of happiness and the fear of failure can create irrational fears that we spend much of our time preparing for. As Burkeman points out though is if you can get a realistic grip on understanding the consequences and having the confidence that you are prepared to deal with them then you no longer have a fear of failing what you set out to do.

Overall good book and a great intro to anyone interested in learning about cognitive behavior, buddhism and the anti-effect of setting goals.

It's kind of ironic that our pursuits of happiness often result in increases of misery. Relentless striving for lives full of positivity, good cheer, security, and success has paradoxically derailed many from the path of happiness. (What's wrong with this picture?)

Shedding insight into this self-help paradox, the author Oliver Burkeman points out that:
"There is something about trying to *make ourselves* happy and successful that is precisely what sabotages the attempt...Through positive thinking and related approaches, we seek the safety and solid ground of certainty, of knowing how the future will turn out, of a time in the future when we'll be ceaselessly happy and never have to fear negative emotions again. But, in chasing all that, we close down the very facilities that permit us the happiness we crave." (pp. 103, 135)

Maybe it's time to consider a new kind of happiness with a different kind of path?

That's exactly what Burkeman proposes in this brilliant gem of book. He suggests a counter-intuitive approach to happiness (whatever that is), which arises through embracing negativity:
"This kind of happiness has nothing to do with the easy superficialities of positive thinking--with the grinning insistence on optimism at all costs, or the demand that success be guaranteed. It involves much more difficulty--and also much more authenticity--than that...If a fixation on positivity is the disease, this approach is the antidote." (p. 211-212, 9)

This antidote to the unrealistic happiness promised by the self-help "cult of optimism" entails developing "negative capability"--the ability to tolerate the existential givens of groundlessness, failure, insecurity, uncertainty, and, yes, even death. Burkeman takes us on a tour of how the Stoics and Buddhists have developed this ability, and also shows how the rest of us can do it too:
"For the Stoics, the realisation that we can often choose not to be distressed by events, even if we can't choose events themselves, is the foundation of tranquility. For the Buddhists, a willingness to observe the `inner weather' of your thoughts and emotions is the key to understanding that they need not dictate your actions. Each of these is a different way of resisting the `irritable reaching' after better circumstances or better thoughts and feelings. But negative capability need not involve embracing an ancient philosophical or religious tradition. It is also the skill you're exhibiting when you move forward with a project--or with life--in the absence of sharply defined goals; when you dare to inspect your failures; when you stop trying to eliminate feelings of insecurity; or when you put side `motivational' techniques in favour of actually getting things done." (pp. 207-208)

So, cancel your membership to the self-help cult of optimism and start subscribing to life-as-it-really-is. And, be prepared to find happiness (or some approximation thereof) where you least expect it.

From the very first chapter wherein the author attends a "Get Motivated!" seminar in San Antonio, this book takes off with wry wit and great descriptive reporting. The author takes us on a tour of America's `positive psychology' and 'new thought' landscape, but he doesn't drink any Koolaid along the way. On the contrary, we get a quick course on Seneca and the Stoics, and an interview with Dr Keith Seddon - Director of the Stoic Foundation. He also visits Buddhists Robert Aitken, Barry Magid, MD, pulls the robe off the emperor's new clothes in regards to `SMART' goals, drops in for a chat with Eckhart Tolle, ponders our need to feel secure with Bruce Scheier, visits some of the happiest people on earth in the slums of Kibera, Nairobi, and discusses denial of death with philosopher and psychotherapist Lauren Tillinghast. He is very readable and engaging every step of the way. My favorite chapter by far, and it had me laughing out loud, was The Museum of Failure. Yes, Virginia, there really is a Museum of Failure outside of Ann Arbor, MI, dedicated to "humanity's shattered dreams," i.e. products that as it turns out, no one wants to buy. I don't want to ruin it for anyone so I shall say no more. This is a fun book that feeds the mind and engages the intellect. Highly recommended.

