Brightsided

Bright-Sided

Bright-sided is an amazing book. While I did first pick it up after watching the author on the Daily Show and I did only pick it up because I thoroughly believe it is my positive attitude that got me to this point in my life and this book’s full title is “Bright-sided, how the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America”. Now while I thought this book was going to get a rise out of me and make me angry that this person was saying that being positive is bad but that is exactly what this book is not trying to accomplish. As I read more and more of this book the more I found myself in this authors words, I personally hate self help books, I had The Secret in my hands for less than one day before I returned it to the owner telling her what a crock I thought it was and that it was full of junk. I have always thought that self help books were a get rich quick way for people to tell other people how to live their lives while living their own lives the direct opposite. When my friend in Japan bought a book on how to succeed in Business I laughed at him and told him he was a loser (just so you know, to be my friend is to deal in evil jokes and cold hard truths). This book confirms many of these aspects for people who live in the positive thinking marketing and promotion world, where multi-million dollar speaking engagements are common place. I have also had a dry heaving revulsion to televangelist preachers and ministers with their demanding of money while they live the high life and their flock is starving and suffering. The nerve of people sometimes, however this book shines a spotlight on all of this double faced, bull shit behind the way people who are in charge use positive thinking to control people below them. She also talks about her own cancer diagnosis and being the “odd person” out if you will by not feeling cancer is an opportunity or being positive, but by being her true emotion which was angry. She talks about how survivors are forced to deny their feelings of anger or fear. It is my hope that this website has not lead you to feel this way. I do my best to make sure that everyone knows that you should not deny how you feel, you have the right to feel however you want to feel but my advice is to at the end try and loop around to being positive in the end. However, this is just what worked for me. It might be more beneficial for you to get angry and get fighting, whatever pushes you that extra mile is worth it. I really enjoyed this book because it is real, it is not cookie cutter happy cancer book. It shows all elements of life though and that is what makes it a must read. It isn’t focused 100% on her cancer, but rather how the positivity movement really had messed up our country. What other country works long hard hours, for less money and benefits and is told to do it with a smile. At my last job, before I was fired, I was always told while I am happy I need to be MORE happy for our clients. Really? More happy? The amount of money my old company spent on “motivation” was ridiculous and I can almost bet any company you have ever worked for has done something similar. It is the way of the corporate world. Get fewer workers to do more work by putting them through stupid group exercises and speakers. The history is quite fascinating and while it was sad to see that the research and articles about positivity linked to good health are fake and are created to get grants because negative results do not win awards; it is best to hear the truth.  I feel that Brightsided is a great look into the actual marketing of positivity. When it is no longer controlled by you, you have no choice in the matter and others are forcing you to live in an imaginary world for their benefit. The one aspect I am truly glad I learned from this book is that in the positivity movement, even in cancer communities, if you cannot feel happy and are not getting better you have only yourself to blame and that in itself is so incredibly detrimental. How could anyone say that to someone else? That is so incredibly awful. Throughout the reading of her cancer story, though, it becomes apparent that, in fact, many people will.  I highly recommend picking this book up, if you need a read. It is full of a little history which if you are bogged down by chemo may be hard to read but the overall message I think is beneficial and the subject matter was highly interesting to me. Especially since I know being positive worked for me and I found no qualms with this book. My beliefs and this book go hand in hand I believe.

Favorite Quote: Right out of the Intro (which you should read!) “There is a vast difference between positive thinking and existential courage” while referring to the Founding Fathers courage, I like to think it can also be applied to being a survivor. It is not the positive thinking that gets you through it; it is the courage to fight what is presented as an unwinnable fight.

Greatest Find:

An AWESOME site of unmotivational items that are sure to put a smile on your face. These are humorous and very poignant as well. Check it out for some awesome bits of pessimism and anti positivity.

Biggest Douche I didn’t know before this book: Joyce Meyer. While reading this book, I staying in a hotel and in the morning before I checkout out  I flipped through and stopped on this station where a LARGE stadium of people were watching this minister talk about not worrying about your possessions and only worrying about God. I thought she was funny and so I kept watching, knowing full well that in this book they had talked about the money that these hypocrites rake in. So, when I got home I looked her up, she is a centimillionaire, owns her own private jet and a $23,000 antique marble toilet. Think of that before you give from your pocketbook. As they say in the book “cotton candy gospel” <--I like that.  There are bigger douches in this book including the Osteens who have taken church and turned it into a money grabbing rock concert, but you’ll have to read all about them yourselves in the book! In fact this book is full of douches, a whole underlying network of douchbaggery.