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 visualizati...

This is a friendly little book that purports to be an anti-"self-help" book - although I have more than a sneaking suspicion that it IS a self-help book. My guess is that Oliver Burkeman is preaching to the choir, to use an old cliché, because I doubt any individual feeling the rosy after-glow of a Get Motivated! seminar will pick it up for an afternoon's reading. I bought the thing after reading a review in the Los Angeles Times, thinking it would offer a humorous take on our cultural obsession...

It's such a turnoff with self-help books that start out with ridiculing self-helps books only to try to paint themselves in a different light. Turnoff and common, that is. This book is no different. It becomes especially obnoxious when the author denounces other authors lack of rigor only to himself use ancient Greek philosophy and Alan Watts as backbones to his arguments. Now, stoicism and Buddhist metaphysics are favorite subjects of mine. My problem with the book is not lack of rigor but the

The subtitle here is the hook: “Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking”. Many of the ideas presented within these pages were already at least vaguely familiar to me, especially those of the Stoics and at least some of the Buddhists. But, really, the word “happiness” is out of place. Even before the Stoics existed, wise Greeks had recognized “call no man happy until he is dead,” and Burkeman’s thrust here is that striving for happiness is almost certainly a bad idea.A better goal

A pretty good look at Stoic and similar philosophies, talking about what really makes us happy, and better mental approaches. Amusingly written and an easy read.

Excellent book. The writing is highly engaging, and Burkeman gives enough information to be interesting, without overloading the reader, and incorporates just the right amount of personal narrative. The book is easy to just fall into, and, while still thought-provoking, doesn't require the reader to sit for ten minutes rotating a concept until its in the right position for comprehension.I think it's got the wrong title, because this makes it sound like pop-psychology, and this is much more than

People often remark on how happy I always appear.- most of the time I have a smile on my face. And I must admit that my moods are fairly stable. But I'm definitely not one for always looking on the bright side of life, and I wouldn't call myself an optimist at all. I'm also very sceptical, especially about psychological strategies to 'get the most out of life'. I have encountered 'postive psychology' in my education studies and while I must admit that some aspects my be helpful, I cringe at the

What a clever and amusing and interesting and thoughtful book! I need more adjectives to describe how much I enjoyed this look at happiness in the modern world.Oliver Burkeman is a journalist who was skeptical of the "cult of optimism," and he digs into the research on positive thinking and talks to various experts in the field. The first thing he learns is that you can't suppress negative thoughts — suppression doesn't work. Whatever idea you are trying to squash down will only continue to pop

Of course this is not perfect. Of course there is a populist tone and a lack of rigour. Of course there are some parts that fall apart if you pick at them too much. But there is a hell of a lot of good stuff here, all of which has tied in nicely with the work I have been doing on my anxiety and depression issues over the last few years. All I can say is that from practical experience, this approach can help. And he is right, too, to speak of having a “tool kit”, rather than buying totally in to

Outstanding...Learning to focus on the negative may cause some to raise an eyebrow. Accepting your failures and even having a sort of relationship with death can be downright scary for others. But Burkeman takes your hand and lightly leads you through the ideals of Stoicism using many examples along the way and many different principles from around the world. In this book you will discover how positive thinking can actually be damaging for some people.This is got to be one of my most favorite se...

Curmudgeonly Brit that I am, I enjoyed this book a lot. I read it at a gallop. I found it wonderfully provocative. I could have filled its margins with comments, heavily pressed into the paper, and accompanied by lots of exclamation marks. The general drift of the book is that the roaring ra-ra-ra of positive thinking does not work. Day by day, in every way, we are NOT getting better and better. The author, Oliver Burkeman, a Guardian journalist covering psychology, says that instead we need to

This is a great overview of some great studies on “happiness” or rather peace. So it’s a great start for people who don’t read a lot of self help books, but for those who have a hobby of reading meditation books (guilty), a lot of this is not new material. It’s a review of Eckhart Tolle and Buddhism and stoicism and a rebuke of the positive thinking industry, though not the first. The industry has been bankrupt of ideas for a while and others have called it out. Still, this is a good book and it...

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)I know this is going to come as a shock to many of you, but I am not exactly an "Up With People" kind of guy, and the relentless forced positivity within a certain section of the liberal arts these days, despite being done for the most noble intentions, tends to wear me out. So thank God, then, for the new...

I suppose some folks read books like this to learn something. And if so they could do worse than this one. For me, not so much to learn anew as to be reminded of what I knew already. In this case it was something I was first reminded of by Zizek and have benefited from rehearing here. That is, if you want something the best way to not get at it is to aim directly at it. And it was refreshing, true, to read something that involved some thinking but didn't require any heavy lifting.

The Antidote starts off by talking about the positive thinking movement, moves on to Seneca and the Stoics then dips into Buddhist meditation, pauses to to criticize goal setting then stops in for a visit with Eckhart Tolle. Burkeman then writes about how we overvalue safety and undervalue failure then ends with a chapter on how we approach death, including an interesting visit to Mexico on the Day of the Dead.Every chapter is well written and provides sufficient insight into each of the various...