When I’m going through something stressful, I have a strong urge to think out loud about it with someone I trust. There are probably several reasons I end up feeling better: my listener helps me avoid catastrophic thinking, or reminds me that they have my back if things get worse. But another likely reason is that having the chance to describe a difficult situation in detail – even if you’re just describing it to yourself, as in a journal – invites you to see the full picture, and in many cases, it’s not all bad.

Research by Christian Waugh and colleagues at Wake Forest University in North Carolina underscores this and highlights its potential for helping us manage our emotions. They focused largely on people’s experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic, based on data they collected then. When people reflected on a stressful experience they’d been having, and were prompted to describe six specific elements of the situation, they tended to list at least one that was positive (such as spending more time with family during the pandemic). Having more positive elements in the list was associated with feeling less negative and more positive emotion following the task. Taking some time to elaborate on one of the positive aspects seemed to help people feel better, too.

It can be annoying to be told to ‘look on the bright side’ or ‘find the silver lining’. But personal trials often come with opportunities for growth or self-insight; grief or separation sometimes lead to new connections; and even mundane sources of frustration (a traffic jam, say) can contain small points of pleasure or relief (enjoying a song on the radio that you would’ve missed). Where there are such leavening factors, taking a moment to talk or write about the experience could help us make the most of them.

Recently, I got food poisoning on holiday. I guzzled a glass of water from the hotel bathroom tap, after missing a sign saying it wasn’t drinkable. I regretted that decision, but what nagged at me more was something else: my choice of hotel in the first place.

Before a holiday, I often agonise over where to stay, weighing up every hotel I can find, with the goal of finding the very best option. Psychologists would call me a ‘maximiser’. Other people (like my partner, for one) are ‘satisficers’ who evaluate fewer options and choose one that’s ‘good enough’. Since the 2000s, maximisers have become of interest to psychologists because they often report greater regret and dissatisfaction with their choices afterwards. It seems their forensic searching for the ‘best’ reveals more options, but also inflates expectations of perfection and, once they’re locked in, they are painfully aware of all the rejected alternatives. One paper from 2024 suggested such habits can spoil a holiday.

In my nausea, I couldn’t shake the feeling that, in a parallel universe, I was enjoying another hotel sickness-free. So, since then, I’ve tried not to maximise so much, especially for semi-arbitrary choices. I might not find perfection but, according to the research, I’ll feel better about it.

My tactical satisficing has felt even more justified since I learnt recently about the work of the historian Sophia Rosenfeld. In an essay for Psyche’s sister site Aeon, she traces how and why choice became a fundamental right in Western societies – and why that right has created many problems. Choice, she argues, is not the same thing as freedom.

Clearly, it’s a luxury to have choices in life: many people don’t. But what I take from all this is that I could decide to be more mindful about how I choose.