Hong Kong bookshops are crammed with self-help guides to every conceivable aspect of success and happiness. Yet, they do not seem to have made much of a dent in the downward spiralling of our collective psyche. Off-putting excesses of bounciness and oversimplification aside, many of these guides do contain sound advice aimed at just the sort of mood change Hong Kong appears to be frantically aiming for with elaborate publicity campaigns.
So what is the theoretical gist of these hugely popular guides to happiness, as can be applied to Hong Kong's current gloominess?
First, it is part of human nature - anything but abnormal - to be merchants of doom and gloom. We enjoy blowing problems out of proportion so much that when everything seems to be going well, which is universally seldom, we feel at a loss for something to agonise over. If a person is happy at home, in good health and has just been promoted, for example, they will often find themselves lying in bed at night looking for something - anything - to fret over. One explanation for why we are like this is that worriers, because they anticipate the worst, once had an evolutionary edge.
Be that as it may, people are predisposed to ruminate. This, looked at in the right way, is good news. It means that it is not only, or even principally, circumstances themselves that lead to gloom and dampened vitality, but our habitual temptation to see the worst. Consequently, self-improvement guides advise readers to focus their efforts not on what is right or wrong about their lives but on how to form constructive ways to interpret or perceive whatever comes along.
The formula, loosely based on cognitive therapy, is a classic one for short-circuiting mild depression. It depends not on the Freudian-style psychology of childhood experiences but on the assumption that people can think themselves out of their despondency given the right intellectual tools.
Preparing for the worst is commendable but approximate and, by definition, rarely justified. So, it is best to simultaneously harness the right sort of self-fulfilling prophesies by training oneself to emotionally expect the best. Can optimism be self-induced? Much of the self-help industry depends on the answer being yes. Here is how many books recommend it can be done.
The pessimist characteristically sees the cause of problems, rejections or failures in terms of three Ps: permanent (it will last forever), pervasive (it will spoil everything) and personal (it is all my or one party's fault). Reality is seldom that clear cut. Problems, as we spontaneously assume when we are in an optimistic frame of mind, are rarely everlasting, all-encompassing or entirely one person's fault.