Stop Being Such A Cynic

Why so cynical? (Insert the Joker’s delivery for full effect.)

None of us is infallible–I’ve most certainly been cynical at times in my life, especially more frequently as I’ve gotten older. But that’s where I want to focus my attention today.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’m calling the cynicism:realism:idealism relationship or CRI score. When you’re young, the third category has the most prominence in that relationship. Children are naturally idealistic–imagining careers as astronauts, the endless possibilities of the world around them. Cynicism is foreign to them–assume the worst? But why? They also probably have a modest amount of realistic beliefs as well. So let’s put their CRI score at 1:5:10.

Now as you age, more of your idealism fades as earlier assumptions of the world are proven incongruous with the surrounding circumstances. The score in young adults is probably more like 3:10:7.

But as we continue to age, we need an active recalibration to avoid becoming complete cynics of everything around us.

Cynicism can stunt our empathy, our progress, and our societal health as a whole. When everyone assumes everyone else is just out for themselves, then no one cares to take any actions that may improve the greater population. Cynicism and myopia (short-term thinking) go hand in hand and, I believe, are a major contributor to the stagnation we find our society in today with respect to many issues.

Cynicism can stunt our empathy, our progress, and our societal health as a whole. Here are three quick ways to reverse, or at least halt, the cynic in you from taking over your life:

1. When you feel the urge to assume the worst, assume the opposite

Next time you’re in a meeting and someone disagrees with you or you’re on the street and someone walking next to you accidentally clips your shoe, *actively *assume the best. It’s too easy to get angry, to assume the other person had only their self-interest in mind and was acting maliciously. Instead, see what happens when you assume that there was no malintent.

Tip: Try to change your facial expression when you’re walking around from one of neutral-negative to neutral-positive. This can be as simple as lifting your eyelids, stretching out your mouth, and and forcing a small smile.

2. Challenge your age-old conclusions

You’ve lived some life so far, haven’t you? You’ve had hundreds of similar experiences that’ve led you down this path of cynicism. You think you’ve got everyone figured out because you’ve seen so much? Throw all of that away. All of it. If more of us choose to be against cynicism we’ll bring more progress to this world than we previously thought possible.

3. Make time to stay positive

This last one is really important.

Busyness is not an excuse to be cynical. If it’s your reason, change your time allocation to make more room for positivity and idealism. Being cynical is easy, convenient, and detrimental to everyone around you–especially children or younger adults. There are plenty of occurrences in life that will knock you down even without help from your cynicism–don’t aid those trying times by providing them with fuel to their fire.

Busyness is not an excuse to be cynical. If nothing else, I hope this post makes you calculate your own CRI score. Consider whether there are small changes you can make to push back against the cynicism knocking at your door.

Thanks for reading and I hope to see you back here tomorrow!