Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesday – Complainers

Tags

Beliefs, Complaining, Delete, Distort, Generalize, habits, Limiting beliefs, Neural Pathways, Problems, Values

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“When you are complaining, you become a living, breathing, crap magnet.” – T. Harv Eker

Have you ever worked with someone who blames others, complains constantly, and never gets anything done? They are toxic and uncomfortable to be around. What’s even more sad is that they don’t even realize what they are doing half of the time.

If you don’t think your thoughts are real, tangible things that create your destiny. Think the worst thing you can think of happening every day for the next month and find out where that thinking will take you. You see, the brain is an economist. It likes to save energy, because it consumes more energy than your body does. It conserves energy by automating everything you show it you want to do all the time. It does this by strengthening neural pathways each time they are used.

Complaining, playing the “blame game”, and all the rest, are habits. If you habitually complain, blame, and all the rest, your brain will continue to show you every reason possible that you are justified in your complaining and blaming. Your mind will delete inputs from your senses that counter this belief. Your mind will generalize inputs to reinforce the same thoughts across many areas. Your brain will alter inputs to satisfy what it already believes. Subsequently, if you believe that everyone is out to get you, things will always go wrong, and you will never get this or that, your brain will make sure you are right. Once these thoughts and beliefs are hard-wired in your brain, you are stuck with them, and your life will literally be a living hell.

The only way to salvage this situation is to take responsibility for yourself. You are 100% responsible for everything that you have in your life. You are 100% responsible for your results. You are 100% responsible for your attitude and mindset. Everything in your life as it is, is the result of your actions, your beliefs and values, your decisions, and your attitude.

If you are unhappy with your life, change your beliefs and values. Change your attitude. Take your time and make better decisions. Act differently. You have to do this. Your friends can’t. Your relatives can’t. Your husband or wife can’t. It’s all up to you. You dug the hole you’re in, you can dig your way out.

Stop looking for proof to justify your feelings. Your mind is already sabotaging you. It will find the proof, because you have hard-wired it to do so. Look at your beliefs. How can you make yourself happy? How can you make yourself calm and collected? How can you make yourself less worrisome? It all starts with your current beliefs and values. If you believe all of your problems are caused by other people (bad boss, stupid people, uncooperative support personnel), your brain will prove it to you. It will identify every weakness of the people around you and prove to you that they are all brain-dead and are out to get you. Change that belief to I have a great boss, the people I work with all want to win, and support personnel will do all they can to help me succeed in my role, and your brain will slowly but surely begin to prove that to you as well. You see how this works?

Changing your beliefs is not easy. You have built these beliefs over and over and over again. You can change them. You do this the same way you built them. You repeat a new belief you want to create over and over and over again. My boss is great. My boss isn’t perfect but wants to win like I do. My boss is there to support me. My boss takes care of me. My coworkers are friendly and supportive. My coworkers are fun to be around. Support personnel do all they can to accommodate my needs. Support personnel are nice to work with. Support personnel are just like me–they want to do their jobs well.

You can literally do this with any of your belief systems. You can rewrite them. You can feed them and stop feeding the limiting beliefs that cause you to suffer. Look for pain in your life. Look for suffering. These are both huge clues in finding your limiting beliefs. If you complain, are unhappy, and believe that everything and everyone is out to get you, these are all limiting beliefs. A negative person will find something wrong in every situation. A positive person will find something right in every situation and the people they work with. Guess who is the happier person who will continue to look for more right things in their life? You guessed right.

A positive person’s beliefs work the same way a negative person’s beliefs do. They distort, delete, or generalize all of their inputs to satisfy their belief system. Change your beliefs and you’ll change your results.

Until next time…

Dave

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Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday: When to help and when to listen.

Tags

Complaining, Empathy, Fixing, Listening, problem-solving, psychology, wisdom

“As we come out of our childhood of spirituality into greater states, we learn to let people be.”—Harold Klemp The Language of Soul

I have always struggled to empathize with people who complain. I always want to jump in and fix whatever is ailing them. What I have discovered is that people do not want to have their problems fixed for them. They want to be listened to, in most cases.

Today, I still struggle with this. In hindsight, I guess I have discovered that I am uncomfortable with people complaining. Complaining is a very negative and victim-like act, in my opinion. It is very frustrating when you run across someone who continuously complains about the same thing endlessly. It’s like these people are frozen in time, trapped in an endless loop without end.

