The Antidote

This was one of the first books I ever read that showed me that there was an intelligent way to do self-help. I have always been interested in how to make it easier and more fulfilling to experience my human life, but I was always allergic to the watered-down or overly simplified takes of many self-help books out there.

But this book was well-reasoned, logical, rational, and smart, and it showed me that it was worthwhile to work on changing my perspective and my thinking without having to be delusional or in denial. It was the gateway book I needed… show more.

Though not a traditional self-development book, this book made me think, made me laugh, and made me question the way I’d been going about life.

It is a fascinating and highly entertaining read that turns conventional self-help advice on its head. Among other things, it introduced me to an alternative “negative path” to happiness that requires us to embrace what we spend our lives trying to avoid.

In the book, Burkeman talks to experimental psychologists, terrorism experts, Buddhists, hardheaded business consultants, Greek philosophers, and modern-day gurus, and they all argue that our constant effort to be happy is exactly what’s… show more.

This book is brilliant and really worth a read. Oliver Burkeman is someone who embraces positive thinking, but from a kind of cynical perspective, so the Antidote is happiness for people like me who can't stand positive thinking. It's a really practical and entertaining celebration of negative thinking that helped me embrace insecurity, uncertainty, and failures in life.

I've read a lot of self-help books, for various reasons, and this is one of the few that has actually helped. The problem with most self-help books is they focus on eliminating any negative feelings entirely and they often lie completely. They tell you that huge sweeping life changes are as simple as just deciding to make them. The Antidote does what its title implies, and shows that a different way is possible. It shows us the value in accepting those things we're normally told to avoid and the life-changing magic of taking small achievable steps.