The idea expressed here is so counterintuitive and yet so important that there will never be enough ways to remind ourselves of it. This is one of the clearest, least partisan, most grounded books you'll find about it. That the author is clearly a skeptic only adds to the effect.

It is true that little here is being said for the first time. However, its succinctness sets it apart, as does its insistence that the basic ideas are simple, though anything but easy. This is anything but fluff; the writer dances lightly through some of the biggest ideas known, and you'll finish with an unexpectedly comprehensive overview of the subject.

I'd rank this with The Black Swan and a very few other recent books that I'd recommend to anyone who wants to actually understand what's going on but doesn't care about flavors of the month or proprietary systems. Appropriate for all ages. I dare say even fun--Burkeman is clearly something of a philosophical counselor himself. Very highly recommended.

Positive thinking in and by itself can't cure all your ills, or solve all the worlds problems. To the contrary, simple techniques like negative visualization, recognition that some things are simply out of our control, and celebration of death, amongst many others, can help you create a much more grounded and productive perspective on life. The author does a good job of introducing some of the core ideas of Stoicism to motivate and explain the above techniques, and sets them in a modern context - lots of examples, a few diversions along the way, but overall an easy and approachable read.

For a more in-depth introduction to Stoicism, check out "A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy" by William Irvine.

I borrowed this book from the library and after reading the first two chapters, purchased it - convinced that it would find a place of pride in my own library. I was not disappointed. Burkeman's writing is superlative and he seamlessly blends the theories of various "negative" philosophies with physical embodiments of these philosophies, mixed in with a measure of entertaining personal anecdotes. Burkeman does not pretend to be an expert on the philosophies covered, yet his chapter-length tours convincingly convey a sense that he has done his research, thought deeply about the issues, and knows of what he writes. Who would have thought this topic could be a page turner? Given the overwhelming mass of content in the modern world, I rarely watch a movie or read a book twice. I will come back to this one.

I can think of several reasons for readers to purchase and read Oliver Burkeman's The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking. If you hate self-help books and the Pollyanna approach found in many of them, this book takes a different path that you're likely to enjoy. Burkeman writes in a way that will engage and entertain most readers. After you've read it, you'll think of at least one unbalanced optimist to whom you will present a copy of this book with special glee. Finally, if you love self-help books, you need to read this one to round out or balance what you've been getting from other authors. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and found that Burkeman's way of connecting his perspective with threads of classic philosophical thinking made me reflect on happiness in a broader way.

Rating: Four-star (I like it)

This was certainly a lot more enjoyable to read than most self-help books.
I actually liked reading it which is a lot more than you say for the usual change your life, awaken the fear within, visualise success and ask the universe type books.

The writing style is quite informal and discursive and despite the modesty of the author it is certainly a lot more rigorous and useful than the usual stuff from the snake oil salesmen. He recognises that what seems to work for him might not work for everyone.

It probably isn't an essential read if you do always look at his column in the Guardian though obviously in this book he gives each subject a more in depth treatment.

This was a life-changing book for me. It came at exactly the right time in my life. I've always been a negative, cynical, sarcastic person, a glass-half empty person. Also, I've never been able to *understand* meditation. This is the first book I've read with a very easy-to-understand, accessible definition to meditation...and Stoicism, too. Now, for the first time ever, I've been trying to meditate, and it helps a bit. I love Burkeman's writing style. I devoured this book and have recommended it to dozens of people! If you always thought of yourself as a negative person, try this book!!

I loved accompanying Oliver Burkeman on his contrarian journey to a happier life. Entertaining, wide-raging and intriguing, this is the best anti-self-help book I've had the good fortune to stumble across.

This book was not what I expected it to be.

I was at my local library looking for Eckhart Tolle books (ironically) and when I searched the catalog this book popped up in the list. So I grabbed it and made my way home. I've been told I think pretty negatively, so, why not give this a try?

This book really makes you think. I didn't just learn about a negative approach to happiness; I learned about stoicism, Seneca, and also that there is a "museum of failures" in Michigan. Odd bits of knowledge and the authors wit really made this so much more interesting. It all comes together, of course, and if you can apply what you learn it does help. It's not meant to be a step by step guide to the negative approach. To me, though, that made it that much more interesting.