I was watching a YouTube video a while back. I cannot recall the person’s name or even the YouTube video that I was watching but a conversation came up about one of the things he did to get along better with his wife. He said, “We came up with a way to identify what type of conversation we were in. I simply asked my wife whether this was a listening conversation or a solution conversation.” This was ingenious. The husband literally asks his wife whether he was to listen and empathize or listen and help her solve a problem. What a great way of doing things. If we are aware, we can pick up on these things and use them in our own lives.

Here’s a link to a great article about complaining: Psychology Today Article

If you continuously find yourself complaining about the same things, this article will help you understand the fruitlessness of this act. This article also explains how you relive what you are complaining about each time you complain. Talk about driving something deep into your psyche.

So, what are the lessons for today? Complaining is harmful if you are not using it to affect change in your life. There are two types of conversations: 1) Conversations where a person wants to complain and be listened to and empathized with; 2) Conversations where a person wants to complain in order to seek an answer to a question or find a solution to their problem.

If a person complains and asks for help, help them. If a person complains and does not ask for help, listen and empathize. People evolve and grow in unique ways. We have no right to jump in and advise, judge, or fix something they are totally capable of fixing. Let them be.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday

Tags

Accepting Reality, Adapting to Reality, Calm, change, Complaining, Peace of Mind, Reacting to Reality, Viktor Frankl

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” – Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

I see so many people rail against reality. I see it in my friends, my family members from time-to-time, and even strangers who I come across in the gym or when I’m at the market. We all have problems to deal with. Some of these problems are self-inflicted, but a great deal of these problems is totally out of our control.

So, what do you do? Change yourself. This change isn’t about going against your values or your belief systems. It is about changing the way you react to something outside of you.

Here are some things that are outside of you that you will not change.

• Weather
• Governmental policies (other than voting and activism)
• Traffic conditions
• Your Genetic Makeup
• What other people do

By no means is the above list all-inclusive. I provided this list to give you an idea of what I’m talking about in case you’ve never considered the premise of this article. Anything that is out of your control is exactly that—out of your control. Subsequently, any complaining you do about things that are out of your control create meaningless stress in your life and perpetuate the ridiculousness of attempting to change something you cannot.

Complaining or letting these outside, uncontrollable circumstances effect your mood is really a huge waste of time. How do you do this? It is really a decision about how you want to be on a daily basis. Do you want to be happy or do you want to be miserable? Do you want to feel betrayed all of the time or are you willing to give people the benefit of the doubt?

The more detached you are from outside circumstances and unrealistic expectations the calmer and more collected you will be. The next time you catch yourself complaining about the weather, seek out the benefits of that weather pattern. I, for example, love when it rains or snows. I think it is relaxing to watch the rain from my office window or wake up in the morning to a fresh blanket of snow on the trees in my front yard.

Just some food for thought.

Here’s my week:

• I’m continuing my daily workout routine in the gym (I love my gym therapy!)
• I’m continuing to work on the rough draft of my technical recruiting book
• I’m continuing to work on my spiritual duties
• I’m also re-reading Mini-habits, The 7 Habits, and Getting Things Done
• I’m continuing my blogging, of course
• I’m also in the process of setting new goals for the New Year (I’ll post my 2019 goals toward the end of this month)
• Finally, I’m interacting on numerous social media platforms, getting to know new people, cultivating the relationships I have, and having fun

I hope all of you are excited about the holidays. This is truly my favorite time of the year.

Until the next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday

Tags

Accepting Reality, Complaining, Epictetus, Gratitude, Lessons, Patience, Stephen Covey

“It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.” – Epictetus

Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/wisdom

Do you have trouble with complaining?

I used to, until I read a book by Stephen Covey, called “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”. In that book he discusses the fruitlessness of worrying or complaining about things that are out of our control. People complain about the weather, taxes, or any number of things that just happen and are out of their control.

There are lots of things we can do to mitigate challenges in our lives. We can take care of our health to avoid costly medical bills. We can manage our money, so we don’t miss payments and can plan for retirement. We can improve our skill set, so we are always viable in this fast-paced society.

Complaining about things that occur in our lives is really a waste of time. Things happen. One of my colleagues told me something a while back that was truly eye-opening. He said, “Remember, things happen for us, not to us.” What a great way to look at all the things that occur in our lives that just happen.

