The Upside of Your Dark Side by Biswas Diener

 The Upside of Your Dark Side by Biswas Diener

The upside? The book is very good…the dark side? Perhaps it encourages some- or is it only me? - To misbehave

I guess this book ends at just about the right time, as I need to get over the fact that I broke my phone- and we all know what it means to be without one nowadays- had to downgrade and whereas a couple of days ago I had received all I needed from that technological extension of myself, now I receive nothing from the prosthetic replacement that has no Facebook, mail, s health tracking, whatever…

It will be necessary to see how one can go about putting in practice the precious advice from this book…and some of the eastern teachings I came into contact with.

We are better off when we let the negative events take their course, learn from them and avoid exaggerating their importance- everybody knows that.

The approach of the authors is interesting and comes somehow from within the positive psychology inner circle of experts.

For this reader, the reluctance to go into the “dark side” is great and makes me avoid movies, books with themes that might upset me, for I have been negative orientated for most of my life, still have a tendency to look at the negative potential in various situations and feel the need to avoid further pushes in that direction.

There are however areas where being negative pays off.

For some jobs, individuals do a much better job when in negative mood- indeed, when positive they perform worse

That seems to include lawyers, policemen, tax analysts and more.

Also it helps in all our cases to adopt a negative frame of mind when we have to analyze, get into details.

The positive kind get the big picture, but are messy when it comes to detailing- as in the tests after 9/11 that showed positive people are more likely to use stereotyping.

The first part of this note ends here, with the rest written days ago, while still somewhere half way through this good book

The upshot of this mesmerizing book- at least at times, seen from a perhaps biased perspective- is that

-          It is not always good to be happy

-          Surprising, isn’t it

-          There are a number of jobs which are prejudiced by a happy attitude- lawyers, traffic controllers, policemen, tax consultants…to name just a few

-          Yes, a happy approach boosts productivity and improves- some- skills

-          If you want creativity and you are the manager, a positive lecture helps the employs obtain better results

-          But for analytical tasks, the happy perspective is not working well

So while I enthuse over positive psychology, I am surprised to find about the “dark triad” constituted by narcissism, machiavelism and psychopathy and how important it is to have some small doses of each of these components.

Then there is the Teddy Roosevelt effect- a wonderful president given to some “dark” manifestations like swimming naked in the Potomac, near the White House, losing his retinue in the Yellowstone- that he gave the status of National Park.

To come back to the Positive Psychology, I would only add that this science is changing my life even now, as we speak, for studies show that

1.            Our minds keep changing all the way to the moment of death and the brain is a very plastic, malleable organ

2.            Even small, extremely short subliminal messages determine our behavior, so when I decide that I will read and discuss positive psychology almost every day that means that this will affect me.