How to be Less Cynical
Strategies for Choosing Optimism
Note: this is a repost of a Twitter thread I wrote on the topic. Trying new things, let me know what you think!
I. CHOICES
Being less cynical begins with understanding that your worldview is a choice. Cynics often say "I have to believe that..." whereas optimists say "I choose to believe that…" This pattern is not a coincidence!
The truth is, we live in a world of complexity beyond human comprehension. There is evidence for everything. If you want to believe that people or the world sucks, you will find support for it in the news, what you consume on social media, and your own life. As Tao Lin said, “On a planet with eight billion people, something horrible is going to be happening all the time. We don't need to know about these things.”
But if you want to believe that life is beautiful and people are amazing, I have excellent news: there is more evidence to support that belief than even every human working together could hope to compile. Consider this your invitation to join the great collective project of humanity in appreciating beauty, celebrating truth, and cherishing all good things.
So, how to be less cynical?
Focus on these three simple ideas: joy, gratitude, and awe.
II. JOY
Joy is all around us and it is contagious. Noticing and appreciating it will automatically make you less cynical. Joy is a way of moving through the world and relating with it.
You see joy everywhere once you start looking for it deliberately; a young couple sharing a kiss here, the clumsy exuberance in how a child or baby animal moves there. The way the tension in someone’s face melts when they take a bite of something delicious.
Joy is infinite.
At the Subway on my campus, there’s a guy with this awesome, purely joyful energy. When you get up to order he goes “WHOO WHOO!!!” like a train whistle.
“Whatchoo want??” and you tell him your order and he goes “AL-RIGHT!” in the tone of “fuck yeah!”
And if he’s in a particularly good mood you’ll probably get some extra WHOO WHOO’s as he makes your sandwich. But you'll always get some form of joy from him. No doubt about it.
Be like him.
You can bring this energy, in your own way, to all that you do.
One of the many beautiful things about joy is the way it relates to authenticity and truth. Each of us has our own, unique brand of joy. This is one of the great gifts of life and sharing it with each other is sacred.
I mean it when I say you should try to be joyful in everything you do. We should all be taking the Simon Sarris pill: “I attain sublime enjoyment from almost every activity. Drinking coffee, picking up dishes, walking around some fields, painting a door, thinking of the coming spring. Every little thing I see as a kind of skill, almost, to contemplate and revere… you can be an amateur at anything and you can get better at everything and both of these are beautiful.”
III. GRATITUDE
Gratitude is not a platitude.
I guarantee you there are things in your life you are taking for granted right now. RIGHT NOW. Stop reading for a moment and think about what some of those things are. Are you breathing clean air? Is your mind curious and perceptive? Is there something beautiful nearby? Notice all of these things and appreciate them. We have much more to be grateful for than meets the eye of the conscious mind.
Gratitude is not just about counting your blessings, it is about seeing the trees of your blessings as the forest that they really are.
I’m not glasshousing here, I take tons of stuff for granted too. I have a sprained thumb which is bothering me, but I could instead focus on the fact that my legs are working pretty darn well lately. And when I do that, an easy miracle occurs: my thumb bothers me less!
Gratitude is also the difference in mindset between “I get to do this thing” versus “I have to do this thing.” Focus on the visceral pleasures of a task to move your attitude from the latter to the former.
Scrubbing dishes is cleansing, purifying, you feel the warm water on your hands and it Feels Good and you see the soapy bubbles catching the light and That’s Beautiful. When the task is done you have sparkling clean dishes which Look Amazing.
You can check the big picture - what a blessing it is to have clean plates for your next meal or your friends to enjoy. You can look deep at the tiniest details - see those miniscule cracks and imperfections in your dishes and how that gives them character?
Bringing this energy to the task is about surrendering to gratitude. You are grateful to do the dishes. You are grateful that you get to do the dishes.
It is a pleasure to do the dishes well. It is a pleasure to do anything well.
Be grateful for it.
IV. AWE
Life and the world is overwhelmingly beautiful. We are surrounded by natural beauty, inspiring humans, mind-blowing inventions, and incredible opportunities.
It is a sin to dismiss these things with a cynical shrug.
