I was in my early twenties, sitting in a dimly lit bar, having a few pints with my father (as one does).
At the time, I was taking a sabbatical from college. I was personal training and living with my sister in North Carolina. I felt stuck and was questioning the path I was on in life
One of the greatest anxieties suffered by recent generations in the Western world is an overwhelm of choices. Our early twenties are filled with what feels like endless possibilities. Exciting in some sense, overwhelming in another. Champagne problems? Sure. But psychologically distressing nonetheless.
The stakes feel high. What if we make the wrong choice? What if I marry the wrong person? What if I choose the wrong career path? What if I invest in a sock puppet start-up that tanks?
Our parents and grandparents were limited in what they were exposed to, and limited in the avenues they could take. My dad’s first marriage was to a woman he knew from the “old neighborhood.” He’s not alone. In a study of who-married-who in 1930s America, ⅓ of couples married somebody who lived within five blocks of them. My father’s first career path was influenced by everyone around him saying that working for the city of Boston is the best job you can get.
But millennials and Gen Z see all the possibilities. You can now call Orlando home while looking at a 2-bedroom in Seattle. You can be exposed to potential romantic partners living in a different state. You get a daily email from LinkedIn about all of the careers you could be pursuing. Mix that with an ethos of “be anything you want to be," and you get a lot of stressed-out young people trying to find their path.
Despite Gen X thinking we’re all a bunch of pansies with no mental toughness, this is a legitimate psychological challenge that other generations haven’t faced. And there's no roadmap for how to navigate.
Psychologist Barry Schwartz wrote a book titled "The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less," where he argues that the more choices we have, the more likely we are “[regret] our decisions later on.” Schwartz says that unlimited options can lead to worse decision-making, dissatisfaction with choices we do make, and becoming so paralyzed that we make no choice at all (the worst path).
Back in that dimly lit Irish pub, I was feeling anxious and started venting to my dad. After blabbering on for about 15-minutes, my dad looks at me and says, “Yeah, EWOP, Dan.” (pronounced eeee-WOP), and then proceeds to take a sip of his pint and looks up to check the Red Sox score.
“EWOP?” I said. “What kind of advice is that? What does that even mean??”
“EWOP. Everything Works Out Perfectly, my son.” he said.
As ridiculous as it sounds, that Irish fortune cookie of a man did make me feel better. Maybe it was the amount of conviction he spoke with. Maybe it was because I trust and respect my father, so I chalked it up to some sort of old man wisdom that I just couldn’t see yet. All I knew was that I felt better.
This quirky little phrase has stuck with me through the years. I still use it to calm down when I’m feeling stressed, anxious, or uncertain about the future.
It's not one of these toxic positivity mantras. It's not YOLO. The way my father meant it, and the way I internalized it, is grounded in some of the latest research in positive psychology.
Bad Fortune Tellers
The human brain is a marvelous machine. We're one of the few animals that have the capacity to look into the future. The brain is a predictive mechanism, constantly scanning the world, making its best guess at how we should feel and act.
This kept our ancestors alive. Their brains worked overtime predicting that any plant they ate, any animal they saw, or any tribesman they met might just be the thing that killed them.
This same feature allows us to save for retirement and meal prep for the week.
The problem is our predictions usually suck.
I remember wandering around New York City with my brothers until we found, yep, you guessed it, a dimly lit pub. After grabbing a pint, the crowd pushed us to the edges of the room. We almost fell right on top of this poor woman who had her tarot cards set up on the table.
With a mix of guilt (for almost taking her out) and liquor, my brother Brandon decided to cough up 20 bucks to have his palm read. The woman’s first reading was that he should spend less time with his family. Tough look on a night out with his brothers.
She then predicts that if he doesn’t stop sitting so much, he’s going to have problems.
“I’m a professional dancer in New York City. I probably get 30,000 steps per day..” Brandon responded.
“Oh. Right.” replied the psychic.
Like our New York City palm reader, we all have a hard enough time seeing the present clearly. And we’re notoriously bad predictors of the future. In one study, Dan Gilbert and his team asked university professors to predict how happy or unhappy they'd be if they were denied tenure. They’d be crushed, of course. They’d probably take up whiskey, suffer an existence of Netflix and loneliness, and die a failure.
In reality, when these same professors were denied tenure, they were much happier than they had expected.
Our worry and anxiety live in a future that hasn’t arrived yet. And chances are, when that future does arrive, it’s not going to look anything like we thought. What’s more, we’re far more equipped to handle it than we think.
A Healthy Dose of Optimism
Back in that dimly lit pub (the first one, with my pops), Everything Works Out Perfectly is still ringing in my ears.
My father isn’t one of these toxic positivity people. He isn’t happy all the time. He wasn’t saying that life would be void of failure, mistakes, or suffering. He didn’t mean that everything in the future would be wonderful.
EWOP is a rally cry for a healthy optimism. Instead of being overly worried about what is or isn’t coming, detach and anchor yourself in the present. Deal with what’s at hand right now. All you can do is what you can do.
Remember that things do generally turn out well, or at least not as bad as we expected...
Remember that even when we do fail and bad things happen, you have the agency to change and improve the situation...
Remember that even when you do make a wrong choice, you have the power to influence how that choice ultimately turns out...
Remember that you can’t really control outcomes, so practice letting go. But you can control your responses to those outcomes...
Remember that believing things will turn out well can fuel a self-fulfilling prophecy. Pessimists might be “right” more often (debatable, anyway) but optimists win big more often. As the fortune cookie goes, only those crazy enough to believe they can change the world are the ones who do.
I think that’s what EWOP means: a practice of detaching from an uncertain future, an optimism that good things are on the horizon, and a faith that we can handle whatever does come.
When we work to focus our brain on what's positive and true, we rewire it to actually believe that Everything Works Out Perfectly.
So the next time you’re anxious about an uncertain future, I really don’t have much to tell you. I guess all I can say is:
EWOP, my son. *Sips Beer*