You Could Just Choose Optimism
There’s something strange and a little awe-inspiring about hearing someone ask for champagne on a two-hour domestic flight. What’s going on here? What are you celebrating? Champagne, really?
Not long ago, I realized that maybe the airplane champagne-drinkers had a point. Maybe you really can take the champagne approach—not just to flying, but to everything. Maybe there are opportunities to celebrate all of the time. What if you can just choose to be optimistic, even when life feels bad?
- Even when things are breaking at work and people are frustrating you.
- Even when you show up to the airport and there’s a huge line.
- Even when your car breaks down and you’re going to be late.
Even when all of these things happen, there is nothing forcing you to complain. You could just choose optimism. You could decide to be more jolly and cheerful. It sounds so simple, and it is. Yet many of us don’t do it (myself included). Why? And how can we choose optimism more often?
1.
Funny enough, this idea became clear to me when I was sitting on a plane. An older man, well-dressed, was sitting in the window seat. Let’s call him “G”. Mr. G ordered champagne. What was he celebrating? I don’t know. Maybe he was an alcoholic. That’s not the point.
Upon tasting the champagne, G told the flight attendant it wasn’t good enough. When she told him it was all they had, he became visibly angry with her. G asked for something else. Then, throughout the flight, he continued complaining in my general direction—not just about the champagne but about the airline, the seats, the service. It was clear by the time we landed: G was a complainer.
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I flew home a week later. The situation on the plane was oddly similar. I was in the middle seat, and an older gentleman was at the window. Let’s call this guy “J”. He, too, ordered champagne.
J was happy when the champagne arrived. He thanked the flight attendant. There was a real smile on his face. For the next half an hour, as he enjoyed his champagne, J was looking out the window looking genuinely happy; in awe that we were flying 30,000 feet over the Alps and he got to sit there drinking a free glass of alcohol. This old man was jolly.
2.
In life, you can choose to be G(rouchy) or you can choose to be J(olly).
There are a number of ways to become G, but usually you do it by adopting a complainer mindset. You wake up in a bad mood. You find little flaws in everything you see in the world, and focus on those. You spend hours fighting with random strangers online and policing the behavior of the people around you. You default to thinking big, difficult ideas are impossible, raining cynicism down on the world. You become one of those folks who is somehow surrounded by “toxic people”, yet cannot find a single flaw in themselves. This is the lazy path to living life.
Being grouchy is so normalized in most social circles to the point that behaving like G might not always stick out as being wrong. Consider for a moment how many people you know might…
- Complain constantly about other people.
- Complain if they have to eat a meal that’s not suited to their tastes.
- Complain if one little thing wasn’t done correctly during their hotel stay. [0]
- Complain the moment they have to step onto a hot, crowded bus or subway.
- Complain if they hit a traffic jam that will make them late for something.
- Say things like “no way” or “no chance” when they are pitched ambitious ideas.
If you want to, you can complain about anything. (Go ahead, try! You could even complain about this essay.)
Travel is one of the best ways to see who is grouchy and who isn’t. Take a 10-day trip across a country with a group of friends and people will fall into two categories: they’ll experience the trip as G or they’ll experience the trip as J. The Gs will complain about everything: the weather, walking distances, transport, food, hotels. The Js will have a wonderful trip.
Humans will even complain about things that don’t affect them at all! There are entire YouTube channels dedicated to complaining about Disney’s Star Wars. When the video game Assassin’s Creed: Shadows was announced, thousands of people spent large chunks of their lives whining about it online. You can find infinite things to complain about in our universe.
Being a negative, grouchy person can sneak up on you. You could wake up one day and start looking at the world a certain way, and before you know it you could be 60 years old on an airplane complaining about the quality of the champagne, serving as the inspiration for an essay about complainers. It’s a scary thought.
What’s weird is everyone already knows that choosing optimism leads to better outcomes. How many of your greatest experiences have come as a result of being grouchy? And yet, I think most of us are quite negative. So what’s the deal?
3.
In our experience, the best way to make yourself a more jolly person is to stop complaining so often. But that’s hard to do.