What is a self help book, especially if there is no self? Or more to the point: everything is a self help book, if you see the world that way. If it is all part of the journey, what kind of journey are you on? This book serves up many entries into the mysteries of life from and for a curious mind. In some ways the title is tongue in cheek, because opposites are not boundaries but where things meet. Turning it this way and that, helps provide a fuller picture of a fluid and dynamic world. Where do we fit in? By not tackling the question of what is happiness head on, we are instead in conversation with a very smart and insightful friend. Sharing stories and experiences combined with philosophy and psychology, we hear from others along the way. He lays out the strands, building upon them and weaving it all together so that at the end of it, there is a shimmering and beautiful puzzle that is alive and constantly shifting. What do you see?

You're not necessarily a pessimist, in fact one might say you're a realist, but when people tell you, "C'mon, smile. Cheer up. Don't be so negative," you not only don't feel better, you want to smash them (and then that would make you feel better).

This book is truly the antidote to the empty, banal approaches to happiness. It shows you that not only when you embrace your obstacles, setbacks and instances you feel let down, can you feel better, but you will often experience breakthroughs that never would have happened had you not had the setback.

I have had hundreds of breakthroughs in my life and nearly all of them were preceded by breakdowns that were uninvited, unpleasant, often deeply painful and sometimes even traumatic. What I have finally realized and tried to apply is that those breakdowns were keys to the breakthroughs, which wouldn't have happened without the breakdown.

So now when I hit a setback or obstacle or a breakdown I say to myself, "Let time pass, don't do anything to make it worse for 72 hours and you will probably have a breakthrough."

I love that I now have a book like "The Antidote" to keep me company while I am waiting for that breakthrough and "white knuckling" until I reach it.

Another companion book that will help you get the most from "The Antidote" is Russell Bishop's practical and tactical book, "Workarounds that Work: How to Conquer Anything that Stands in Your Way at Work." Workarounds That Work: How to Conquer Anything That Stands in Your Way at Work

I don’t think I’d go that far: I don’t hate positive thinking. Nevertheless, Burkeman takes a close look at what science has discovered about positive thinking and, though I hate to smash your rose-colored glasses, it is really not pretty. Positive thinking can lead to some pretty negative thinking. Oddly.

So Burkeman takes another approach. It’s to face reality. To look at it carefully. But dispassionately. Realistically.
I like this. It seems a little silly to go around saying, “Life just gets better and better every live long day.” Sometimes, frankly, it doesn’t. And it doesn’t do any good to walk around, saying it, shouting it, with your fingers in your ears, honestly.

Take a look at this book. It’s a hard cold look at happiness. That just might make you much happier.

I expected the book to be a light-hearted romp through different camps of New Age positive thinkers. Instead, Burkeman takes on different approaches to happiness and systematically shows why they're flawed. What these approaches have in common is a resistance to negative thoughts and a determination to focus on the "positive."

The problem is that "positive thinking" is such an amorphous concept that at times he appears to be attacking a straw man. The first chapter, "On Trying Too Hard To Be Happy," pokes fun at one of those motivational weekend events. I have to admit I was horrified to think that the US government invests taxpayer funds to send park service employees and military personnel to these overpriced, overhyped events. Burkeman fortuitously sits next to a cynical parks employee who just wants to go get a beer.

Burkeman identifies movements that lead to happiness while facing down the negatve, especially Stoicism and Buddhism. The chapter on goals made a lot of sense but will undoubtedly encounter resistance: goal-setting is hailed by everyone from corporate managers to new age-y coaches. I was especially facinated by the research of Saras Sarasvathy who emphasizes "effectuation" over goals, i.e., start with the means and take small steps to the end.

The truth is, I have known people trapped in goals, but some people are extremely successful at setting very specific goals and achieving them. They set an income goal or a graduation date and they march firmly to that goal.

