Complaining about stuff is one of the most annoying behaviors exhibited by people. Whenever you’re in the company of someone complaining about something you have to just nod your head and say “uh huh”. When you are complaining yourself, you never feel good about it.
Complaining isn’t the problem per se, it’s the weak mindset that lies underneath.
Generally people who have their shit together don’t complain about stuff.
There’s two reasons for this:
They know that complaining doesn’t accomplish anything.
They know it’s their fault.
Projecting your faults
Recently I was talking to a co worker who was complaining about some policy enacted. The policy used to be that there was a grace period of 15 minutes to clock in. That changed because a number of people were abusing this and clocking in late every day.
She was upset because she would clock in at 8:07 every day instead of 8 and now would be penalized for doing so.
I sat there listening to her diatribe about this and I cut through her bullshit with one question: “How far away do you live from work?”
She knew what I was getting at right away because she answered by saying “Well I could get up at 7:30 if I have to, but I like getting up at 7:45.”
I go into work at 11:00 am. I get up at 5 am to go lift and start my day. Depending on the traffic, it takes me on average 45 minutes to get to work and I’m sitting here listening to a person complain about having to get up at 7:30 compared to 7:45.
Smile, nod, “uh huh”.
The point I’m making is that whenever you are complaining you are projecting what a weak person you are. The whole time she was saying this, I’m thinking, “Why don’t you just get up earlier and be on time?”
Everything that happens to you is your fault
If there is one central philosophy for this site, it would be that everything that happens to you is your own fault.
Every single thing is on your shoulders.
People are really quick to take the credit when they do something awesome, but when the shit hits the fan it’s always bad luck or fate or some other magic that was responsible.
If you really believe this philosophy to your core, it will completely eliminate complaining because every time you complain, you’ll just be complaining about yourself.
Credit goes to Chris over at Get a Life for this philosophy as he wrote up an article about this.
Making this philosophy sink in really takes work. The key is taking responsibility for absolutely everything in your life. This means the things that you can control, and also the things that you can’t control.
For someone that complains a lot, this can be incredibly difficult. But the positives far outweigh the negatives. Sure, you’ll have to step up when stuff goes bad and blame yourself, but embracing this mentality gives you immense power.
Your new powerful future
There’s a few benefits to embracing the everything is your fault philosophy.
When you start taking responsibility for everything, you will get rid of complaining and making excuses. Both of these behaviors rely on the idea that whatever happened isn’t your fault. An example would be if you were late to a date. You may be tempted to say that the reason you were late was because traffic was bad, but that’s horseshit. The reason you were late was because you didn’t leave in time to get there.
Under this new philosophy, you the random universe is never a factor in why things happen. Now, it’s either you did something or didn’t do something. This gives you more control over your life and makes it easier to change things that are negative.
Under the old system, you may be less inclined to start lifting weights for your health. Why would you when you could get hit by a bus and die? Under the new system, you’re alive right now and may as well be healthy while you’re here.
Now, instead of relying on things to happen, you make them happen. An example would be if you were let down by not getting a promotion. Old system would be complaining about how you have bad luck and that they don’t appreciate you. New system would be accepting that it’s your fault that you’re at the mercy of a boss and you have the ability to quit, get a job somewhere else, or be your own boss.
The Process
Every time your instinct to complain comes up, stop and follow this process to stop.
- Realize that whatever happened is your fault and take responsibility for it.
- Identify the problem at hand and how to solve it.
- Start working towards solving the problem immediately.
The more you implement the anti-complaining process the more it will become second nature and you’ll eventually stop having any instinct to complain at all. Once you start doing this for everything, you will become incredibly strong willed.
Conclusion
Complaining gets nothing accomplished and makes you look really soft. Eliminating it will not only serve to make your life better, but also bring down the net complaining negative emotion matrix in the world.
Stopping complaining was one of the best things I ever did. I’ve freed myself from a lot of negativity by doing it.
-Tate
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