Very short version:
Complaining teaches your unconscious you are powerless.
Short version:
Untangle the habit of complaining to get power over you life.
Your unconscious works based on your model of the world. Your conscious interpretation of events modifies this model.
When you complain you teach your unconscious you are a powerless victim in a harmful world. Bad things happen to you against your will, and you cannot change them.
Solution: 30 day no complain challenge. Every time you complain, start over. After you complete it, you will gain superpowers over your life.
Long version
We live better than any other human in history. Yet we complain once a minute in every conversation.
Why is it bad?
Complaining is normal. Everybody does it. Your friends, your family, your colleagues, your partner, strangers. If you stop and listen, half of all conversations are complaining.
If everybody does it, is it so bad?
Yes.
Complaining is self-sabotage.
When you complain, you teach yourself the world is awful, and you are a victim.
World is awful
Complaining implies the world is a bad, negative, awful place for you. Every time you do it, you change your perception of reality to the negative.
Perception is reality.
As you complain, you perceive the world as more unfriendly, which then makes you complain more. A vicious cycle towards unhappiness.
You are a victim
Complaining implies lack of power to change the world. The more you do it, the more you teach your unconscious you are powerless. This then changes how you view the world and what you can do.
You program yourself into a victim by complaining.
How we evolved
Our ancestors complained. It was a successful strategy on many levels.
By complaining, they elicited help and empathy. Their tribemates would help solve the cause of the complaint.
By complaining, they preserved reputation. When something bad happened, it’s human to blame it on external factors. To complain.
For our ancestors this was important. Survival depended on belonging. If you were incompetent, then you might get kicked out. So it was advantageous to find external causes for problems instead of assuming responsibility.
By complaining, they identified threats. Your unconscious continuously scans the environment for threats. It does not scan it for positive factors. Survival depended on finding problems, not things to be grateful for. Those who found more threats, survived more. But they also complained more.
What to do
Train yourself to not complain. It’s life changing.
I used to complain incessantly. As a result, life felt unpleasant and difficult. I did a 30-day no-complaining challenge. Now life is wonderful and I find it easy to be grateful.
You can do the same.
30-day no-complain challenge
It’s very simple. The goal is to not complain for 30 consecutive days. If you complain, you have to start over.
You can keep track with a simple bracelet that you move from one hand to the other if you complain and start over. Or a whiteboard at home. Or a text file on the phone. Or carvings on a stone. It does not really matter.
What matters is not complaining.
There is only one exception. You can complain about something if you also say what you will do about it. So ‘Traffic sucked this morning.’ is a complaint and restarts the 30-day timer. But ‘Traffic sucked this morning so I am taking the bike to work tomorrow.’ is fine. As long as next time you actually implement the solution you proposed.
The one drawback of this challenge is that you will feel disinclined to hear other people complain.
If you do this challenge, let me know how it goes. I like hearing people be amazed by wonderful transformations.
If you don’t do it, then you cannot complain how bad things are because you have the chance to improve them.
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