The most difficult chapter was the one related to safety. Burkeman points out, accurately, that we spend millions of dollars on air safety based on isolated reports. As he points out, the strategies designed to make us feel more secure actually make us less secure in reality.

It's a jump to this chapter from positive thinking and the book would be stronger if Burkeman had emphasized that a lot of positive thinking has been incorporated into our infrastructure. Airport security systems aren't the only ones who encourage us to think we can prevent most evils. As Dr. Gilbert Welch notes in his book Overdiagnosis, a lot of so-called "preventive" medicine does more harm than good. Doctors and medical professionals aren't always up for talking about death in the realistic way Burkeman advises. Psychologists have been promoting "self-esteem" for years.

Finally, there is a fine line between silly "positive thinking" and the outcome of positive emotions as studied by researchers. Burkeman ignores the work of Seligman and the psychologists who study mood. He chooses a definition of affirmations that even many New Agers would reject - telling yourself an unimaginable story instead of something that's realistic and attainable as well as desirable.

Ultimately, while Burkeman raises real concerns and logical arguments, it's not clear what we should take away or how we can revise our lives to be, well, happier, after our reading.

Rating 3
This book is more about dealing normal life. It is about viewing things as they truly are and not about pretending things won't happen.
A few quotes from the book:
Negative visualization generates a vastly more dependable calm.

Without noticing we're doing it, we treat the future as intrinsically more valuable than the present. And yet the future never seems to arrive.

We fear situations in which we feel as though we have no control, such as flying as a passenger on an aeroplane, more than situations in which we feel as if we have control, such as when at the steering wheel of a car. No Wonder, then, that we sometimes risk making ourselves less secure by chasing feelings of security. You're vastly more likely to be killed as a result of a car crash than an air crash, vastly more likely to die of heart disease than at the hands of a violent intruder. But if you react to news stories about air terrorism by taking the car when you'd otherwise have taken a plane, or if you spend time and energy protection your home from attackers that you could have spent on improving your diet, you'll be letting your biases guide you towards a greater feeling of security at the expense of your real safety.

This book finishes up discussing death in the true sense whereas we are all going to die. we need to quit living as if we are not.

I probably read too many self help books, and often they are a bit of a chore. Burkeman's great writing, intelligence and sense of humor make this a mostly quick and enjoyable read. Much of the stuff he covers I knew about before - Mindfulness meditation, Stoic philosophy, Carol Dweck's growth mindset, Albert Ellis and exposure therapy. So most of the ideas are not really new - he is talking about other people's ideas and trying to bring them together - but the writing is quick and loaded with interesting nuggets that even if it's not new to you it's enjoyable. Occasionally the book gets really profound, as when it talks about the way we close ourselves off to life by trying to avoid change. I'm happy I read it.

Popularly written, easily digestible guide to alternative paths to happiness through meditations on desire for fame, security, and immortality. The essential argument is that grasping after happiness will make you miserable and that well-being is most likely to be achieved by dealing soberly with the aforementioned desires. Explorations of Stoicism and Buddhism included. The critical reviews here are quite amusing and reflective of many of the fears and projections discussed herein.

Pleased with this read; worth the money. I've recommended it now, at least 5 times, and I've only had the book a week.

I can appreciate the themes explored in chapter 2, 3, 4, and chapter 6. Enlightening read, and very cerebral, retroflex, advanced in its notions, and in it's use of language.

I particularly appreciated the chapters at the beginning on Stoicism and Buddhism and was especially grateful for a fresh look at the human condition apart from the positive thinking mania that has much of the Western world swept up in its crazy clutches. He pointed out that studies show that pursuing happiness for its own sake doesn't work, we become more self-centered and more focused on what we don't have, and we become less happy.

Unfortunately, the last chapters fell short. It seems he couldn't sustain the energy he'd started the book with. The chapter on death went on too long and while there were interesting bits about Mexico, I felt he overestimated our refusal to accept our own deaths. Aren't most of us perfectly aware we're going to die?

