The Antidote (23 page)

The negative path to happiness, then, is a different kind of
path. But it is also a path to a different kind of destination. Or maybe it makes more sense to say that the path is the destination? These things are excruciatingly hard to put into words, and the spirit of negative capability surely dictates that we do not struggle too hard to do so. ‘A good traveller has no fixed plans,' says the Chinese sage Lao Tzu, ‘and is not intent upon arriving.' There could be no better way to make the journey.

W
RITING THIS BOOK AFFORDED
me many opportunities to test its arguments by confronting uncertainty, anxiety, the prospect of failure, and occasionally blind terror. I am grateful that I didn't have to rely on positive-thinking affirmations to deal with this, but benefited instead from the skills and time of some extraordinary people. At Canongate, I thank above all my remarkably Stoical editor Nick Davies, whose talents vastly improved the text, and his colleagues, including Norah Perkins, Angela Robertson, and Octavia Reeve; Mitzi Angel at Faber & Faber in New York provided enormously invaluable input. To say that I am indebted to my agent Claire Conrad would be a comical understatement; I am grateful to everyone at Janklow & Nesbit, in particular Tina Bennett for early guidance and encouragement. As well as all the named interviewees, I thank the following people for advice, contacts, comments on chapters, or places to write: Cyntia Barrera, Tor Butler-Cole, Jeremy Chatzky, Clar Ni Chonghaile, Catherine Crawford, Joanna Ebenstein, Jeffy Gibbins, Julia Greenberg, Debbie Joffe-Ellis, Kenneth Folk, Solana Larsen, Jeff Mikkelson, Mac Montandon, Salvador Oguín and Joanna Tuckman. At the
Guardian,
for assistance or forbearance in
differing measures, I thank Emma Cook, Janine Gibson, Clare Margetson, Emily Wilson and Becky Gardiner. Ian Katz doesn't really do forbearance, but I'm grateful to him for much else.

Since this book grew initially from the topics explored in my column for
Guardian Weekend
magazine, its ultimate source, as with so many ideas, is the mind of Merope Mills, the magazine's editor. Others deserving of much thanks include Esther Addley, Anne Bernstein and my friends from York, of whom I'll unfairly single out here Adam Ormond, Rurik Bradbury, Abigail Gibson, Daniel Weyman, Sally Weyman, Rachael Burnett and Robin Parmiter. Emma Brockes continued her indispensable service as outboard brain, and was much more help than any motivational seminar.

I'm by no means sure that it was a wise happiness strategy on the part of Heather Chaplin to decide to embrace this project as wholeheartedly as she did, but it made an incalculable difference. For this and many other reasons I am ridiculously lucky to know her.

Some of the interviews in this book were originally conducted in the course of reporting assignments for the
Guardian.
In a small number of other cases, scenes have been compressed or dialogue reconstructed from memory.

has been accused of denying access to reporters … Lowe denies the charge:
See Eric Anderson, ‘Media Barred from Get Motivated! Seminar, at Least for Now', Albany
Times Union
blog ‘The Buzz', 21 July 2009; and Tamara Lowe's comment, at
blog.timesunion.com/business/media-barred-from-get-motivated-seminar-at-least-for-now/

has filed for bankruptcy:
See Rebecca Cathcart, ‘Crystal Cathedral Files for Bankruptcy',
New York Times,
18 October 2010.

increased economic growth does not necessarily make for happier societies:
This is an endlessly contested subject, with rival psychologists and economists constantly doing battle, and as ever it rests on contentious definitions of happiness. But one of the very biggest and most up-to-date reviews of the data, which found an absence of correlation in the long term between economic growth and improved wellbeing, is Richard Easterlin et al., ‘The Happiness-Income Paradox Revisited',
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
107 (2010): 22463-8.

increased personal income … doesn't make for happier people:
See previous note; and see also Daniel Kahneman et al., ‘Would You Be Happier If You Were Richer? A Focusing Illusion',
Science
312 (2006): 1908-10. And perhaps more to the point, it certainly seems to be the case that if you
set out
to
achieve material goals, you'll be less happy than those with other priorities: see Carol Nickerson et al., ‘Zeroing in on the Dark Side of the American Dream',
Psychological Science
14 (2003): 531-6.