There are a few things I have come to believe in my life. First, everything is in its rightful place in the worlds of God. God is perfect. God doesn’t mess things up. There is a reason for everything. What is the reason? We are here to learn how to be better spiritually. Subsequently, what the human consciousness deems evil, bad, or unfortunate means nothing at the God-level.

Second, there is a lesson to be learned in every problem we face. If you agree with our purpose of existence—to learn, then each problem or situation we are placed in is an experience. These experiences are designed to teach us. They teach us what to do, what not to do, and how to be a more loving being. A being that knows how to give love and receive love.

Finally, everything happens for a reason. Many times, we don’t see the reason behind something that happens outside of us that affects our life. Maybe you needed to meet someone. Maybe you needed to go to a certain place. Maybe you needed an example of what not to do. The possibilities are endless and, in most cases, are a little bit outside our level of consciousness so that we “stretch” a little.

Sometimes we complain because we are helpless. We are unhappy with our current situation. Keep the above three things in mind when you begin singing the “woe is me” song. Instead, take a moment to be grateful for the situation you are in. There is a lesson to be learned. I have found when I take a moment to express gratitude for my life, regardless of my circumstances, life gets easier, lighter, happier.

I hope you enjoy your weekend! It’s great to be back from Phoenix and get back to work on the things I enjoy doing, particularly writing these daily postings for you, my readers. I hope each of you finds some wisdom in these words and they help you. That is the primary purpose of my blog. I’m not here to make money. I’m not here to be an affiliate for any company. I just want to spread the knowledge and wisdom I’ve gained throughout my life with the hope that perhaps my words will help someone else.

Until next time…

Dave

 

Daily Ramblings – Complaint or Solution?

Tags

Complaining, Helplessness, Hopelessness, moving forward, problem-solving, Solutions

 

“Don’t find fault, find a remedy” – Henry Ford

 

It is so easy to nitpick a solution to a problem or a process. It is so easy to complain about other people or something we don’t like. It is so easy to be a complainer.

 

But, like anything easy, it comes with some huge disadvantages. The first is the inability to see anything positive in a situation. Complaining compels us to look for the bad situation, the bad solution, the bad person, the bad in everything. Who complains when things are going good right?

 

The second major problem with complaining is the constant reference to the activity, item, action, or person we complain about. This complaining, particularly if we have no solution, escalates our complaining to a level that brings about a feeling of helplessness, hopelessness, and feeling bad about ourselves (Winch, 2012).

 

We rarely complain to the people that can solve the problem is the third disadvantage. When we lack a solution to a problem we are complaining about we tend to vent to our friends or relatives—people who cannot solve the problem. Why? Because we want someone to validate our emotions. This does bring temporary relief, but does it solve the problem? No. So we move to the next phone call or meeting over coffee and continue to relive our problem over and over and over.

 

Like Ford’s quote suggests, there is a solution. Complain to people who can do something about your problem or issue. If you don’t like a process or program in your company, approach the person who set the process or program. If you don’t like the way you are treated by someone, tell them. If you don’t like the service you are getting at a restaurant, request to speak to a manager.

 

Suggestion: Have a solution. If you don’t like a program or process, design a different one that will benefit the organization—then sell it! If you don’t like how someone treats you, pull them aside and tell them how you would like to be treated. If you aren’t getting the service you like, request to speak to a manager and explain what your expectations are when visiting their restaurant.

 

Will these solutions be effective? Not all the time. However, it is much more efficient to solve a problem and present it, rather than coming up with an easy complaint and talking with people who cannot solve your problem. If your solution doesn’t work, you can work with your manager and perhaps come up with a better solution than you came up with. You can approach HR in your company to help a person who is mistreating you see the light. You can avoid a restaurant in the future that didn’t meet your expectations.

 

Personally, I do not like the feelings associated with helplessness. I believe there is always a solution to a problem. Complaining is ok occasionally. Habitual complaining is unhealthy and an absolute waste of time. For more information, see the article referenced below. It is a good read if you are looking to improve your outlook on life and want to learn to complain effectively.

 

Until next time…

 

Dave

 

Reference

 

Winch, G. (2012). Does complaining damage our mental health? How the way we complain impacts our mental health. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-squeaky-wheel/201201/does-complaining-damage-our-mental-health