I found it ironic that he wrote about being open to mystery but had already told us that people couldn't believe in God because they now knew God didn't exist. He dismissed the religious concept of an afterlife with the typical atheist opinion that some people just can't accept that they're going to die. The author has, in all his wisdom, shut out a great deal of mystery with his certainty. I was annoyed by his bringing in Keats's negative capability and then trying to say it could also be looked at as "negative thinking," which is not at all what Keats meant. Keats's negative capability is when a person "is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason." (The author doesn't seem to be very good at this.) He never said it had to do with thinking negatively and it was irresponsible of the author to take his words and use them in that way.

I give the beginning of the book five stars and the end two stars. I'm giving it four overall because he's saying some things that need to be said and few others seem to be saying, or even thinking, them. Positive thinking doesn't make people happy, pursuing happiness doesn't make people happy, studying happiness doesn't make people happy. What seems to make us happy is acceptance--of uncertainty, of our circumstances, etc. (and for many of us, religion, but this book leaves that out). The attitude of not judging but accepting what is has been taught by the Buddhists for thousands of years. The Stoics knew it centuries ago. Positive thinking isn't a fantastic secret that was overlooked by intelligent people throughout time (all those smart people weren't smart enough to understand that all they had to do was think positive? all the world's great religious thinkers never knew it was so simple?). Thank God someone is telling another story, even if the medium is a bit flawed.

Well researched, well written. We should be especially grateful to the author for finally digging up the truth behind the much touted "Goal Study" from 1953 Yale--which it turns out never existed. It wasn't true that the 3% of the student body that had written goals, had more wealth than the other 97% decades later. Never happened. Antidote should be on every entrepreneur's shelf as the medicine that cures the moronic myth of positive thinking. The Power of Negative Planning is much more useful than the supposed "Power" of Positive Thinking." THE POWER OF NEGATIVE PLANNING How To Succeed By Beating Murphy's Law

Reading this book will make you happy! If you are having trouble reaching happiness using other suggestions then I suggest using this book as a guide to happiness! Step 1: stop using guides to happiness. They do not work. Worse! They make you unhappy because they do not work. Hence, avoid trying to feel happy and guess what! Yes. But what if you can't stand people who thrive on negative thinking? Actually, this feels like an update to the Stoic philosophy but with a Buddhist slant. But for the moment let me disidentify from thoughts. Ah! There. That is better.

The Antidote is a book for people who are interested in philosophy and the meaning of life, but prefer to have their sermons a bit on the light side. Oliver Burkeman is laid back and witty, my type of author. The Antidote suggests that although optimism is not necessarily a bad think, it may keep you from seeing the world as it really is, and, shockingly, an optimistic view is insufficient to ensure happiness. I agree with Oliver that clear-eyed rationalism is the way to go, even if you have to acknowledge that some bad things, like death, are bound to happen to you.

This is a great book for evaluating new tools for thinking and dealing with the term 'happiness' and what it means to be happy. This is not a how-to manual. There are a few core philosophical ideas exposed in great detail and how they can help you on a day to day basis. 4/5 stars because I felt like I was missing something at the end. But ... then again ... that might be the point. Accept the given negative and possible worst case and you'll usually end up happier.

This book is a marvelous antidote for the "feel good every moment" philosophy of life to achieve happiness. I liked it very much, and highly recommend it as a guide to grounding yourself as a normal human in a fast-changing world of uncertainty, without a smile on your face!

Oliver's new book was mentioned in an issue of Brain Pickings [...], and I found the title irresistible. The book is a fascinating departure from the usual it's-all-good, look-on-the-bright-side kind of self-help literature. I've pursued the optimistic, always positive view for a long time, and have only recently begun to accept more uncertainty in my life. Oliver presented a number of intriguing things to mull over, and I suspect this isn't the only time I'll be reading this book

This is really a fantastic bool, and especially for those who are enamored with positive thinking. The book is not about bashing positive mental states, rather it speaks about the benefits of including everything else.

