Can Cranks Turn Into Cheerleaders?

This is the final entry in the non-complaining project. Read the first entry here [2], the second here [3], and the third here. [4]

In our last noncomplaining project entry [5], Hanna vowed to be “more visibly cheerful and appreciative” toward her friends on the advice of positive psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky. As I am already outwardly bouncy (Hanna predicts I will continue to sound like a cheerleader even when I am 40), I decided to try out another aspect of Lyubomirksy’s friendship advice, a strategy she calls simply “making time.”

Lyubomirsky says to “create rituals that allow you to get together and be in touch on a regular basis. …In this way, friends become as much a priority as all the other areas of your life.” This counsel is somewhat obvious and self-help-y, but it still makes sense. Commitments to my friends can just feel like yet another responsibility in my over-packed schedule, and I get resentful and whiny about them.

I am in almost constant IM-contact with my friends who have media jobs like mine, and so with very little effort I know the intimate, LOL-inflected minutiae of their lives: whom they’re dating, what they’re eating, when they’re on their periods. But with my friends who have jobs that actually require them to step away from the Internet abyss, I have to pick up a phone and call and make dates to see them in person.

One of my closest friends, my ex-roommate and college bestie Anna, is one of these off-line ladies. I am always thrilled to see her and excited when she calls me. But Lyubomirsky made me think about how she is usually the one to initiate our rendezvous. This made me feel awful—she means so much to me, and I would never want her thinking that I wasn’t really invested in our friendship. I decided to text her this week, and after a back and forth, we ended up having a 30-minute phone call and making plans to hang out this weekend.

I got off the phone with Anna feeling high, almost as if I had just returned from a run. I had been about to spend a night inside because it was raining and the subways weren’t running right, but I decided to go socialize instead. But what if this convivial mood was merely narcissism masquerading as happiness? “What a great friend I am!” I had been thinking. But then I took a step back: I called my good friend. I didn’t give her a kidney. This is pretty much basic friendship maintenance, and I shouldn’t give myself a mental gold star just for being a decent human being. This reveals a fundamental flaw with the happiness psychologists: Many of their lessons are grossly self-absorbed. In her chapter on positive psychology in Bright-Sided [6], Barbara Ehrenreich talks about her frustration with the narcissism at the center of a happiness test created by psychologist Martin Seligman. “[A] question that had hurt my score [was one] where I had confessed to being ‘pessimistic about the future,’ assuming that it was the future of our species at issue, not just my own.”

Even though my overall worldview is more like Ehrenreich’s, at the beginning of this project I worried that the attempt to stop kvetching would sublimate my true, rather pessimistic nature. But both the positive psychologists and Ehrenreich have been instructive when I remember the original aim of our project, which was not to stop complaining entirely, but to stop whining about the petty stuff that doesn’t matter. Lyubomirsky and Seligman’s practical behavioral strategies about how to quell various anxieties and be more vocally grateful about my lucky circumstances have helped me weed out some of the more noxious complaints.

Ehrenreich’s notion that “positive” and “good” can be mutually exclusive have helped me realize that being a critical crank about the things that really matter is not a moral failing. Reading and engaging with the most depressing news every day is not a threat to my mental well-being, as some of the happiness experts contend. But part of being able to look at situations with a clear eye means being able to step back and not react immediately. I learned this in the first week of noncomplaining [3]: My verbal impulsivity and knee-jerk judgments can be quelled, but it’s a real effort to keep myself from outbursts.

I do think I have been complaining a lot less overall, but I can’t be objective about it. So I asked my fiance, who arguably has to listen to the majority of my kvetching, whether he’s noticed a difference. “Now that I think about it, I haven’t noticed you complaining at all recently,” he said. Which, of course, doesn’t mean that I don’t complain—when I walked into our apartment earlier today and he was watching some crappy action movie (“Hey honey,” he said, “It’s Jurassic Park 3 [7]!”), I certainly made my disdain known. But the whines of the excessive, wheedling variety have apparently dissipated … for now. It’s unclear whether or not my behavior has changed for the long run.

When we first started this project, I wondered whether my lack of whining would be socially contagious [8]. Did my complaint diet affect Hanna like a contagious virus? Hanna, please enlighten us.

—Jessica Grose

I must admit, this week of our noncomplaining project was the most trying for me. Whatever sociological type is the opposite of cheerleader, that is me. (Traffic-court judge? Tax collector? Guy sweating in the mascot costume?) As I wrote in my recent review of Barbara Ehrenreich’s book [9], I walk around with what most people perceive as a scowl. So to be more visibly cheerful and appreciative required a very conscious effort.

I started slowly, by looking store clerks in the eye and heartily thanking them for the change. I graduated to the mailman and then to my neighbors. This was all bland and unremarkable to me. Mostly it made me feel more mainstream American, as if I were adding to the white noise of national politeness. It felt neither phony nor transformative.

Then one afternoon a close friend and I were at a restaurant and ran into an acquaintance. This is not someone we particularly like. In fact, this is someone we judge to be rather phony and duplicitous, a standout in the underminer school of friendship [10]. I immediately gave her a big hug and told her she looked beautiful. I did not think much; it just came naturally. After she had left, my close friend looked at me and said, “Who are you? Is this part of that noncomplaint thing?”

This brought up the central question: Had I somehow betrayed myself by giving love to the underminer? Was I being a fake? Was I like Charlie Crist, in trouble over a hug [11]? I thought about it a lot and decided no. Just because I am not crazy about someone does not mean I have to transmit my ambivalence in every interaction with her.

In fact, like Amma the hugging saint [12], I would heartily defend the hug as a generally positive influence on both me and the huggee. It definitely made me feel better—and cleaner, even. I hate that mumbly manner I get around people I don’t like all that much. Honesty, for its own sake, at all moments, is a kind of flaw. Also, my burst of affection clearly relaxed the underminer. Surely some of her undermining tendencies stem from insecurity, and the total acceptance and praise put her at ease. So who’s the loser?

This is a limited revelation, I can see. It’s not nearly as profound as something like forgiveness, which calls for kindness to people who have actually wronged you. I have not quite tackled that yet. But at least I can say I have put some minor goodwill into the air.

The real beneficiary of this week’s effort at explicit appreciation, however, was not the underminer but my daughter. As I’ve said before [13], she and I fall into the habit of relating on an ironic, jokey level. This week I made a conscious effort to actively compliment her at least once a day. I told her the things I admire and appreciate about her. I went out of my way to praise her for the things that make her special. I recommend this to all parents. Most often we conceive of our role as disciplinarians, or protectors, and take the love for granted. Sometimes it’s great to consciously shift the focus.

Jess, you ask, was your nonwhining contagious? Absolutely. I’ve picked up two very specific and helpful skills—the explaint [14] and the explicit appreciation. Since we’ve started, I can honestly say I’ve only had one or two moments of pointless excessive bitching. Someone who has been reading our entries asked my husband, “How do you like your wife’s noncomplaint project?” He smiled and said, “It’s fabulous.” I felt very proud.

—Hanna Rosin