The Antidote

Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking

By: Oliver Burkeman

Narrated by: Oliver Burkeman

The Antidote is a series of journeys among people who share a single, surprising way of thinking about life. What they have in common is a hunch about human psychology: that it’s our constant effort to eliminate the negative that causes us to feel so anxious, insecure, and unhappy. And that there is an alternative "negative path" to happiness and success that involves embracing the things we spend our lives trying to avoid. It is a subversive, galvanizing message, which turns out to have a long and distinguished philosophical lineage ranging from ancient Roman Stoic philosophers to Buddhists. Oliver Burkeman talks to life coaches paid to make their clients’ lives a living hell, and to maverick security experts such as Bruce Schneier, who contends that the changes we’ve made to airport and aircraft security since the 9/11 attacks have actually made us less safe. And then there are the "backwards" business gurus, who suggest not having any goals at all and not planning for a company’s future.

Burkeman’s new audiobook is a witty, fascinating, and counterintuitive listen that turns decades of self-help advice on its head and forces us to rethink completely our attitudes toward failure, uncertainty, and death.

©2012 Oliver Burkeman (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

Excellent narration. Interesting point of view.

The book offer some different views and is well narrated. The ending was a bit of a let down with no clear actionable take aways.

Thought invoking.

I found think view on positive a negative thoughts refreshing in a sea of positive goal oriented self torture. Off to learn more about stoicism. -John

the power of negative thinking!

Great research and persuasive evidence/arguments. Loved hearing Burkeman narrate as well! This is indeed a nice remedy for all the treacle about positive thinking (and a good companion to Bootstrapped)

Nice change of pace

Tired of all the "get happy" books out there? Then try this. I enjoyed listening to Oliver Burkeman's narration and appreciated his dry sense of humor and his sincerity. His main point is that trying too hard to be happy can actually result in being less happy. It's truly a novel idea that you don't have to love what you are doing at all times every day, or that you can make the pain, sadness and disappointments in your life just magically disappear by following one method or another. Or that it is necessarily good to always look on the bright side. Burkeman's isn't telling us that we all have to go around being grumps, but when things go wrong or we get too attached to the right way for things to be, we are running away from thoughts and emotions that if we felt them and didn't resist them, would help us grow and maybe reset our whole idea of what "happiness" is.

Good read

The Book was so good I listened twice. I highly recommended this for young adults