Burkeman's insights on stoicism, zen, and many other practices are clear and engaging enough that I believe anyone with the slightest interest in such subjects would enjoy his passages.

The book might not make you feel happy, but it might help you be okay with that.

"There is a greater correlation between perfectionism and suicide, research suggests, than between feelings of hopelessness and suicide." WHOA!

Critical reading for Peak Performers! This book has become a lifeline for myself, a now middle-aged over-achiever, and for the friends I'm sharing it with. For those who flog ourselves daily with inner chants of "work hard. work smart. be a success" this book shows us how we are actually flogging ourselves straight into despair. There's a light at the end of this "Achieve at All Costs" tunnel, and that light is Mr. Burkeman's book.

An excellent read that will provide me ample opportunity to think and reflect upon in the coming days and weeks. An older gentleman shares his mantra of "everything in moderation" with me every time I see him, and Burkeman's book echoes that same thought. Rejoice in a life more simply led; breathe and don't take events, or yourself, so seriously. This will be a book I recommend to many people I live and work with...in hopes that we can all enjoy each other's company just a bit more.

This book is fantastic! The title sounds a bit negative, but the book is anything but. Very eye opening about the current state of motivational speaking and business processes regarding employees. The writing style is great. A bit of humor, but not flip. Highly recommended.

The book covers a lot of basic psychology reasonably well but it wraps it in a gimmick about being "negative."

Most of the material that it covered which I was well verse in was covered fairly accurately but he does distort a few things and just get facts wrong here and there in order to fit the gimmick. And there is one painful passage where he tries to reconcile his liberal politics (poverty is bad) with his argument that happiness doesn't depend (much) on your environment (poverty doesn't have bad consequences).

The one harsh criticism I have for the book is that it is marketed as a self-help book and not a mix of humanist essays and pop-psychology. This book is unlikely to make anyone happier for reasons discussed in the book--you would have to actually DO things differently to feel differently. Reading about doing things differently doesn't count as acting differently.

Mr. Burkeman, I heard you on NPR yesterday. You have a fantastic voice, and I would really like to listen to you read your book while commuting. Perfect topic for being stuck in traffic! Please Record!!!

I wanted to like this book and learn from it. I really did. Unfortunately, try as I might, it didn't happen.
I am inclined to agree for the most part with Andy Rosenblum's one-star review of this book, but I am willing to be a bit kinder and at least give the book two stars. After all, it wasn't completely useless or terrible.
Overall, the author seems to have a fascination with tracking down cynics and curmudgeons who, for whatever reason, seem to have a strong dislike for positive thinking. These individuals try to make their lives work, and, maybe their lives actually do work, but the author didn't seem to have much success finding many of these people who actually seemed to be really happy.
A second major shortcoming of the book is that the author spent way too much time with "local color" - providing detailed descriptions of places he visited, what people were drinking when he interviewed them, and lots of other information that, while it might have had some value if he were writing a novel, added nothing to the philosophical points he was trying to make in this book.
Some other minor comments:
- Early in the book, he makes the claim that none of the major religions have a focus on happiness, and then spends a lot of time talking about Buddhism. Indeed, Buddhism is definitely a negative religion. The basic tenet seems to be, "Life in general stinks most of the time (suffering is standard fare), but every once in awhile, if you meditate enough, you might experience brief moments of happiness. One religion he fails to mention at all is Hinduism, which has a strong focus on happiness. One of the basic tenets of Hinduism is that happiness is (or should be) man's natural state. If people don't experience continuous happiness, it is because of some "clutter" that they have allowed into their minds and/or lives, and that getting rid of the clutter will uncover one's basic nature of happiness.
- And, like a lot of today's "pop" authors, he seems to love to slam self-help books and their authors, claiming, in a number of different ways, that such books are useless, by suggesting that the reason people keep buying self-help books is because the ones they have previously read didn't do any good. Actually, a lot of self-help books are extremely useful, but only if the readers actually do what the books instruct them to do. The problem is that most "self-help book junkies" are people who read book after book, hoping their lives will miraculously change simply by reading the books, and not realizing that they actually have to put the work into doing what the books say. It's akin to someone complaining that they read a dozen cookbooks, but that they are still hungry. Hey, you actually have to go to the work to cook the recipes! Just reading the books won't fill your belly! So, the problem isn't always useless books. It is often lazy readers.
- He also seems to suggest that one reason people lack happiness today is because of difficulty in experiencing spirituality, and he cites two reasons for this, one being from Alan Watts, who suggested that the increased popularity of science has reduced the potential to experience spirituality. The author then goes on to say that people who are disillusioned with their regular religions have the choice of either going back to them to try to experience spirituality, an endeavor, he suggests, that would be silly, because such people left those religions because they stopped believing them anyway; or simply giving up hope of experiencing spirituality. The author thus leaves out some completely viable options for experiencing spirituality, such as going on a quest for spirituality without religion at all, or immersing oneself in some of the Eastern religions, which focus much more on spirituality than on rule-bound religious creeds.
- Along the same lines, he devotes a whole chapter to people's fear of death and trying to figure out a way around this, again, completely ignoring Eastern religions, whose devotees rarely fear death. The reason, largely, is that devotees of Western religions believe you only go around once, whereas devotees of Eastern religions believe in reincarnation, so there is little to fear when one physical life ends.
- All of this leads me to believe that, while the author did travel to different cities and countries to interview various people for his book, he seems to have an extremely limited grasp of the vast majority of happiness literature (psychological and otherwise) and the vast majority of positive philosophies and spiritual alternatives that can lead, and have led, millions of people to happiness, fulfillment, contentment, and more.
Anyway, while I suspect there are a few readers who might learn something useful from this book, I don't think the majority of people would find a route to happiness by utilizing the ideas suggested by this author.

