The Unconscious Mistake That Keeps Promising People From The Life They Desire
Using the problems you identify as a map to the solutions
The most potent blocker of success is complaining.
It took me years of painful stagnation and negativity to realise it.
But I don’t blame myself because we’re raised and socialised into believing that complaining is ok. We complain about our jobs, our loved ones, having to get groceries, the economy, our life situation…
We’ve created a negative and disturbing “normal”.
There’s always something to complain about — even a cup of coffee! Yuck, this coffee is gross!
And before we know it, we’ve become just like everyone else — negative, down and always criticising something.
No matter how good we’ve got it, we find things to complain about and suffer for no reason.
This should bother you — it bothers me!
Complaining feeds negative thought patterns which hijack your gratitude and distract you from making change.
It may be seen as innocent and as venting, but it’s a sneaky destructive habit. It’ll slowly suck away your positive, natural spirit.
Do you want to be a complaining, negative and disgruntled person who feeds negative thought patterns that hijack your gratitude and distract you from change?
You weren’t born that way, or destined to be that way. You were put on the Earth to make changes to benefit humanity and enjoy life in the process.
When you stop giving energy to the whinging and whining, and redirect that into positivity and action — when you shift your focus from a complainer to an Improver — you’ll rip that leach off and experience:
more happiness, and less frowning
faster results, progress and problem-solving
a generally more positive and peaceful inner consciousness
You’ll transform your life from someone sad, negative, judgemental and useless into an Improver — someone happy, positive, stoic and valuable.
So, be different, be more positive and create meaningful changes.
To become an Improver, you have to question the attitude and focus you’ve been raised with.
You Have to Escape the Complaining Thought Loop to Make Something of Your Life
I was a serial complainer.
I’d mope when things didn’t go my way, when my muscles were sore or when my company didn’t pay me what I wanted.
I criticised and whinged about everything. Without realising it, I was becoming this disgruntled, angsty person who believed the world owed him something.
I was on the phone with Dad while driving home one day.
We were both whinging back and forth — complaining about people and processes in our lives that were annoying, frustrating and dumb.
But then we stopped.
What have we become? Are we really just going to sit here and complain about the state of things?
We decided we’d stop indulging in this typical human way of complaining and start to think about how to solve the problems instead of just defining them.
Together, we’d cracked something significant — and he spelt it out in a sentence that stuck with me:
“Being negative and complaining is easy — you can always find something to complain about.”
He’s right — it is easy. It’s very easy actually. If I’m struggling to make conversation with someone, I always find myself resorting to a complaint.
We even find ways to complain about the most incredible things — its never us who’s the problem.
How many conversations have you been a part of where social media is the evil that cloaks the Earth and should be irradicated?
Hundreds, right?
But what about the fact that social media is allowing people to stay connected with their family overseas? What about how social media has allowed millions of people to start education businesses aligned with their passions and reach like-minded people all over the world?
And if you stopped complaining about how bad it is, and created solutions so you don’t feel the negative impacts of it — you’d see that social media is one of the greatest miracles humanity has ever seen.
Everything you complain about has this duality.
It’s no surprise that the mindset of a complainer leads to dead-ends.
Because complainers aren’t interested in WHY things aren’t going their way — they’re too focused on the problem.
And so nothing changes.
They’re stuck in a vicious cycle of waiting for something, not getting it and then being mad at the system for not rewarding them.
There are two things wrong with this mentality:
If you wait for things to magically change by complaining — you’ll be waiting forever
A negative outlook on life will colour everything negatively, no matter how great it is — you will miss the beauty of the roses by focusing on the thorns.
Once I deeply understood these two things, I started to understand life on a more fundamental level.
I decided to make a change that would take me from a serial complainer into a ruthless Improver.
The Path to Success is Flipping Your Complaints Into Solutions (4 Steps to Become an Improver)
Most people don’t realise that the things they complain about have solutions.
In fact, the complaints themselves are like anti-solutions — if you flip them around you’ll see a map to success.
You ask for a promotion and your management declines it.
You have two options:
Complain — go home and whinge to your family about how the corporate machine is set up to for you to fail. Come into work the next day with a bad attitude and angst toward the company. Do bad work and be disgruntled forever.
Flip it — analyse the feedback, and find out why you didn’t get the promotion. If it was a lack of organisational skills, go home and research how to be more organised.
Going home and complaining is the easy option because it involves NO WORK.
Going home and fixing your problem is difficult — because it involves admitting your shortcomings, and then working on fixing them.
Here it is broken out into 4 steps:
1 — Become aware when you complain
As with anything, being aware of what’s happening is the first step to creating a new, more ideal process.
I notice I’m complaining about my salary — there is a problem that is upsetting me and I’m feeling negative.
2 — Find the problem within the complaint
What’s the problem you’re complaining about — what needs to be fixed?
The problem is that I want to be paid more because I believe I am worth it for several reasons, but my management doesn’t agree.
3 — Rationalise the problem
Break the problem down into a logical argument.
The company defines the value of my work — that is the agreement when an employer pays an employee. They pay me to perform a service that they would like, which means I must meet their definition of good service for them to recognise that I am worth more money.
4 — Find a solution to the problem
How can you leverage what you know to propose a solution to the problem?
Therefore, I should seek their definition of good — and work to achieve that. I will ask for feedback on why they did not give me the promotion, and use that as the exact roadmap to the promotion.
Leave complaining in the past!
If someone is bothering you — do not complain, it will only bother you more.
View it as a problem that requires a solution. How can you get them to stop bothering you?If you hate your job — do not complain, it will only make life worse.
View it as a problem that requires a solution. How can you solve that problem?
A complainer spends time in the non-existent world, going in circles of negativity and dragging out the problem to be larger than it is.
An Improver simply takes action and gets results.
So make the change today, leave complaining in the past!
It’s a much better and more valuable approach to life.
And be the positive spirit the world needs to change.
Sincerely,
eren
Complaining drains you of all gratefulness, which is the key to happiness.
Eren, thanks for writing on a common yet deeply profound topic that is eating up a generation of people. You have written with a sense of genuineness.
Yes, Negativity does not take you anywhere. On the contrary, it takes you away from becoming your real self - a goal of attaining and achieving your full potential. A conscious awareness to turn that negative energy into positive energy can radically calm you, by directing and harnessing that energy.