Your book, The Antidote, is subtitled “Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking”. Why do you think our pursuit of happiness through positivity can lead to so much trouble?
Sometimes it is the very pursuit of happiness that stops us from achieving it. Put simply, I think many of the techniques that claim to enable us to achieve happiness don’t work. They are too focused on strenuously stamping out any trace of negativity, rather than cultivating the conditions of real happiness. The more complex and subtler idea is that happiness is impossible to aim for directly. I’m not just talking about all the bad self-help books out there – I think the “cult of optimism” is broader than that. We are all to some extent in its grip, whenever we think that the way to achieve whatever we’re trying to achieve is to go after it vigorously, and that if we believe it will all work out fine then it will... (continues)
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