Before you rush out to buy the next positive thinking bestseller, ask yourself this — is your search for optimism making you miserable? Dhamini Ratnam speaks to an unusual group that says, bathe in insecurity and focus on the worst case scenario instead of the best to find what else, happiness and success.
I've seen people using positive visualisation to restart a car that's broken down," laughs Subhas Rao Mallya, a 48-year-old engineer with an oil company, and a self-confessed self help addict. A decade ago, as a practitioner, he wasn't laughing. His obsession with positive thinking led him to attempt to heal his aunt's pain from cancer using a technique called Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP).
Made popular in the 1970s, NLP is a personality development technique that uses verbal and non-verbal communication (like eye movements) to overcome physical pain or get rid of negative thoughts.
The aunt's pain decreased, but when her cancer resurfaced, there was little he or the doctors could do to save her. She passed away in six months, "bitter that I couldn't help her," says Mallya. "I was disappointed in myself, but blamed her for not following my instructions. After she passed away, I felt like a failure."
While that didn't quite put Mallya off self help, it did inject a healthy dose of scepticism in him, leading him to the same conclusion that British author Oliver Burkeman argues in his witty, thought-provoking new book, The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking. Embracing the darker realities of life is as important as imagining a shiny, bright one.
Burkeman, a journalist with The Guardian, is offering a radical take on how we look at happiness and success. "It (self help culture) has encouraged an allergy to the idea of experiencing negative emotions. There's now a lot of exciting psychological research that suggests that trying to stamp negativity out whenever it pops up, is deeply counterproductive," he says in an email interview.
After speaking to experimental psychologists, terrorism experts, Buddhists and hardheaded business consultants, he argues that in our personal lives, and in society at large, it's our constant effort to be happy that is making us miserable. "Failure is everywhere. It's just that most of the time we'd rather avoid confronting that fact," adds Burkeman. He suggests you give negativity a chance to make you happy.
It's not the same as being negative
Simply put, taking the negative path means imagining the worstcase scenario. "When you're anxious, instead of struggling to convince yourself that everything will turn out fine, turn the question around and ask: what if it didn't turn out fine? We have a tendency to jump from some small event, say an argument with a lover, to the worst possible fantasies, like being rejected for life," he argues. By asking what's the worst that could happen, negative visualisation puts a limit on that limitless fear: things might get bad, but they'll never be infinitely bad.
Sanjiv Dasgupta, a 36-year-old top management executive in a real estate firm in Mumbai, can vouch for that. Four years ago, the Indian Institute of Management graduate read the immensely popular self help book, Who Moved My Cheese? and was motivated to quit his job, simply because it was too comfortable.
"I felt like the mouse that had gotten too comfortable with finding its cheese in the same place. I needed to move my cheese, take risks and push myself to adapt to change," says Dasgupta.
For some, a plush job at an office 10 minutes from home, in the same building as their spouse, would have been the very roadmap of happiness. But Dasgupta's urge to change his life led him to take up a job that wasn't just far from where he lived, but also vastly different from his original one.
The situation at his new workplace, he admits, isn't sound, and visualising a positive outcome — one which has him retaining his position — is a daily 10-minute exercise. Is he happier now?
Dasgupta pauses before answering. "Yes, and no," he replies. "But I'm glad I moved out of my comfort zone."
It's because we must adapt
Economist Bibek Debroy points out that the all-pervasive self help culture that's currently trending in urban India, is born out of liberalisation. An opening up of the Indian market to Western corporations has meant that young urban Indians not only have more money than their counterparts of 20 years ago, but also that their hierarchy of needs has moved up.
Liberalisation also brought mobility and flux. "Whereas earlier, a working professional joined the public sector and stayed on till retirement, now there are several hops between jobs. This constant shift has generated a perceived need to improve oneself. We no longer feel that our University education can last our careers," says Debroy.
Hence the upsurge in books that teach us to 'upgrade our skills', 'become better managers', 'deal with stress' and focus on lifestyle-related issues.
"A lot of this positive thinking is a response to insecurity," agrees Burkeman. "Given the weight of change in the last few decades in India, it's not surprising that self help books are a hit in the country."
While the self help industry in the United States is estimated to be $11 billion, in India, markers of its popularity lie in the details. Rhonda Byrne's 2006 bestseller The Secret has notched up to four lakh sales, while The Magic, which hit Indian bookstands in March, has sold 75,000 copies already.
