Positive Thinking: What Is The Antidote?

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Guest blogger Cath Wallis (@DudessofYork) Reviews The Antidote – Happiness for People who Hate Positive Thinking by Oliver Burkeman

Have you ever had the sneaking suspicion that ‘positive thinking’, as a lifestyle choice, is a little bit mental? You know the one, it’s the world of goal setting, positive visualisation and endless 10 point plans for success and happiness as expounded by a whole industry of happy clappy optimism gurus. I have and this stuff can be truly terrifying to someone from Sheffield. Personally, I have always felt it to be a bit forced, a little desperate, and a lot unsustainable. But hey, each to his/her own. I was always content to let the happiness hippies get on with their thing while I got along with my, shall we say, alternative outlook.  And all was well. Until, that is, I began to feel the spectre of ‘positivity’ begin to encroach on my life in that unavoidable capture net, the workplace.

It seems that, as the recession bites, positive thinking has become ubiquitous in the workplace. Desperate Senior Managers increasingly incorporate its teachings into our everyday lives, often in an effort to convince us that doing 3 people’s jobs as well as our own is a sensible way to run a business. I have observed previously sane colleagues become infected with ‘positivity’ and make increasingly irrational decisions in fear of being perceived as ‘being negative’. Meetings, once the forum for problem solving and debate, have become little more than motivational seminars and an exercise in self-congratulation as staff are encouraged to go around the table and tell everyone “one positive thing that has happened this week”. By the time it gets to me I’m usually too busy vomiting to contribute.

Having experienced the feeling of being devoured by this insane cult of optimism and seen, at first hand, how its overvalued doctrine can override reason and common sense, I was desperate for someone to come along and save me from the positive thinking Nazis. And they did, in the form of Guardian columnist and psychologist, Oliver Burkeman, with his book ‘The Antidote – Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking’. And what an antidote it is.

What Burkeman doesn’t do is offer an alternative 10 point plan for happiness. Thank God. What he does do is take you on an exploration of what is actually wrong with the positive thinking industry and the one-size-fits-all definition of happiness. His journey takes him across the globe, literally, but also into the minds and worlds of people who have really thought about the stuff of happiness. I mean REALLY thought about it, not just nipped into WH Smith for the latest ‘Path to Delirious Joy ’ best seller to give them a boost when they’re a feeling a bit pissed off. He delves into the philosophical teachings of Stoicism and Buddhism; offers us psychological research; insightful interviews with a diverse range of free-thinking individuals and imaginative case studies. Then he lays it on a plate and invites the reader to actually think for themselves, something which, it seems to me, is the antithesis of the positive thinking agenda.

Burkeman’s travels take him from a motivational conference where George W Bush is a speaker (need I say more to convince you ) to a silent Buddhist retreat; from the slums of Nairobi to the ‘Museum of Failures’. It’s a fascinating mission to redefine what we mean by happiness and how we achieve it and is packed with interesting and funny anecdotes and findings. Here are just a few of the questions that he explores:

Can ‘chasing’ happiness be bad for us?

Why do companies set goals then throw everything at achieving them even when it’s apparent that they are not working?

Why do people in the slums of Nairobi achieve a higher happiness rating than people in the affluent West?

Can constantly boosting your child’s self-esteem turn them into a self- absorbed brat?

Can setting goals be at best, unhelpful, and at worst dangerous?

Can changing our ideas on death and dying help us lead more fulfilling lives?

Burkeman puts his ideas across in a non-preachy, balanced way with plenty of wit and bags of common sense. He doesn’t dismiss positive thinking in its entirety. He acknowledges that there are situations where it can be useful, for example, getting into the right frame of mind for an interview. He does, however, challenge the unrelenting doctrine of positive thinking as an all-encompassing means of achieving happiness and success. He invites the reader to consider the idea that embracing a ‘negative’ path and all that this entails: uncertainty, facing fear and failure head on can help us toward a more contented life. In short, shit happens, let’s deal with it. But more than that, it confirms everything that I ever suspected about the gospel of positive thinking but was too thick to put into words myself, and for that I will be eternally grateful.

13 comments

  2. I certainly feel a lot more postive after reading this article!… I have been suspicious of this ‘positivism’ bandwagon for some time, I’m sure when in education we were always encouraged to question and challenge everything, so why in the workplace is there so much pressure to suck everything up and with forced enthusiasm?!

  4. As a professional speaker who experienced at first hand the ‘eye of the storm’ of the motivational positivist mantra, I can attest to its slab-wall properties.

    Needless to say I exited that hurricane of “high fives” as soon as I could but not before I scratched my rebellious graffiti on its monolithic rock face;
    http://www.tymchak.com/?p=598

    I find it ironic/sad/predictable that a profession that purports to be creative and challenging, demonstrates the greatest amount of group-think when it comes to analysing its own philosophy. Well, there is corporate money in the game, so what can you expect?

    1. Thanks for your comment Ivor. I agree, this has become a multi-million pound industry so if the formula works they will just keep banging it out there.

