The Complain Diet: Rooting out hidden negativity

(3-minute read time)

Our thoughts create your feelings, which drive our actions and ultimately our results.  Therefore, it makes sense to think on purpose. When we think about thinking on purpose, few of us would choose whiny, cranky, irritable, thoughts.  We would never choose complaints.  

Yet studies show we complain an average 30 times a day!  And every time we do, we are taking a few steps backward.  Complaints introduce negativity that can’t help but impact our results, our quality of life and some research even suggests, the length of our lives!    

“Every time you complain, your irritability — like a virus — is neurologically picked up… So by all means, train your brain to be optimistic and positive because (according to 30+ years of longitudinal research conducted by Duke University and the Mayo Clinic), it will literally add years to your life.” — Mark Waldman  

For those exact reasons, I made up a challenge for myself last month.  I called it “The Complain Diet”. For a whole month, I was not going to complain – about anything.  

I imagined it was going to be challenging but not hard.  I imagined that all I would have to do is pay attention and choose my words carefully.  

I failed.  

It was not but a few hours into my Complain Diet when sneaky complaints snuck out.  By the end of the first week, I caught myself saying things like:

“He just doesn’t get it”     

“There’s never enough time”

“Rain?  On a Saturday?? Again???”

“Of course there’s a traffic jam (Insert annoyed sign here)”

Now, none of these SOUND terribly negative.  Some of them might even seem like they’re just simple observations.  But alas, they are not. They’re complaints.  

At one point I even thought to myself “Sheesh Deneen, if this is what you do when you are focused on NOT complaining you must really sound like a whiny brat when you aren’t paying attention”.    

And then I gave up.  

I gave up trying to NOT complain.  I focused on what I do want (gratitude) instead of what I don’t want (complaining).  

Our brains will find what they are looking for.  When I intend to look at things with a lens of gratitude that is what I will see.  As the old saying goes “When we change the way we look at things, the things we look at change”.  

There are lots of ways to generate gratitude, here are a few favorites:   

• Gratitude Journal – you can even do this electronically with the 5 Good Things App (gotta love it, there’s an app for EVERYTHING!)  
• Find 1 person in your network every day – personal or professional – and tell them you appreciate them are grateful for them and why.  Surprisingly this does more for you than them!     
• Think about where you find the most grateful people or wherever you feel most grateful (nature walk or the beach maybe?) and go spend some time there
• Be grateful for things you might have initially judged as negative.  How can you spin that traffic jam into something that happened FOR you, not TO you?
• Read this post and learn about being grateful for yourself and even for things you want but don’t yet have  

How about a helping hand to change the way you’re looking at things?  I can definitely help, just click here to schedule a free, 30-minute discovery session.