The effort to try and feel happy is often precisely the thing that makes us miserable. Instead of losing them, you’ll enlarge those very negative thoughts. However, when you dedicate a lot of mental effort to scanning your mental landscape for negative thoughts in order to root them out, paradoxically, the opposite happens. Typical positive thinking advice suggests: Decide to think happy and successful thoughts, banish sadness and failure, and happiness and success will follow. It is where the opportunities – for success, for happiness, for really living – are waiting. The greatest benefit of negative capability-the true power of negative thinking-is that it lets the mystery back in. There’s never any closure in an awe-inspired life, only constant acceptance of the mysteries of life. True security lies in the unrestrained embrace of insecurity - in the recognition that we never really stand on solid ground, and never can. This is an alternative path to happiness that is rarely focused on in the current self-development world. If you think that positive thinking, visualisations, goal-setting etc are the only way, this will challenge your views. This book also aligns with some of my own views about self-development, happiness and positive thinking. This book was used as some of the ideas that fed into Mark Manson's work, which I really enjoy, so wanted to read some of the 'source' material. Burkeman takes us on a journey through the world of the ‘backwards law’ - from a remote mindfulness retreat in the woodland in Massachusetts, to Day of the Dead in Mexico City, to slums outside of Nairobi, to modern day stoics and specialists in the art of failure. This is an insightful, and alternative guide to happiness, through harnessing negative thinking and things not going to plan. This involves confronting the worst-case scenario not setting goals embracing failure seeing the hidden benefits of insecurity and having a better relationship with death. Instead, it advocates that we should take the negative path to happiness. This book deconstructs the commonly held obsessions of the ‘power of positive thinking.’ The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking by Oliver Burkeman □ The Book in 3 Sentences
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