If you call out the biggest complainers you know about their behavior, starting with yourself, we bet the most common retort will be some version of standards. I pride myself on having good taste in food, so of course I have to complain about how nasty this Big Mac is instead of eating it and moving on with my life.
When complainers complain, it’s typically under the premise that their standards need upholding. But there’s a false dilemma going on here: choosing optimism and joy doesn’t mean you can’t have standards. All it means is that you don’t have to vocalize those standards all of the time. [1]
Upset that the hotel service forgot to change your towels? Go ask for new towels, but don’t whine about it or let it ruin your afternoon. Annoyed that the airplane boarding procedure isn’t exactly how you would’ve designed it yourself? Put in some AirPods, listen to a favorite song while you wait, and then enjoy your flight. Frustrated that a coworker delayed a project by a day? Focus on the parts of your work that you actually can control. Complaining isn’t doing you any favors here.
* * *
Another major driver of complaints is the belief that the world is doing things to you; as though the world is stimuli and is forcing you to respond in some particular way.
There is, for example, a common sentiment among younger generations that their ability to purchase a home is completely out of their hands. The boomer generation fucked them, the government isn’t helping, and that’s that. No home, no retirement. People complain as if it’s already been decided.
Some of those talking points might be true. But are they useful? If you want to own a home, is it useful to decide that the world said “no” and there’s nothing you can do? I don’t think so.
“Okay,” you say, “but what about when really bad things happen?” What if your dog dies? Or a friend?
Being optimistic and feeling the full range of human emotions are not mutually exclusive. It’s normal to feel frustrated, and sad, and even angry about things that happen in your life. Of course you’re going to be sad when your dog dies. What’s not helpful is to complain about it for years, or to use your dog dying as an excuse to become a grouchy person.
In the most recent season of HBO’s hit T.V. show The White Lotus, Walton Goggins plays a big time complainer. He can’t enjoy anything. It’s all bad. His life sucks, he says. The reason he gives for his terrible behavior throughout the show is that his dad was murdered when he was a child. Goggins’ character hits home because there are real people who behave like this.
Instead of using life events as excuses, you could accept that you have response-ability. Bad things happen. But what if you assigned yourself more authority; more agency? It helps to remember that the world is a mirror: things as you see them are an interpretation, and that interpretation is based on you. Change yourself and you might change how the world feels and behaves.
4.
It’s easy to get caught in the trap of sarcasm, cynicism, and complaints. It’s addicting. Complaining becomes a habit. Life can temporarily feel better when you put yourself in a position to criticize everything and to create excuses. Maybe that’s why Curb Your Enthusiasm is so fun to watch. But while Larry David (the Curb character who complains all the time) is funny, you shouldn’t want to be a Curb Larry David. That’s not a fulfilling way to live your life.
It’s our view that the more sustainable long-term path is to choose optimism. To be jolly.
Choosing optimism may feel cheesy, even embarrassing, at first. Years ago, I was on a vacation in the moutains. About halfway through the trip, a rainstorm moved in. Fog, rain, cold, all day. I mentioned how it was nice to see the mountains wearing a different outfit, and how a hike in the rain might be refreshing. They looked at me like I was crazy and kept scrolling TikTok in the hotel. In a world where being a complainer is the norm, being jolly is often seen as ‘cringe’ or unrealistic.
But, once you get the hang of it, being jolly is infectious. It’s a refreshing feeling to be anywhere (at work, traveling, at home, at a bar) around a group of people who are jolly and optimistic. The world feels new.
I wish there were more good role models of this behavior. Or maybe there are, and I’m too much of a grouchy complainer to see them. Who comes to mind for you? You can email us here with any thoughts.
* * *
[0] This is not to say you should never voice complaints to anyone. For example: if your hotel forgets to swap out your towels, you could mention it to someone working there. Not to be a complainer, but to provide a useful piece of information that will help solve a problem. There’s a difference between that complaint and spending the trip whining to your friends about how the hotel is so bad.
[1] It’s true that complaining may sometimes have some benefit. It can feel good to vent about things, and sometimes complaining can even be funny. We think complain less is a good heuristic though, because most people complain too much.
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