Nor does better education:
See for example Robert Witter et al., ‘Education and Subjective Wellbeing: A Meta-analysis',
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis
6 (1984): 165-73.

Nor does an increased choice of consumer products:
The canonical resource on this is Barry Schwartz,
The Paradox of Choice
(New York: Ecco, 2003).

Nor do bigger and fancier homes:
Robert H. Frank, ‘How Not To Buy Happiness',
Daedalus
133 (2004): 69-79.

research strongly suggests they aren't usually much help:
One example is Gerald Haeffel, ‘When Self-help is No Help: Traditional Cognitive Skills Training Does Not Prevent Depressive Symptoms in People Who Ruminate',
Behaviour Research and Therapy
48 (2010): 152-7. To be fair, studies have shown some specific self-help books to have a beneficial effect, notably
Feeling Good
by David Burns - see Eric Stice et al., ‘Randomised Trial of a Brief Depression Prevention Programme: An Elusive Search for a Psychosocial Placebo Control Condition',
Behaviour Research and Therapy
45 (2007): 863-76.

the ‘eighteen-month rule':
For more on this, see Steve Salerno,
Sham: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless
(New York: Crown, 2005).

venting your anger doesn't get rid of it:
Brad Bushman, ‘Does Venting Anger Feed or Extinguish the Flame? Catharsis, Rumination, Distraction, Anger, and Aggressive Responding',
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
28 (2002): 724-31.

‘when you try to stay on the surface of the water …':
Both quotations from Alan Watts,
The Wisdom of Insecurity
(New York: Vintage, 1951), 9.

‘the harder we try …':
Aldous Huxley,
Complete Essays 1939-1956
(Lanham, Maryland: Ivan R. Dee, 2002), 225.

the ‘cult of optimism', as the philosopher Peter Vernezze calls it:
Peter Vernezze,
Don't Worry, Be Stoic
(Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 2005): xx.

one typical transcript:
Daniel Wegner,
White Bears and Other Unwanted Thoughts
(New York: Guilford Press, 1989), 3.

he explained in one paper:
Daniel Wegner, ‘How To Think, Say or Do Precisely the Worst Thing for Any Occasion',
Science
325 (2009): 48.

‘Metacognition … occurs when thought takes itself as an object':
Wegner,
White Bears and Other Unwanted Thoughts,
44.

‘Metathoughts are instructions …':
Ibid., 54.

when experimental subjects are told of an unhappy event:
Ibid., 128-9; see also Daniel Wegner et al., ‘Ironic Processes in the Mental Control of Mood and Mood-related Thought',
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
65 (1993): 1093-1104.

patients who were suffering from panic disorders:
Chris Adler et al., ‘Relaxation-induced Panic (RIP): When Resting Isn't Painful',
Integrative Psychiatry
5 (1987): 94-100.

Bereaved people who make the most effort to avoid feeling grief:
Wegner,
White Bears and Other Unwanted Thoughts,
9, in reference to Erich Lindeman, ‘Symptomatology and Management of Acute Grief',
American Journal of Psychiatry
101 (1944): 141-8.

people instructed not to think about sex:
Wegner,
White Bears and Other Unwanted Thoughts,
149, in reference to Barclay Martin, ‘Expression and Inhibition of Sex Motive Arousal in College Males',
Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology
68 (1964): 307-12.

An additional twist was revealed in 2009:
Joanne Wood et al., ‘Positive Self-statements: Power for Some, Peril for Others',
Psychological Science
20 (2009): 860-6.

‘There are lots of ways of being miserable':
Edith Wharton, ‘The Last Asset', in
The Collected Stories of Edith Wharton
(New York: Carroll & Graf, 2003), 65.

‘doing the presumably sensible thing is counterproductive':
Steven Hayes, ‘Hello Darkness: Discovering Our Values by Confronting Our Fears',
Psychotherapy Networker
31 (2007): 46-52.

a speech he gave to executives of the investment bank Merrill Lynch:
See Jeanne Pugh, ‘The Eternal Optimist',
St Petersburg Times,
8 June 1985.

