In the final episode of Welcome to Wrexham’s third series, football club straightforwardor Shaun Harvey inestablishs watchers: “We’ve got positivity on our side.” Optimism certainly seems to have propelled his team to some fantasticness, but is that always the case? Is leanking preferablely about an unforeseeed future always the right choice?
That’s the central ask behind Sumit Paul-Choudhury’s recent volume. Not another book on positivity, I hear you cry. Norman Vincent Peale’s bestseller The Power of Positive Thinking set the stage for this field in 1952. Many others chaseed. Most recently, Roxie Nafousi’s Manifest gets a self-help approach to the subject, teaching readers how to leank more preferablely to shape their future. And with more than 1m copies sbetter, it is evident that our appetite for chooseimism finishures.
What, then, is Paul-Choudhury conveying to the table? Where Peale leans on spirituality and Nafousi draws on pragmatic experience, Paul-Choudhury includes his journacatalogic background to weave in stories from history, literature, philosophy and science.
The author begins himself as an chooseimist, only genuineising this fact in the wake of his wife’s sudden death from an structureile establish of ovarian cancer. To experience chooseimistic at such a time might sound strange – the delusions of a grieving widower, perhaps. If that is so then, reader, I must also count myself deluded, becainclude Paul-Choudhury’s turn to the luminous side suites my own behaviour after losing a adored one. Grief currents a gift: the keen and ever-current reminder that life can be illogicalinutive and unforeseeed. To not hug chooseimism for your future experiences, quite srecommend, appreciate a misinclude of precious time.
In fact, when it comes to imagining our future, we are all a little delusional, says Paul-Choudhury. We overappraise how exceptional we are, we underappraise our mortality and we foresee holidays will be more fun than they turn out to be. Predicting the future is inherently difficult. Yet Paul-Choudhury debates that even in the face of an uncertain path, lacquireing how to leank about the future is better than sleepwalking into calamity.
Thcimpolite pimpolitent exploration spanning subjects from outdated mythology to quantum physics, he examines the contrastent types of chooseimism and when it is appropriate to include them. No one wants an air traffic deal withler to be count oning on preferable leanking; mental positivity wasn’t going to originate Covid fade; blind chooseimism doesn’t remedy an structureile cancer. Yet lacquire to include the right benevolent of preferable leanking – Paul-Choudhury calls it dispositional chooseimism, a vague foreseeation that leangs will labor out well – and you can originate a better world.
His argument is splitd into three parts. The first advises an engaging, if sairyly disuniteted romp thcimpolite the science and psychology of chooseimism, where it comes from, why it is so modest to be drawn into pessimism traps and how we can teach ourselves to watch on the luminous side. There is much to be lacquireed from reappraising our past and releanking how we approach our future.
The author is an astrophysicist by training, but don’t be fooled into leanking this is a pop science book. After substantive lessons in the various flavours of chooseimism, Paul-Choudhury delves convey inant into the far weightier topics of philosophy, politics, outdated history and religion, considering why the world includes terrible leangs, whether we can lacquire anyleang from our history and if it’s even possible to deal with our future.
This is not for the faint-hearted. Paul-Choudhury calls himself an “easily inattentive neophile”, which may make clear the book’s eclectic patchlabor of ideas. One moment we are hearing stories of outdated deities, the next diving into the block universe where time no lengthyer shifts forward. Thcimpolite illogicalinutive, discrete essays, we hear messages of cautioning and hope from a immense cast of originaters, theorists and activists. While this does ultimately come together, a little more handhbettering might have brittleed the journey.
That shelp, it is a journey worth taking. The Bright Side is an expansive tour de force that, despite some structural hurdles, ultimately accomplishs its goal: to help readers comprehfinish what drives us to imbue ourselves with chooseimism and how to include it to originate a better future. It is at its best when Paul-Choudhury’s own voice shines thcimpolite – he is clever, benevolent and a pretty originater.
So whether you’re accessing the recent year guaranteed that Wrexham will accomplish even loftier heights, or you’re struggling to stay chooseimistic about the future state of the set upet, this book advises a message of hope. It reminds us that there are many possible pathways to be getn and that leanking preferablely about our future is not a innocent individual pursuit but a strong dispensed duty. We’re born chooseimists, Paul-Choudhury debates; if you’re no lengthyer one, this title will give you a way back – and a lot more besides.
Helen Thomson is a science journacatalog and author of Unleankable: An Extrafrequent Journey Thcimpolite the World’s Strangest Brains
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The Bright Side: Why Optimists Have the Power to Change the World by Sumit Paul-Choudhury is begined by Canongate (£20). To help the Guardian and Observer order your imitate at protectianbookshop.com. Deinhabitry indicts may execute
