The antidote oliver burkeman epub

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If you're still having trouble, follow these steps to sign in. Add a library card to your account to borrow titles, place holds, and add titles to your wish list. Have a card? Add it now to start borrowing from the collection. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in popular psychology research. Favorite Quote "The point here is not that negative capability is always superior to the positive kind. Optimism is wonderful; goals can sometimes be useful; even positive thinking and positive visualization have their benefits.

The problem is that we have developed the habit of chronically overvaluing positivity and the skills of 'doing' in how we think about happiness, and that we chronically undervalue negativity and the 'not-doing' skills, such as resting in uncertainty or getting friendly towards failure. To use an old cliche of therapy-speak, we spend too much of our lives seeking 'closure.

What we need more of, instead, is what the psychologist Paul Pearsall called 'openture. But its very awkwardness is a reminder of the spirit that it expresses, which includes embracing imperfection and easing up on the search for neat solutions. View all 14 comments. Jan 08, Marie Murrell rated it it was amazing. This might be my favorite self-help book of all time. In a nutshell, rather than trying to force ourselves to be cheerful when we don't feel cheerful by thinking positively, it suggests we think of the worst thing that can happen and realize that whatever that worst thing is, it isn't likely to be the end of the world.

On procrastination, it suggests we stop trying to feel motivated and just do what we have to do--moods and actions don't have to be related. On goals, it explores whether goal str This might be my favorite self-help book of all time. On goals, it explores whether goal striving brings happiness or might actually be counter productive. As someone who has spent the last 30 years reading self help books with optimism of making meaningful changes that will transform me into the person I wish to be, this is a welcome change of pace.

Over the past few weeks, I've been just accepting whatever mood I'm in and getting on with what I have to do in my day, and I feel happier already. An added bonus is that when I ask myself what the what is the worst thing that will happen if I don't do something like flossing my teeth, I find that while it isn't the end of the world, I really prefer not to have them all rot and fall out, so I am, ironically, finding the motivation after all.

There is much, much more, but I find it interesting that the one book that basically tells us to quit trying is impacting me. View 2 comments. I used to do the lab. 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 I used to do the lab. 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.

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. This is done through chapters on Stoicism, the ways goals can be counterproductive or destructive, insecurity, the non-attachment 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. Mar 18, Ms. On the one hand, telling myself that things'll work out somehow, helped silence my panic-stricken rants.

Though truth be told, these rants where mostly caused by reckless lack of studying for some of the most difficult exams in my life. In theory, a book sub titled Happiness for people who can't stand positive thinking should've been perfect for me.

At this point in my life, even the most minor whiff of positivity would have me scoffing. So it came as a complete shock, when the book's first chapter put me firmly down in the dumps, complete with a heavily secured lid. All it took, was reading a few small anecdotes about some well-known to people OTHER than me motivational speakers, who sooner or later ended up going bankrupt. I was depressed, scared witless, and also on the brink of starting a new job I wasn't entirely sure I had chosen wisely.

So I hid,i. I spent the following month attempting to glare the book into submission. This had about the same effect, as John Oliver and Rachel Dratch cursing Lupus into submission, pictured here below for your convenience. In the end, the looming 1-month deadline I had set myself, was nearly upon me, so I sucked it up and finished the book in under half a day.

And strangely enough, I had never rarely felt better. It had opened my eyes to what it meant to be a stoic: by no means one of those Hindu enlightened person to walk on hot coals. And most definitely not a saint who will suffer abuse till the end of time. Accepting that things are bad, doesn't stop you from removing yourself from being under their influence. Then there was the absolutely perfect chapter on meditation.

I could literally relate to every single piece of frustration, acceptance, and calmness of the author. It was no wonder, seeing as my first and only attempt at meditation had gone something like: " breathe iiiiii- IWantToBuyALamp -in, hold your breath, breathe ooooouu- StopPicturingLampShadesDammit -uut To be fair, this wasn't one of those books that I could just Aside from the fearful first chapter, there was this chapter on getting over oneself.

In a nutshell: I am me, but not really, but me and my environment, but also not really either, but yes, but no, but So I didn't know if things would work out. I still wasn't sure about my new job, or even However I also wasn't feeling the need to ruminate over the fact that some of my randomly set goals were nowhere near complete.

View all 3 comments. 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. I bought the thing after reading a review in the Los Angeles Times, thinking it would offer a humorous take on our cultural obsession 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.