  5. Cath

    You mention the ubiquity of positive thinking programmes at a time of recession. I thought (hoped) all the touchy-feely new-age management bollocks would disappear with the recession, but the opposite seems to be the case. Maybe it’s because government and management find it easier and cheaper to concentrate on our psychologically than find solutions to real problems.

    Positive thinking tends to be an element of other courses, as well as something in its own right. It’s an easy, vacuous concept to introduce, after all who’d be for ‘negative thinking’? In the Civil Service dept I work in I don’t remember specific positive thinking courses (but then I avoid going on any such courses so may have missed it). The fad here for the last few years has been ‘engagement’; which is all about cultivating our ‘emotional and psychological connectedness’ to our employer, to ‘enhance our sense of well-being’ (‘well-being’, along with ‘happiness’, being another recent fad) which they hope will ‘raise our performance’.

    However, the latest thing they’ve imposed (although at present just senior management) is ‘unconscious bias’ training. Apparently our unconscious is now employee/government concern, and through some type of Mao-lite re-education training management will trained in methods of ‘unconscious resistance’ to combat their ‘unconscious bias’. It’s really just an extension of ‘diversity’ training in which some outside consultancy tells us how we should think about and relate to one another, except now the employer seems to think our very unconscious (the existence of which is long disputed in psychology) is their legitimate concern. But all these fads represent a tendency to overstep the wage-labour relationship. And in patronising us and trying to tell us how we should think they actually demonstrate the very negative view employers have if us.

    Paul

    1. Hi Paul

      Thank you for your post. My first reaction to your info about ‘unconscious bias’ was to laugh at how ridiculous it sounded but you know, thinking about it, it really is quite scary isn’t it? You make some excellent points, particularly regarding overstepping the wage-labour relationship. There’s a phd in there somewhere! I am now off to Google ‘unconscious bias’ as mu curiosity has got the better of me! If you have a link to a website dealing with stuff please let me know.

      Cath

      1. Cath

        There’s no particular website, I searched under ‘unconscious bias’ and it brings up loads of HR/PR firms, all quoting similar cod/evolutionary psychology about how our brains are ‘hard-wired’ to react in certain ways. I agree it is scary that the employer thinks it has a right to get into peoples’ heads, but we can always act as conscious beings and refuse to go along with it.

        I don’t know about a PhD, but I hope write an article about it for Leeds Salon’s sister journal FIPA. I just need a bit of positive thinking to get off my lazy arse and write it.

        Paul

        1. You’ve got it spot on – the recession has caught people napping and it’s deeply shocked me, particularly for career changers.

          I’ve gotten to see this from the other side and people’s approaches can be so stupid. In my industry (quant) you can tell straight away if someone has a chance at getting a position, yet HR/PR still peddle bollocks like “numbers game” and to “keep your options open”.

          What I see as frightening is the amount of cold callers we get chancing for an opening bragging about X years doing this and that in unrelated work that only at best sounds related to what we do. Even though the approach has its merits, and I might have roles available, at the very least I want 2 things – 1. do you actually understand the change in role you’re looking for? 2. Have you anything that suggests this is not a pipe dream e.g. a strong paper published that justifies employing you?

          But what frightens me is a culture where positive thinkers will put a box around the statement “has its merits” and make money out of others’ misery by ignoring the rest of what I said. I’m not the only one and, in fact, this is how most other employers I know feel.

          It is actually quite frightening how much this is not in line with real psychology, whether it be talk therapy or evidence based CBT. It is also quite frightening to see how people fall for this. I mean I STILL get so many people in other fields actually LECTURING me about why I’m suited for jobs that are posted where I know FOR A FACT aren’t anything to with what I do or can do. Usually they misconstrue this as limiting myself – surely the case is that with 9 years experience (and being employed I don’t need a new job anyway?!?) I know the field and they don’t?

          Furthermore people will go to great lengths to preserve their faulty beliefs – even when you’ve explained the plain logic behind why certain people will not get into certain roles, it’s always reduced to negative terms like “giving up”. It’s quite presumptuous that it’s never a case of people not being good enough – this is the real limiting psychology, I mean surely applying for stuff that you can’t get is energy draining? Why not go to networking events, find what’s hot, what you might have a better chance of getting and what will help make a jump? Beats the pants out of cheap “positive psychology”.

          Indeed there may be a PhD in this – I’ve been out of work a couple of times and the amount of inconsistencies I see in people’s thinking when that happens is frightening. Discussing this with most clowns they either go into pontification mode or characters will change identities in their stories to suit themselves. E.g. I was asked recently by someone what a new entrants needs in my industry. Because she didn’t like what she heard i.e. with the wrong last job or no justifiable reason you ain’t getting an interview (even if you did MFE many moons ago) she retorts with “But what would HR know?”. I mean did I suddenly change my identity to HR during that conversation? Even when I made it clear that this THE LINE MANAGER not HR that does this it just never sunk in – indeed I see this kind of bizarre behaviour from uni classmates that didn’t get serious jobs. I think a PhD would focus on how people’s ability to listen is hampered and people wind up severely disempowered by positive thinking.

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