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

The Antidote discusses the power of negative thinking in a positive way. IN our western culture we are often driven by the need to achieve an succeed. Plenty of self-help gurus tell us what we must do to succeed. We need to believe in ourselves and visualize the success. However, this rarely leads to happiness. Many studies on success tend to suffer from survivors bias. Successful people have a number of traits. However, there are probably plenty of abject failures with similar traits - they are just never interviewed.

The book also discusses the concept of self. What is the self? What is not the self. We could argue that the entire world that we live in is part of the "self". Out happiness is tied to those around us. Many very material poor societies have greater happiness than rich ones. Is it the community that helps cause this? Is the problem with positive thinking that it just pushes us to continue on the rat race that is not necessarily what brings us to happiness?

People also get stuck hoping for security. "These insecure times" is a common expression throughout history.. It is common to have a fear of the unknown void after death. What about fear of the unknown void before birth? What about other irrational fears that cause us to do things not in our best interest? A form of realism can be a legitimate way to achieve happiness.