*Not like other self-help books* The Antidote by Oliver Burkeman

What if the key to happiness was not simply to focus on the positive, but instead to embrace the negative?

In this critique of mainstream self-help focused on ‘positive thinking’, Oliver Burkeman argues that by learning to accept the negative aspects of the human experience — unpleasant emotions, failure, and death — we might unlock new strategies that can increase our long-term wellbeing.

Such ideas aren’t particularly new. So-called ‘toxic positivity’, a term coined by Dr Jamie Zuckerman, has been circulating in online and offline spheres for some time now. While serving effectively as a straw-man to rail against, I think the current self-help content landscape is much more nuanced than Burkeman gives it credit for (admittedly Burkeman is correct in that some of it is complete pseudoscience).

In fact I’d come across many of the studies and philosophical arguments cited in this book already in The Happiness Lab, a podcast by Yale Professor, Laurie Santos. Ironically, many of the studies described in this podcast come from the field of ‘positive psychology’, which from the name alone would appear to represent everything that Burkeman stands against. This would be a misconception.