Healthy and happy people … generally have a less accurate, overly optimistic grasp:
The classic study on ‘depressive realism' is Lauren Alloy and Lyn Abramson, ‘Judgment of Contingency in Depressed and Nondepressed Students: Sadder but Wiser?',
Journal of Experimental Psychology
108 (1979): 441-85.

a particularly high-achieving week at work:
Heather Barry Kappes and Gabriele Oettingen, ‘Positive Fantasies about Idealized Futures Sap Energies',
Journal of Experimental and Social Psychology
47 (2011): 719-29.

Oettingen had some of the participants rendered mildly dehydrated:
Ibid.

writes the scholar of Stoicism William Irvine:
In
A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy
(New York: Oxford 2008), Kindle edition.

‘Things do not touch the soul':
Marcus Aurelius,
The Meditations,
Book IV, Trans. George Long; electronic text available at
classics.mit.edu/Antoninus/meditations.html

‘the single most valuable technique':
In William Irvine,
A Guide to the Good Life.

‘Whenever you grow attached to something':
Quoted in William Stephens, ‘Epictetus on How the Stoic Sage Loves', at
puffin.creighton.edu/phil/Stephens/OSAP%20Epictetus%20on%20Stoic%20Love.htm

‘Set aside a certain number of days': Moral Epistles to Lucilius,
Trans. Richard Gummere (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1917), 119.

‘Constantly regard the universe as one living being':
Marcus Aurelius,
Meditations
Book IV.

‘Never have I trusted Fortune':
Seneca,
The Consolation of Helvia,
Trans. Moses Hadas (New York: Norton, 1968), 111-12.

‘Do not despise death':
Marcus Aurelius,
Meditations
Book IX.

‘The cucumber is bitter? Put it down':
Marcus Aurelius,
Meditations
Book VIII; the translation here is by Arthur Loat Farquharson (Oxford: Clarendon, 1944).

America's psychologists had voted him the second most influential:
See Michael Kaufman, ‘Albert Ellis, Influential Figure in Modern Psychology, Dies at 93',
New York Times,
24 July 2007.

‘Whereupon thirty got up and walked away':
Myrtle Heery, ‘An Interview with Albert Ellis',
www.psychotherapy.net/interview/Albert_Ellis

‘Nobody took out a stiletto':
Ibid.

‘Because … when you insist that an undesirable event is awful':
Albert Ellis,
How To Make Yourself Happy and Remarkably Less Disturbable
(Atascadero: Impact, 1999): 60.

immediately collapse onto the ground:
This anecdote comes from Rick Fields,
How the Swans Came to the Lake: A Narrative History of Buddhism in America
(Boston: Shambhala, 1992), 252.

‘Fall, hands a-clasped':
See Jack Kerouac,
Pomes All Sizes
(San Francisco: City Lights, 1992), 96.

one Kerouac biographer:
Ann Charters,
Kerouac: A Biography
(New York: Macmillan, 1994), 219.

‘One realises … that one's brain is constantly chattering':
J. Krishnamurti,
‘Dialogue at Los Alamos', March 1984; available at
www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/print.php?tid=1588&chid=1285

a series of experiments conducted in 2009:
For details, and for Fadel Zeidan's comments, see University of North Carolina at Charlotte release, ‘Brief Training in Meditation May Help Manage Pain, Study Shows', at
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091110065909.htm
, and Fadel Zeidan et al., ‘The Effects of Brief Mindfulness Training on Experimentally Induced Pain',
The Journal of Pain
11 (2009): 199-209.

In a related experiment by Zeidan's team:
See Fadel Zeidan et al., ‘Brain Mechanisms Supporting the Modulation of Pain by Mindfulness Meditation',
Journal of Neuroscience
31 (2011): 5540-8.

‘If we get the right emotion':
From a talk at the TED conference by Tony Robbins, viewable online at
www.ted.com/talks/tony_robbins_asks_why_we_do_what_we_do.html

The author Julie Fast:
See Julie Fast,
Get It Done When You're Depressed
(New York: Alpha Books, 2008).

‘Inspiration is for amateurs':
Quoted in Julie Bernstein and Kurt Anderson,
Spark: How Creativity Works
(New York: HarperCollins, 2011), 13.

‘People … think that they should':
Shoma Morita,
Morita Therapy and the True Nature of Anxiety-Based Disorders,
Trans. Akihisa Kondo (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), 53.

‘Many western therapeutic methods focus':
See James Hill, ‘Morita Therapy', at
www.moritaschool.com/content/morita-therapy
.