Svend Brinkmann: Refreshing message (©Svend Brinkmann)

Svend Brinkmann is the self-help guru who paradoxically presents himself as the antidote to self-help culture. In this provocative and entertaining book he urges us to liberate ourselves from the edicts of the self-help industry, with their phoney promises of happiness and self-realisation. We should resist their mantra of “self-development”, and their exhortations to be forever positive and optimistic. He calls upon us to stand firm against pointless, perpetual incommands to be “true to oneself”.

Brinkmann instead asks us to be happy with staying still and living with oneself, with saying “no” sometimes instead of “yes” all the time. Perfect happiness is an impossible goal. There is nothing wrong with being unhappy or being doubtful. His most abiding message is to resist the temptation to “look inside oneself”, and instead to suppress one’s feelings when they are infantile and destructive, and to look outside oneself. It’s usually people who give in to their base emotions, and those in possession of certainty, who have caused the most misery in the history of humanity.

Brinkmann introduces his own “seven- step guide to happiness”, a somewhat ironic and indeed risky approach, considering that he seeks to debunk therapy programmes. His steps are: 1. Cut out the navel gazing; 2. Focus on the negative in your life; 3. Put on the No hat; 4. Suppress your feelings; 5. Sack your coach; 6. Read a novel — not a self-help book or biography; 7. Dwell on the past. He urges the reader to look outwards, to be open to other people, cultures and nature. “You need to accept that the self does not hold the key to how to live your life. The self is merely an idea, a construct, a by-product of cultural history.” The much-vaunted journey of “self-discovery” is a dangerous one, as you may not like what you find — or you may not find anything at all.

With an eye for paradox, he talks about positivity as a negative thing, and attacks the prevailing notion that it’s good and healthy to “say yes” all the time. He exhorts the reader to eliminate the tyranny of the positive by accentuating the negative. It will make you better prepared to stand firm, where you are.

First, the “say yes” dictate paradoxically annuls personal agency. Second, not everything is possible if you merely “put your mind to it”. The notion that you can change things merely through positive thinking will only lead to ultimate feelings of failure.