Welcome to the tenth edition of Airplane Mode, where less is more and the WiFi is always off.

Every week, we curate 3 impactful ideas for you to stop and ponder, taking you away from the algorithm and putting you back in control of your most valuable resource: your attention.

Use this newsletter as a signal to pause, breathe, and think, helping you realign with your purpose and clear out the ‘scroll pollution’ that clouds our brains every day.

Thank you for flying with 99 Lives 🐆✈️

There’s a concept I recently came across that completely shifted how I see the world, and how my decision-making shapes not just my day-to-day, but my entire reality.

This concept focuses on the (often unconscious) mental models that people go through life with, the differences between maximizers vs. satisficers. I will explain these in detail, but beyond their definitions, what struck me most was the repeated emotional outcomes each mindset produces, as a result of the decisions people make shape their world.

Maximizers are those who always aim to make the optimal decision, often exhaustively considering all alternatives before deciding. They are constantly seeking the 10 out of 10, often a result of extremely high expectations.

Satisficers on the other hand, are those who make decisions that are above their acceptable criteria or threshold, but don’t seek to squeeze out the best possible outcome every single time. Think of these people as those who are happy with an 8 out of 10. They very often accept ‘good enough’ and make decisions faster as a result.

Now, when it comes to the emotional outcomes of each, who ends up happier in the long run? There is nuance to this answer of course, but in general, satisficers tend to be happier overall. They are less concerned with perfection and high expectations, and spend less time and agony always trying to make the perfect choice.

Maximizers often suffer from the “Law of Diminishing Returns”, meaning the extra effort they put in to find the perfect outcome brings more agony than happiness, even when they succeed. Maximizers spend more energy in the search of perfection, and even if they find it, they experience more regret and less satisfaction over time.

The point of all this isn’t to say “drop all of your standards and expectations” though. It’s more to point out that we live in a world with more options for everything than ever before, and this perception that we have access to all these options (especially with dating) is turning more of us into maximizers, which has psychological impacts at a societal level.

In my experience, nothing is truer than the phrase “Expectations ruin everything”, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have them. I argue instead that we should shift our terminology a bit. We all should have some expectations, to respect ourselves and our boundaries, but these should be called ‘non-negotiables’, and there should be a limit to how many non-negotiables we have.

This keeps us in a position to respect what we believe we deserve, without falling into the delusion that we deserve it all, preserving our standards and non-negotiables without illusions.

(In future Airplane Mode editions, we will look more into maximizers and satisficers, and also take a look at how romance has shifted in the digital age, using a book that was before its time, Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari & Eric Klinenberg)

Last week, we looked at the three key types of traveler mindsets, described by American travel icon Rick Steves. Steves breaks down everyone into 3 possible categories: Tourist, Traveler, and Pilgrim.

This week, I want to expand on the two categories that I believe are the most important and impactful for our own growth and self-development: the traveler and pilgrim mindsets.

Since I began traveling over 10 years ago, one mindset I’ve kept since the very beginning was the idea of “complete immersion” in whatever culture I was lucky enough to experience. From the moment I arrived, the first thing I did is “go get lost”, putting my bag down and immediately walking around the city with no plan, destination, or goal in mind.

I would walk everywhere and anywhere, talk to everyone, and eventually I’d find my way back. After traveling to nearly 30 countries and living in 7 of them, I can firmly say that this mindset has completely transformed me, the way I see the world, and myself in it.

We often think we are traveling to see and experience the world, but after enough travel, you realize that you are simply traveling the world to learn more about yourself, more than you ever could by staying home or in your comfort zone.

When you leave home and go somewhere completely foreign, you realize that you and your mind are your only true home, and you have to face up to all the emotions and thoughts that come with that. You have no choice but to grow with this mindset, which is why a mix of “traveler and pilgrim” mindsets are truly the best combo to go with as you travel.

The single most important thing we can do as human beings looking to grow is simply leaving our comfort zones, over and over and over again. Next is staying curious all the time, always asking why and seeking connection wherever we are.

When we do all of this, the cumulative effect of all these experiences allows us to do something that is a key pillar to everything 99 Lives stands for, which is to “Create Your Culture”. We’ll explore this concept much more in the future, but creating your own culture means unshackling yourself from parts of your home cultures that don’t serve you, and replacing them with the best elements of other cultures you’ve picked up along the way.

In the end, you are sharpening your own personal lens for how you see the world and build your own morals, values, and beliefs that you will pass on to others around you and those that come after you.

(I owe so much of my life, my identities, my joy, and my experiences to Rick Steves. You will likely never read this, but thank you so much, Rick. I am eternally grateful for you and the culture you created that helped shape my own)

If you’ve ever dated, you’ve either ghosted or been ghosted, whether it’s someone new, someone you’ve known for a while, or even an ex.

Ghosting is everywhere. The official definition is “ending a relationship by cutting off contact without explanation”, and a recent study published in the journal ‘Personal Relationships’ looked deeper to understand the damage that ghosting causes.

Researchers found that ghosting tends to create emotional distress comparable to explicit rejection, except it lasts much longer. This is because it uniquely prolongs emotional attachment, uncertainty, and attempts to re-engage, leaving the (ghosted) person stuck in an ambiguous “grey zone”, an emotional limbo where closure is harder to achieve.

Like ghosting, explicit rejection is painful of course, but it provides a clear endpoint and ability to move forward. With the clarity that direct rejection provides, individuals can move forward and tend to avoid further contact, leading to quicker emotional recovery.

On the other hand, ghosting leaves room for interpretation and confusion. This leads to higher levels of uncertainty and emotional attachments that remain long after the situation has occurred. This ambiguity sustains hope and prevents emotional closure, while leaving a lot of mental space for self-blame, overthinking, and the triggering of past wounds. There’s even a term for this, known as “ambiguous loss”, which is a type of grief without resolution.

Ghosting always says more about the ghoster, not the ghosted. The ghoster will engage in this behavior out of a desire to avoid discomfort and the inability to handle it. These tend to be people with avoidant attachment styles. Unable to handle the emotional overload of tough decisions, the ghoster retreats into avoidance. This is a coping mechanism for uncertainty, stepping away without explanation into a zone of perceived safety.

The bottom line here is: Ghosting is not necessarily more emotionally painful than direct rejection, but it’s far more psychologically sticky. It keeps people tethered to the relationship in ways that slow healing, increase obsessive monitoring, and sustain hope long after the relationship has effectively ended. Both the ghoster and the ghosted ultimately suffer, though in different ways and on different timelines.

Thanks for reading the tenth edition!

Last week, we took a vacation! But you can count on Airplane Mode arriving in your inbox every week, just in time for you to switch off & reconnect with the topics that matter most.