{"id":36193,"date":"2020-05-20T15:03:15","date_gmt":"2020-05-20T22:03:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/?p=36193"},"modified":"2020-05-20T15:03:15","modified_gmt":"2020-05-20T22:03:15","slug":"book-freak-42","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/book-freak-42\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Freak #41: How to Succeed in a Distracted World"},"content":{"rendered":"

Book Freak is a weekly newsletter with short pieces of advice from books. Subscribe here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Oliver Burkeman writes a weekly column on psychology for The Guardian called, \u201cThis Column Will Change Your Life.\u201d Here are four pieces of advice from his book, The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can\u2019t Stand Positive Thinking<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Don’t wait until you feel motivated to do something<\/strong>
\n\u201cWho says you need to wait until you \u2018feel like\u2019 doing something in order to start doing it? The problem, from this perspective, isn\u2019t that you don\u2019t feel motivated; it\u2019s that you imagine you need to feel motivated. If you can regard your thoughts and emotions about whatever you\u2019re procrastinating on as passing weather, you\u2019ll realise that your reluctance about working isn\u2019t something that needs to be eradicated or transformed into positivity. You can coexist with it. You can note the procrastinatory feelings and act anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n

Embrace insecurity<\/strong>
\n\u201cTrue security lies in the unrestrained embrace of insecurity – in the recognition that we never really stand on solid ground, and never can.\u201d<\/p>\n

Be happier by not trying to be happy<\/strong>
\n\u201cThe effort to feel happy is often precisely the thing that makes us miserable. And that it is our constant efforts to eliminate the negative – insecurity, uncertainty, failure, or sadness – that is what causes us to feel so insecure, anxious, uncertain, or unhappy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stop rating yourself<\/strong>
\n\u201cWhen you rate your self highly, you actually create the possibility of rating your self poorly; you are reinforcing the notion that your self is something that can be \u2018good\u2019 or \u2018bad\u2019 in the first place. And this will always be a preposterous overgeneralization. You have strengths and weaknesses; you behave in good ways and bad ways. Smothering all these nuances with a blanket notion of self-esteem is a recipe for misery. Inculcate high self-esteem in your children, claims Paul Hauck, a psychologist opposed to the concept of self-esteem, and you will be \u2018teaching them arrogance, conceit and superiority\u2019 \u2013 or alternatively, when their high self-esteem falters, \u2018guilt, depression, [and] feelings of inferiority and insecurity\u2019 instead. Better to drop the generalisations. Rate your individual acts as good or bad, if you like. Seek to perform as many good ones, and as few bad ones, as possible. But leave your self out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Book Freak<\/a> is one of our five newsletters from Cool Tools Lab (our other\u00a0four are the Cool Tools Newsletter<\/a>, Recomendo<\/a>, Gareth\u2019s Tips, Tools, and Shop Tales<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>and What’s in my bag?<\/a>).<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/div><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Short pieces of advice from books<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[76],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36193"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36193"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36196,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36193\/revisions\/36196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}