Why do I complain all the time?
Husband, children, colleagues, weather… We always have a ‘good’ reason to grumble! Here are the keys to succeeding in stopping the complaints.
The waiter rejects you a table at 11:30am when you tell him you’re there for a coffee on the terrace, but they’ve already prepared the lunch menu. Your significant other forgets your anniversary, the children don’t put away their toys, the weather turns bad quite conveniently for the weekend when you’ve planned a barbecue for the family… You should believe in keeping it positive, but let’s face it – the opportunity to complain is too tempting to resist!
AM I A COMPLAINER?
This is a simple way to realise it: put on a bracelet. That’s the advice of Will Bowen, best-selling author of 21 Days Without Complaining (ed. Of Man) and initiator of the movement A Complaint Free World*. Whenever there is something worth complaining change your wrist bracelet – which shows the victory of not complaining for twenty one consecutive days. Verdict: it takes four to eight months to fully conquer. A strong trend in 2015, the concept of auto-challenging intended to change one’s behavior within three weeks (stop smoking, get to meditation…) is currently the buzz, particularly in the United States.
WHAT’S THE BENEFIT?
Quit whining and you’ll cease to develop negative thoughts, to pose as a victim and lose time looking for the guilty rather than solutions to improve the daily. This is not to accept anything that bothers you, but to avoid the ‘pressure cooker‘ effect.
3 KEYS FOR LESS COMPLAINING
Say things without exaggeration: stop putting on the negative energy (“Why does this always happen to me!”). Indeed, the complaint relieves you at the time but does not change the situation. It has been formulated more clearly what is expected of you. Inspired by the Non Violent Communication movement, we’re advised to banish the words ‘always’ and ‘never’ from our vocabulary. It promotes cooperation rather than conflict by describing what we see, what we feel and what we expect, in the first person mode rather than in an accusatory fashion – like the famous “You never did it…” that kills.
Create positive mental images by offering yourself a ‘challenge celebration’ (talk about a positive thing in the evening at dinner rather than subjects of frustrations and to-do lists) and keep things humourous.
Isabelle Soing and Nur Syazana H.
