The Upside of Your Dark Side: Why Being Your Whole Self--Not Just Your "Good" Self--Drives Success and Fulfillment

by Todd Kashdan

It turns out that one reason we wrongly predict what will make us happy in the future is that we overlook our capacity to tolerate, and even adapt to, discomfort. Sure, that new job—to take a different example—is intimidating the first week, but before long you’re cruising along as if you had worked there for years.

Kropp’s decision to turn back was, perhaps, lifesaving. It also throws new light on the commonly held assumption that perseverance is good and that quitting is bad.

In fact, researcher Eva Pomerantz of the University of Illinois argues that heavy investment in a goal can erode a person’s psychological quality of life by creating a spike in their anxiety. This is especially true when people push themselves by focusing on the potential negative impact of not achieving their goals.

Whole people have the ability to approach goals flexibly by continuing to invest when progress occurs at an acceptable pace, and by swapping old goals out for new ones when failure is almost certain.

motivational. Unless you open yourself to unwelcome negative feelings, you will miss out on important opportunities to wield some of life’s most useful tools.

If you fall prey to the temptation to constantly search for something positive to grab on to in hopes of eliminating, hiding, or concealing negative emotions, you will lose in the game of life.

Using shame as a form of punishment has the tragic paradoxical effect of increasing the behavior you’re attempting to stamp out.

“We feel guilty because we care—an important message of reassurance for those whom we’ve hurt or offended.” Flawed acts do not provide evidence that you are a flawed person.

Love is about adopting another person’s perspective of the world, and when overvaluing your happiness gets in the way, it leads to unfortunate by-products such as loneliness.

Now, we mentioned earlier that happiness leads to big-picture thinking (think project managers) and unhappiness leads to detail-oriented, analytical thinking (think detectives). Building on this theme, Visser and her colleagues found that with a happy leader, followers performed 200 percent better on the creative task than they did for an unhappy leader, and when the leader displayed signs of sadness, followers performed 400 percent better on the analytical task. These numbers are staggering.

we are typically in a different state when making choices than we are when we experience the result of that choice.

According to Greek mythology, Icarus and his father, Daedalus, were imprisoned on the island of Crete. Daedalus fashioned two pairs of wings from wax and warned his son that as they flew away he should be cautious not to venture too near to the sun. But, once aloft, Icarus was so delighted by the experience of flight that he flew higher and higher until his wings melted, and he plummeted to his death. Not everyone suffers from an Icarus complex, but we are all prone to seeing happiness as unqualifiedly good, and this is an example of its backfiring in a big way.

The problem with creative people is that they have a tendency to fall in love with their own ideas.

It is essential to separate the malevolent parts of the Dark Triad from the benevolent parts of psychopathy, such as fearless dominance, and the benevolent parts of narcissism, such as grandiose self-assuredness, that stimulate courage, creativity, and leadership ability.

A little narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism (underutilized skills in human relationships) can be extraordinarily effective in winning others over, creating great experiences for friends and customers, motivating other people, and accelerating a sense of intimacy and comfort.

Comfort addiction results in lower immunity to negative experiences (chapter 2). Negative emotions are an underappreciated resource (chapter 3). The pursuit of happiness can weaken you (chapter 4). Mindlessness is beneficial, especially when alternated with mindfulness (chapter 5). Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy give you an edge in

We are, it turns out, short-term hedonists and long-term saints.

Knowing whether someone is experiencing a great deal of negativity does not tell us whether they are going to be successful. That depends on whether they are effective at differentiating what they’re feeling. This

“Language dictates consciousness.”