Reviewed Date: March 26th, 2023
Self-help gurus and life coaches have been pushing the idea that to live well, we need to be happy and positive. Positivity has become a prerequisite for success. And pain and sadness are usually seen as sickness, though we humans naturally feel them. People are often overwhelmed and get anxious that they are not positive. The obsession to be positive takes a toll.
Happiness has to be a by-product of what we do, and so does the feeling of being positive. When you find your work is meaningful and brings fulfillment, you won’t have to try to be positive. Because you are already in that state. But these self-help gurus don’t see emotions and feelings as seasons we go through to become whole and to feel human.
Instead, they elect a state (suppose, say, positivity) and push people to remain in that to live life. Imagine eating a donut for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, 7 times a week, 365 days a year. How would you feel? The same goes for positivity too. Positivity without any real work feels shallow.
Carl Sagan quoted, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” The author himself said the Law of Attraction has no evidence and brushed it off as pseudoscience and continued to promote the idea throughout the book because of one self-reported incident.
I understand that we are subjective beings and cannot be rational all the time. And, There is no one way to live life. Our beliefs often take away the pain we are experiencing, but the problem comes when someone molds, butchers, and belittles the real science and its discoveries to prove something that has no evidence as true.
Speaking about the book, it’s one of the worst reads. No originality, no depth to the concepts, commonsensical advice, and a typical self-help book. Just because a book is famous doesn’t mean it holds useful stuff. Skip the book. Better ask your grandmother for life advice; she will give more realistic ones.
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