I bought the thing after reading a review in the Los Angeles Times, thinking it would offer a humorous take on our cultural obsession with happiness and Looking On the Bright Side. He does. But the author also discusses some very interesting philosophies by current and ancient thinkers. And I agree with him when he writes that maybe our definition of "happiness" is screwed up.

He also comments on "the hidden benefits of insecurity" - and quotes Tennessee Williams: "Security is a kind of death, I think. Oliver Burkeman is no expert philosopher, but the compilation of authors he cites form a powerful argument for embracing ambiguity and uncertainty which includes our fear of death.

All the goal setting we do, all the positive visualizations, are attempts to nail down a secure surprise-free future. This is probably not news to most people. Yet, I enjoyed reading the various experts quoted in the book.

I found much of the book engaging, and not negative at all. I cannot vouch for the scholarship though - I just don't know enough - but I can tell you that the book stays on the surface of things. If you really want to know what the Greek stoics believed, you'll have to read them as directly as you can albeit in translation.

Buddhist beliefs, same. Alan Watts, same. Still, there's a lot of great ideas in this little book that can get you thinking - maybe get you to the library to check out a philosophy book. View all 12 comments. 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.

This is a very good albeit not perfect book, illustrating several schools of thought that bear on the issue of happiness — or contentment, or acceptance; there are definite nuances. An amusing and snarky appraisal of the world of self-help books and motivational speakers starts the book, but it starts delivering strongly in chapter two, What Would Seneca Do? Ponder the difference between a terrible situation and a merely undesirable one, and the latter becomes much easier to tolerate.

He extensively quotes the renowned psychologist Albert Ellis. If you are tortured to death slowly, you could always be tortured to death slower.

This trick comes into play later on, as well. The motivational gurus would have us only think positive thoughts, but the lesson here is that we could easily be better off by examining the negative — that worst-case scenario. After all, someone fixated on the best outcome imaginable will be disappointed much more often.

I found the next chapter, on the Buddhist take on this problem, to be moderately enlightening. I suspect things were worse in India twenty-five centuries ago, though. The perfect Stoic adapts his or her thinking so as to remain undisturbed by undesirable circumstances; the perfect Buddhist sees thinking itself as just another set of circumstances, to be non-judgmentally observed.

Got it? Amusing, is it not, what tricks the material world plays upon us? Well, remember part of that definition? To the analytically inclined, my goal would be to focus this skill more on the unpleasant side of the Gaussian distribution of life experiences. The next few chapters engage in some specious over-intellectualizing along with some very good stuff.

To strive is, obviously, not the same as to attain. And for many goals, the dilemma is that the act of striving can work against the attainment.

The bad logic comes in when he tries to make the case that we are all one. The book is very good in spite of it, so just wade through the mystical junk and everything will be fine. The chapter ends with an excerpt from the famous commencement speech J. Rowling made at Harvard in text , video , in which she talks up the benefits of failure. Burkeman rightly differentiates two ideas. Those that think like our sneered-at motivational speakers will argue that failure is inevitable on the way to the top, and expecting it and getting over it is healthy.

But that still focuses on the striving, not on acceptance, and for most of us there is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The other perspective is the one that Rowling also points to: absolute failure is liberating. Yeah, duh, it is indeed a little ironic, given that it liberated Rowling to become staggeringly successful and wealthy. The book ends well with the last chapter, Memento Mori. Death is, after all, the ultimate failure.

You are already naked. Remember that you are a man! I can recommend this book pretty highly. Oh, and a bit of humor: Burkeman begins his tale by studying how motivational speakers and self-help authors typically worship at the alter of success and optimism and how this is ephemeral blah blah blah , and later examines how accommodating oneself to failure and eventual death can be psychologically beneficial.

So I was primed and amused when this showed up within my event horizon View all 4 comments. Dec 04, Henrik Lindberg rated it it was ok.

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. So are we engaged in a futile pursuit? Or are we just going about it the wrong way?

Looking both east and west, in bulletins from the past and from far afield, Oliver Burkeman introduces us to an unusual group of people who share a single, surprising way of thinking about life. Some of the techniques listed in The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Cant Stand Positive Thinking may require a sound knowledge of Hypnosis, users are advised to either leave those sections or must have a basic understanding of the subject before practicing them. DMCA and Copyright : The book is not hosted on our servers, to remove the file please contact the source url.

If you see a Google Drive link instead of source url, means that the file witch you will get after approval is just a summary of original book or the file has been already removed. Loved each and every part of this book.