I was intrigued enough to borrow this book from the library after I heard about it on the radio from a Slate.com reviewer. I find books like Norman Vincent Peale's "The Power of Positive Thinking" really depressing. That book served to remind me of what was wrong with me and even made me feel like a bad Christian because I couldn't make the book work for me. So, I was eager to read The Antidote.... I found the first part of this book interesting and calming but not really helpful once I encountered a real challenge in my life. The thing that made me finally quit reading was when I saw that Mr. Burkeman had written on page 70, "We can feel the fear and do it anyway." I searched the page and then the index for any mention of Susan Jeffers. There wasn't any. This really burned me up because the one self-help book that has been tremendously helpful to me is called "Feel the Fear...and Do It Anyway," which has been around for over 20 years, by Susan Jeffers. To rip-off the title of a book in the same genre without so much as a nod to the author felt like plagiarism, or at the very least sloppy journalism, to me. My recommendation is to try Susan Jeffers instead. "Feel the Fear..." is a classic, but I also borrowed the "Embracing Uncertainty: Breakthrough Methods for Achieving Peace of Mind When Facing the Unknown" audio book from my library (it's out of print) and found it tremendously helpful to listen to during my commute.

This book is very readable and in places even quite illuminating, but it really should have been a lot better than it is. The strap-line looks promising `Happiness for People who Can't Stand Positive Thinking'. Well, positive thinking is naff in more cases than not, so it looked like a book for me. However I was having difficulty with the general approach after just a few pages, because happiness and positive thinking are totally different things, and I don't believe the author has done a very good job of linking them. This is from p6 -`There are good reasons to believe that the whole notion of "seeking happiness" is flawed to begin with. For one thing, who says happiness is a valid goal in the first place?' Excellent. The Gadarene Swine, says Malcolm Muggeridge, were doubtless in pursuit of happiness when they leapt to destruction over the cliff. Bernard Shaw goes even further and calls happiness itself, never mind its pursuit, intolerable.

