The Antidote

"Because my wife kept reading it and laughing out loud, which she almost never does. He’s such a great writer and he’s got such great stories in there. For those of us who’ve been around the self-improvement, self-development, personal growth game for 40 years, it was such fun to read. “Happiness For People That Can’t Stand Positive Thinking” is a fun subtitle. But the content, as you know, is much more sophisticated than the title represents. He describes Stoicism , the philosophy of accepting current reality so that you can move past it. That is such a key, key element. It’s a real key element of getting things done, in a way, because a lot of people resist what I teach because they don’t want to look at all the commitments that they’ve made, face up to them. Hey, it takes most people one to six hours just to identify all of the ‘would,’ ‘could,’ ‘should,’ ‘need to,’ ‘ought to’ tasks that are banging around in their psyche. Most people don’t want to engage with that reality. That’s a very good example of what Oliver’s talking about. This is not nah-nah-nu-nu-fru-fru stuff. This is: can you just deal with what you’ve committed to, what’s up and what’s in your face? Because if you don’t do that, it’s very difficult to move forward without resistance. Everyone. Anybody who is into improving their life. Anybody who wants their life, 18 months from now, to be better or more creative or more expansive than it currently is. Any life-long learner—that’s my broad definition. Anybody who wants to be able to do more, better; have less stress; have more fun; have more anything, as opposed to just being complacent."