Hey, all millennials: stop whining so much

A lot is said about millennials. We are said to be spoiled. Unable to handle even the smallest setback. Uber late? Crying. No permanent contract? More crying. So we go looking for ourselves in Asia with money from mom and dad. Right?

Not entirely, if it’s up to journalists and fellow millennials Anouk Kemper, Suzette Hermsen, and Lianne Marije Sanders. From today, their book ‘Stop whining’ is in stores. A nice comedic little book in which three Amsterdam friends shamelessly answer questions like ‘do people see my sweat mustache?’, ‘why isn't this man getting hard?’, and ‘when do you talk about pooping in a new relationship?’. Sounds like a book after my own heart. Time to call co-author (and my ex-colleague) Suzette. Time to have a good whine.

So Suus, we whine. Tell me.

“That's right. We whine. About our lives not being spectacular enough, that job that pays too little, about having too few followers on Instagram, not having a Doutzen Kroes body, you name it. Our message? Life isn't perfect either. You can say your relationship is in a rut, but you'll never have a long relationship without getting into a rut. Everyone at work sometimes thinks ‘god, how long do I still have to go today...’. Welcome to real life! Where people also fail sometimes. And hey, that's okay too.”

And the whole ‘stop whining’ has a double meaning, right?

It's also a ‘stop whining’ towards the generation above us. Millennials are said to be lazy, we supposedly can't handle anything. We actually don't recognize that at all. We think we're pretty cool. Are there no jobs? Then we create them ourselves. We might complain for a bit, but then we move on. And besides, it's also a ‘stop whining’ towards ourselves. We really whine a lot in the book.”

How do you think it comes that millennials whine so much?

“We grew up with the idea that anything is possible and everything is allowed. We have a bit of grandiosity going on. Almost all of us want to conquer the world by our thirties. A few years later, you wonder why you haven't done that yet. At the beginning of the book, I wrote the piece: what I thought I would have at thirty (a lot of fame and respect) and what I actually have: (430 followers on Instagram). That immediately puts things into perspective. Away with the grandiosity, welcome to real life.”

Just something to whine about then. RTL Late Night had asked you for the broadcast on Wednesday morning and then suddenly it didn't go through at the end of the afternoon? Crying!

“I still get palpitations from this story. Until five o'clock in the afternoon, I was just stressing out. Things like: ’I really have to talk very calmly, why didn't I cut my hair? Do I have to go on live TV with dead hair? And I really shouldn't laugh as stupidly as always‘ kept running through my head. I was completely hyper from the adrenaline. And then they went for another item at the last minute. Painful, painful. That same night I had really weird nightmares from the unprocessed stress haha.’

What do you hope to achieve with the book?

That we can make people laugh. That you think: ‘haha, my life isn't that bad after all.’ We write exactly about how life really is. We initially wanted to call the book ‘how it really is’. The publisher didn't quite feel that name, and during a brainstorming session, we suddenly said to each other: we're just whining together. And that's how ‘Stop whining’ was born. My mother initially said: “Isn't whining a bit too harsh?” To which I replied: “Mom, that's so old-fashioned.”

How do you approach not whining?

“First of all, strangely enough, by whining a bit. And then putting things into perspective by telling yourself and each other: this isn't that important. I'm not that important. Be glad you're healthy, if you are. And especially stop comparing. We all look at a few ‘successful types’ in life, but honestly, there are only a few. Most people are just like you and me.”

Do you have any final tips for your fellow millennials to adopt a mindset like yours in life?

“Anouk always describes it beautifully: actually, you don't matter to anyone. That sounds very uninviting, but it's true. No one wonders ‘where you are’ if you don't post anything on Instagram for a week. No one misses you. Only your real friends, but you see them face to face anyway. Just get on with it and don't whine. Just be relaxed.”

Want to order Stop whining? You do that here.

Source image: Instagram