Alas, Oliver Burkeman seems to be another in pursuit of happiness after all, with occasional sideswipes at the positive thinking brigade and a sustained chapter (rather better, this) in which he pans the fashionable cult of goals and goal-setting very effectively. The good reasons for scepticism about seeking happiness seem to have disappeared without trace: all he is concerned to attack is the ways in which others think they can attain it. He quotes with approval a patronising statement by the garrulous monk Thomas Merton to the effect that what many people never understand is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer. How far such a lofty statement can be supported as a generalisation I don't know, and I'm quite sure Merton doesn't either. However quite a lot of this book concerns itself with similar propositions, so frequent that I found myself wondering whether Burkeman is really keeping his focus on what he thinks his topic is. Is it pursuit of happiness, or avoidance of unhappiness? Once again, those are not identical issues - even Shaw admitted that unhappiness was more intolerable than his despised happiness. Avoidance of the one does not entail or even connote a quest for the other.

Asking for a definition of happiness is asking for trouble, but Burkeman ought to have made some attempt to indicate how the ordinary speaker of English, unencumbered with Aristotle, eudaimonia and the rest of it, is likely to understand the notion. Provisionally, and only for present purposes, I'll try something akin to `contentment', although `happiness' is probably stronger in flavour. At least `contentment' will do as a makeshift antonym for `unhappiness', which `happiness' won't, and if I am misrepresenting what Burkeman thinks that's his own fault for not settling the matter himself. If he is seeking happiness, then we at least have an idea what he may be seeking. He seeks it through a cut-price tour of Great Philosophies and Cultures, somewhat in the manner of the 70's when Brits were seeing the world more than before and the Guardian among other bien-pensant organs used to run a lot of material of this kind. It's largely about toughening oneself against the slings and arrows of an outrageous fortune, but there is also an excursus about the `self' which is rather interesting, although I think he can't have read the right books on the matter. Paraded for us are (chiefly) Descartes and Hume, concluding with H's famous statement that in searching for the self he could only find a bundle of perceptions, not any `self' that could stand individually as distinct from the bundle he is talking about. Fair enough: there was never a more rigorous logical thinker in human history, I dare say, than David Hume. However, what did he think he was looking for? The school of linguistic philosophers mainly associated with Oxford may or may not still be unfashionable, but they had the technique for dealing with this sort of issue. Looking for the `self' in the way Hume was doing was never going to find it, because it was not there to be found in the same category as the components of his bundle. It's Ryle's `category mistake', explained in The Concept of Mind. Ryle passes quickly over this instance without disrespecting the great Hume, but he flags the point.

I could frankly have done without western cultural tourism to Nairobi, Mexico and wherever, to see how the deprived deal with their expectations. I doubt that most of us need telling that once poverty is relieved people find lesser issues to be dissatisfied with; and the parallel that wealth does not bring happiness is, dare I say, news that men have heard before. Burkeman's epilogue is a lot better than much of what went before it, because his intrinsic sensitivity and intelligence is allowed to come through. I hope I need not even say that he does not offer any formula for attaining happiness in the way his quoted motivational speaker has a recipe for success in the first couple of pages (before his forum went bankrupt). We're back to what I started with - that was about success, not happiness, and Burkeman could have handled this dichotomy a lot better. Nor does he offer anything so ridiculous as an alternative philosophy of pessimism or negative thinking: these are correctives, not general rules. To illustrate what I mean, I am not myself any wholesale admirer of Winston Churchill, but if ever there was, in any history that I know, a triumph of positive thinking and seemingly irrational determination, it was what Churchill provided in 1940. The thing exists, just don't cheapen it with motivational speaking and such like. To end on a positive note, Burkeman is right about `survivor bias' in sampling, which proves the desired case via selective instances. As for coping with death's inevitability, just imagine living for ever and you will have no problem with that, or maybe not until the moment is on top of you.

This book is a recipe for failure, not only it clearly shows the way for failure but also tells you to accept it and like it. In the last chapter, as a conclusion, it even tells you to start preparing for death...

While he has a valid point to make and brings in some quite amusing examples to back up his viewpoint. In my oppinion the subject could be easily covered in a book half the length without any loss of purpose.