I recently talked to a friend of mine who decided to take a challenge of not cmplaining for one day and then turning that day into a week of no complaining. I smiled at the thought I don't really consider myself a complainer (so I thought.) On Tuesday morning I decided to take the challenge of not complaining for one full day. Now my friend told me that when he took this challenge it actually took him five weeks before he accomplished his goal and then it took him seven weeks before he made it a full week without complaining.
Back to me, so on Tuesday, I tried to go a full day without complaining. I made it a whole three hours before I stopped mid sentence and said to my friend. "I'm complaining."
She looked at me surprised and said, "It's okay it just me. I don't care."
I ended up explaining my new challenge I was undertaking. With greater effort I started over and made it another couple of hours before I did it again.
I have noticed since I'm trying to do this is; most conversations actually begin with a complaint of some sort. I think as a society we are addicted to the process of telling people are gripes and thrive when we get support and people agree with our complaints. The problem I can see is we don't talk about positive things 90 percent of our day is spent on complaints and negative thoughts and only 10 percent on the positive.
So take the challenge and see how you do and let me know how long it takes you to go a full twenty-four hours without a complaint. Good luck. I'll let you know when I accomplish my own goal.
hmmm. Not complaining is very hard! I remember after about 6 months of having my horrible headaches that one day I decided to stop complaining about them and just accept them as part of my life. It was so hard, and obviously I wasn't perfect at it, but I did probably cut my complaining by about 90%. And amazingly enough, even though I still had them (and still do have them...though to a much lesser degree) they didn't seem as bad...all because I just stopped talking about it! weird huh.
ReplyDeleteI haven't ever really tried very hard to stop complaining all together though. Sounds tough. I will give it a try and let you know...I'll try to go the day :-) starting now, since I think I already complained this morning.
I did it, but it was hard and I had to constantly think about what I was going to say, which for those of you who know me know how hard that is for me. But I did it and I'm proud as for a whole week I think I'm going to have to work up to it. The challenge has made me aware though of what we talk about most and I have pledged to be more positive in the conversations I have.
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