The Antidote: Happiness For People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking

[Guest guest]

Don't worry, I'm not coming back for along time yet, if ever, but I though this article about happiness was really good.

I tend to lose sight of ACT and get caught up in defusion and mindfulness techniques as a way of avoidence, which never works. Also, the bit here about perfectionisn and relentless determination was pertinent too. My pholosophy is if it doesn't work just try harder, and if that doesn't work, then just try even harder again and so on, but I end up nearly dead, which is how I feel most of the time.

Yep, there's a link below, and lots of science stuff, just I am I'm afraid.

These are some extracts from a very long article by the author Oliver Burkeman about his book, The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking.

Be positive, look on the bright side, stay focused on success: so goes our modern mantra. But perhaps the true path to contentment is to learn to be a loser.

Behind all of the most popular modern approaches to happiness and success is the simple philosophy of focusing on things going right. But ever since the first philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome, a dissenting perspective has proposed the opposite: that it's our relentless effort to feel happy, or to achieve certain goals, that is precisely what makes us miserable and sabotages our plans. And that it is our constant quest to eliminate or to ignore the negative – insecurity, uncertainty, failure, sadness – that causes us to feel so insecure, anxious, uncertain or unhappy in the first place.

Yet this conclusion does not have to be depressing. Instead, it points to an alternative approach: a "negative path" to happiness that entails taking a radically different stance towards those things most of us spend our lives trying hard to avoid. This involves learning to enjoy uncertainty, embracing insecurity and becoming familiar with failure. In order to be truly happy, it turns out, we might actually need to be willing to experience more negative emotions – or, at the very least, to stop running quite so hard from them.

The gurus of positivity and optimism can't bear to contemplate that there might be happiness to be found in embracing failure as failure, not only as a technique for achieving success. Perfectionism is one of those traits that many people seem secretly, or not-so-secretly, proud to possess, since it hardly seems like a character flaw. Yet, at bottom, it is a fear-driven striving to avoid the experience of failure at all costs. At the extremes, it is an exhausting and permanently stressful way to live: there is a greater correlation between perfectionism and suicide, researchers have found, than between feelings of hopelessness and suicide. To fully embrace the experience of failure, not merely to tolerate it as a stepping stone to glory, is to abandon this constant straining never to put a foot wrong – and to relax.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/jun/15/happiness-is-being-a-loser-burkeman

Kv

[Guest guest]

I like Oliver Burkeman’s stuff. He is a journalist who is very ACT-friendly, and has quite often quoted from ACT books. All the best,Cheers, Russ www.actmindfully.com.auwww.thehappinesstrap.com From: ACT_for_the_Public [mailto:ACT_for_the_Public ] On Behalf Of KaiveySent: Saturday, 16 June 2012 9:59 PMTo: ACT_for_the_Public Subject: The Antidote: Happiness For People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking Don't worry, I'm not coming back for along time yet, if ever, but I though this article about happiness was really good. I tend to lose sight of ACT and get caught up in defusion and mindfulness techniques as a way of avoidence, which never works. Also, the bit here about perfectionisn and relentless determination was pertinent too. My pholosophy is if it doesn't work just try harder, and if that doesn't work, then just try even harder again and so on, but I end up nearly dead, which is how I feel most of the time. Yep, there's a link below, and lots of science stuff, just I am I'm afraid.These are some extracts from a very long article by the author Oliver Burkeman about his book, The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking.Be positive, look on the bright side, stay focused on success: so goes our modern mantra. But perhaps the true path to contentment is to learn to be a loser.Behind all of the most popular modern approaches to happiness and success is the simple philosophy of focusing on things going right. But ever since the first philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome, a dissenting perspective has proposed the opposite: that it's our relentless effort to feel happy, or to achieve certain goals, that is precisely what makes us miserable and sabotages our plans. And that it is our constant quest to eliminate or to ignore the negative – insecurity, uncertainty, failure, sadness – that causes us to feel so insecure, anxious, uncertain or unhappy in the first place.Yet this conclusion does not have to be depressing. Instead, it points to an alternative approach: a " negative path " to happiness that entails taking a radically different stance towards those things most of us spend our lives trying hard to avoid. This involves learning to enjoy uncertainty, embracing insecurity and becoming familiar with failure. In order to be truly happy, it turns out, we might actually need to be willing to experience more negative emotions – or, at the very least, to stop running quite so hard from them.The gurus of positivity and optimism can't bear to contemplate that there might be happiness to be found in embracing failure as failure, not only as a technique for achieving success. Perfectionism is one of those traits that many people seem secretly, or not-so-secretly, proud to possess, since it hardly seems like a character flaw. Yet, at bottom, it is a fear-driven striving to avoid the experience of failure at all costs. At the extremes, it is an exhausting and permanently stressful way to live: there is a greater correlation between perfectionism and suicide, researchers have found, than between feelings of hopelessness and suicide. To fully embrace the experience of failure, not merely to tolerate it as a stepping stone to glory, is to abandon this constant straining never to put a foot wrong – and to relax. http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/jun/15/happiness-is-being-a-loser-burkemanKv