Sivaraman Balakrishnan, senior manager, marketing and communications for Crossword Bookstore, credits The Secret for setting the trend. "It did for self help literature what Chetan Bhagat did to Indian English fiction," he says.
Priya Kumar, Deepak Chopra and Shiv Khera are the popular Indian authors in this genre, with Azim Jamal being toted as the new hot author with his 'Corporate Sufi' teachings, says Balakrishnan.
Hay House India, a branch of Hay House founded by self help author Louise Hay, has sold close to three lakh copies of Hay's You Can Heal Your Life. "Each year it is reprinted at least four times. It has been translated into a dozen regional languages and the film by the same name has been successful in English and Hindi," says managing director Ashok Chopra.
Motivational books form 25 per cent of the overall sales at Mumbai and Bengaluru's Strand Bookstore, says managing partner Vidya Virkar. Five years ago, it was 10 per cent. "The demand for New Age spiritual books has gone up. People are clearly seeking more than how to manage their workspace," she says.
Being positive costs money
Thirty-three-year-old Kanishka Sinha trained as an engineer, a chartered accountant and later completed a management degree. Last year, he launched a soft skills and self-awareness training company for corporate executives. As a personal coach to CEOs and high ranking professionals, Sinha charges 10,000 for an hour-long call, and 50,000 for a day-long workshop. And his charges are competitive.
Personal coaches often charge up to 75,000 for a day-long workshop where they train ambitious youngsters on tackling uncertainty, gaining respect from juniors, and allaying deep-seated fears of not being respected. Very often these concerns spill over to their personal lives, as well, says Sinha.
"Personality development is no longer about telling people what to do. We make them observe their behaviour, and give them feedback."
This is perhaps the reason why psychotherapist Rani Raote is unwilling to trash self-help culture. "If selfhelp books make people examine their behaviour to understand why they do what they're doing, then that's a good thing."
However, psychiatrist Dr Dayal Mirchandani, strikes a note of caution. The problem, he says, arises when self help masquerades as quick-fix solutions. "A lot of motivational literature sets people up for failure. We live in a real world. When positive visualisation doesn't work, it leaves a person upset."
Which is what Burkeman means when he says research has shown that motivational books make people miserable, and visualising your goals can make you less likely to achieve them because your brain relaxes and gets tricked into thinking that you've already achieved them.
And so, he offers the perfect alternative: give failure, pessimism, insecurity and uncertainty — the very things we spend our lives avoiding — a tight hug. "Positive thinking and goal-setting is motivated by a desire to know how the future will turn out. But, if you knew exactly how the rest of your life will unfold, it would be a kind of living death. It's only in situations of uncertainty that new and fruitful things can happen."
How to be negative & happy:
Burkeman's rules
Situation 1: Your partner behaves cold think:
What's the worst-case scenario? Apply: While at first, you may jump to a panicked vision of the relationship ending, leaving you sad and lonely, take a moment and vividly work out
the worst-case scenario in a more rational way. You'll find yourself reaching a number of anxiety-reducing conclusions — there's no reason to assume anything is really all that wrong; there are actions you can take (like initiate a discussion) to resolve the mess; even if you did get dumped, you would probably find someone else; if you don't find someone else, you can still find happiness. The point is, you'd never reach these conclusions if you sought to persuade yourself that everything will be OK. Delving into the negative version of the future in fact, can help you feel better. Situation 2: You're procrastinating on a project Don't think: I need to be positive Apply: Conventional self-help wisdom advises you to find ways to motivate yourself and get the job done. But that actually adds an obstacle to action, by reinforcing the idea that you need to be in a particular state of mind, i.e, motivated, before you can act. The "negative path to happiness" instead leads you to realise that you don't need to feel like doing something before you do it. You can coexist with the negative feeling and act anyway. Often, the negative feeling disappears. Situation 3: you're taking a big life decision (moving to another city, pursuing a relationship, taking up a new job) Think: Let me embrace uncertainty Apply: We hate uncertainty so much that we are likely to take decisions not in our best interests, but simply to get rid of the feeling of uncertainty. If you ask yourself, "Am I taking this decision to get rid of a feeling of uncertainty," and if the answer is yes
, beware. Of course, not every risk-taking decision is a good one. But a new job or relationship shouldn't be dismissed only because it leads to feelings of uncertainty.
Courtesy: Times of India