Surrender to the awe that occurs organically when you really think deeply about these types of everyday miracles which the default culture would have you take for granted:
Beautiful things inspire awe. I experience this all the time, slipping into awe from appreciating how gorgeous and unique each tree, each branch, each leaf is. A symphony for the senses composed of the smallest of differences and similarities.
One should be appreciating the world so hard that you come across as a bit touched in the head, like staring up at the moon slack-jawed as you walk through traffic.
I just discovered Jon Batiste’s new album, Beethoven Blues. I can listen to it and instantly fall into a state of pure tranquil appreciation.
Give it a listen, or even better, listen to some music that inspires your *own* sense of awe.
You know yourself better than me.
Draw on what inspires awe in you from anything and everything you can. What resonates in any particular person’s soul is unique to them, but nobody is born without the capacity for this resonance.
Chase your sources, and you'll create a wellspring of abundance for your spirit.
Note that joy, gratitude, and awe are not really separate things at all, but part of a connected web. Awe naturally inspires gratitude, gratitude naturally connects you with the feeling of joy, being joyful leaves you open for the experience of awe. They all create a feedback loop, reinforcing and amplifying themselves as they enrich your spirit.
V. TIPS FOR OPTIMISM
As Visakan V. says, “focus on what you want to see more of.” Focus is your superpower. If you want to be less cynical, focus on noticing things that are pure, true, good, beautiful. There is an overwhelming abundance of such things.
Notice when you’re being negative and either gently reframe it or redirect your attention.
Ask yourself, “Is this the most loving way I could respond?” when dealing with a person or situation. This includes to yourself!
Filter persistently negative energy and information streams out of your life. You need the New York Times or Fox News far less than they need you. Read better things.
Cultivate beauty around you and understand that beauty requires the absence of ugliness. (h/t to Simon Sarris)
When you notice something that might cause you to feel cynical, say a person lied to you for selfish reasons, instead of focusing on their behavior you can try appreciating that you are perceiving their actions clearly, that it is a good thing that you don’t act the way they do.
Cynics, like the proverbial pig in the mud, want to drag everyone else down to their level; don’t let them do so.
Happy people are not inherently stupid. If you think this, you are stupid. The default culture says cynicism is smart and smart people should be cynical. Embedded in “ignorance is bliss” is the implication that happiness is downstream of stupidity. This lesson is taught in schools, Hollywood, all sorts of media.
It is a lie. Don't fall for it.
See through the eyes of the Wanderer. The world is enchanted, full of magic and mystery. The modern sense that the world has been fully explored is, in fact, the layer of fog obscuring the countless secrets that remain undiscovered.
Find them. Pierce the veil.
VI. CLOUD THEORY
If all this sounds too complicated, you can just be like a cloud, man. Clouds are light, fluffy, and beautiful. Sometimes they swell up with dark power or intense energy. Sometimes they stretch and fade, becoming nearly immaterial.
But clouds are always true to themselves and always beautiful.
You can be the same.
VII. CONCLUSION
Cynicism vs optimism can be thought of as a calibration problem. Suppose there is some “correct” worldview which has the exactly right proportions of cynicism vs optimism.
The odds of you hitting on that exact right view worldview are incredibly low. So if there’s going to be an error in your worldview, that means you get to pick the direction that error is in.
Choosing optimism means staying open to the world and the joy, truth, and beauty it carries. Choosing cynicism means opting into an interference layer making it harder for those things to permeate.
Cynicism is a closed, guarded way to relate with the world. Optimism is a fundamentally more open, curious, and loving way to perceive the world. A note that choosing optimism doesn’t mean being open or agreeable to everything; far from it.
“Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.”
- Proverbs 4:23
Choosing optimism is about creating pathways for beautiful thoughts and interactions to safely pass through to reach your spirit while also effortlessly rejecting the unhealthy parts of the modern world and our culture that are working to undermine you.
Lastly, there is a tremendous arrogance in cynics when they claim to “see the world as it really is.” If you are not appreciating the divine beauty of the natural world and the marvels of life and human creativity—music, art, literature, dance, games, and so much more—can you really even claim to be seeing anything at all?
I accuse cynics of being selectively blind rather than clear-eyed. And that’s me standing on business.
Thanks for writing this - I've been living with memento mori the past month and while it's true, it does give a grey view on life and the future.
Going to bookmark this for a deeper read