Stop complaining by Will Bowen ( Via Dale Brown)

A Complaint Free World

How to Stop Complaining and Start Enjoying the Life You Always Wanted

By: Will Bowen

1. Complaining never attracts what you want; it perpetuates what you do not want.

2. We are so busy focusing on what is wrong in the world, as evidenced by our complaints, that we are perpetuating these problems.

We are obsessed with what is wrong. We complain about anything and everything and as a result we keep focusing on our problems. Contrary to popular belief, complaining does not lead to solving our problems. Rather it concretizes our challenges and justifies our inaction in doing anything to make things better.

3. I know a man who watches CNN twenty-four hours a day — literally. He even sleeps with it roaring from the television at the foot of his bed. He is one of the most fearful and negative people I know.

Bestselling author Ester Hicks recently commented that if the news were an accurate reflection of the day’s events, twenty-nine minutes and fifty-nine seconds of the thirty-minute broadcast would be good things that occurred, and the bad news would be just a one-second blip on the screen. What we call news is actually Bad News.

Negative thoughts are seeds we plant in the world through complaining. They will produce. Therefore, guard your thoughts. Protect them. Shield them from the negativity of others and what some call “news.” And begin now to shift your comments from what is destructive to what is constructive.

Your thoughts create your life and your words indicate what you are thinking.

4. Like most people, you spend much of your time swimming in a sea of negativity and complaints.

5. When you stop complaining about what you perceive to be wrong and begin to speak about what you are grateful for and what you desire, you force your manufacturer brain to develop a new product line.

When you commit that what comes out of your mouth will be positive, your mind will become more aware of positive experiences to be used as raw materials to supply positive thoughts. As a result, the fundamental focus of your mind will shift. Your attention will be on what you want, and this is important: You will begin to draw more of what you want into your experience. Further, as you shift your focus away from the challenging aspects of life, you lessen their occurrence.

What you call reality will transform. This sounds simplistic, but it works. There is no reality, only perception. And you can change your perception.

6. Chances are you complain a lot more than you think.

For most people, complaining is a habit that has been reinforced time and again through repetition.

Complaining keeps our focus on the problem at hand rather than the resolution sought.

The biggest problem with complaining is that it keeps our focus on what is wrong, so that we don’t even consider the ways a situation might be improved.

When you complain, you are using the incredible power of your mind to seek out things that you profess not to want but that you nonetheless draw to you time and again. Then, when they show up, you complain about these new things and attract still more of what you don’t want.

When we control our words by eradicating complaining, we create our lives with intention and attract what we desire.

7. The problem with complaining about our health is that it tends to draw to us the actual experience of sickness. What comes out of your mouth determines your reality.

Poor health is one of the most common complaints people voice. People complain about their health to play the sick role so as to derive sympathy and attention and to avoid events they are averse to, such as adopting a healthier lifestyle. Certainly there are some who complain who do have poor health, but even this keeps focus on their struggles, making those struggles more prevalent in their lives.

People who complain about their pain are not only notifying the world as to their suffering but are also reminding their own bodies to look for and experience pain.

Complaining is draining and unfulfilling, and it makes you feel agitated and even defensive.

8. Medical doctors estimate that nearly two-thirds of their time is spent treating patients whose illnesses have psychological origins.

Dozens of research studies have shown that what a person believes about his or her health leads to that belief becoming real.

Complaining about an illness will neither shorten its duration nor lessen its severity. In fact, it will often have the opposite effect.

9. He who avoids complaint invites happiness. Abu Bakr

10. In 1938, Lewis Terman interviewed many psychiatrists and counselors in an attempt to identify a common thread in unhappy marriages. His research found that unhappy couples were distinguished from happy ones by the extent to which they reported their partner being argumentative, critical, and nagging (i.e., complaining).

11. Benjamin Franklin put it this way: “The best sermon is a good example.” And Gandhi said, “We must live what we want others to learn.” If you want others to change and your relationships to improve, you must change first.

12. Human beings have an innate need to be acknowledged by other people. Attention from others makes them feel safe, secure, and cared for. People will often complain simply because they want attention from others and can’t think of another, more positive means of getting the notice they crave.

If there is someone at work who tends to come into your workspace frequently to complain, consider that that person might just want attention. Then take direct action by going to him or her first to ask a question. Ask about the person’s hobbies, family, health, etc.

13. Complaining to excuse poor performance is an attempt to rationalize (tell yourself rational lies) by saying circumstances were stacked against you.

“It’s not my fault” is the underlying message of such a complainer.

14. If you study the lives of successful people, you will find that their success occurred not in spite of their life challenges but often because of them. They stopped telling everyone how much they were wronged and began to seek ways of turning the manure of their lives into fertilizer for their growth and success.

15. When something traumatic happens in our lives, we have a choice to let it defeat us or to let it complete us.

It can be a fire that consumes us or a fire that refines us.

It can be a tragic last act or a joyous new beginning.

16. “There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?” Robert Kennedy

17. Change the words you use and watch your life change. For example:

INSTEAD OF CONSIDER

Problem Opportunity

Setback Challenge

Enemy Friend

Tormentor Mentor

Pain Discomfort

I demand I would appreciate

I have to I get to

Complaint Request

Struggle Journey

You did this I created this

Remember John Milton’s comment, “The mind is its own place and in itself, can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.”

18. “With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.” Max Ehrmann

19. “When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.” Helen Keller

20. From the moment we first draw breath, we are moving toward the grave. When we’ll get there, none

of us knows. The tragedy is not to die but to have never lived. To never have enjoyed where we are.

We tend to relegate happiness to “someday.” When all of our problems are resolved, we will be happy. Well, the only day you will no long have problems is the day when you exhale for the final time. Until then, there will be challenges and struggles, so you might as well make the decision — yes, the decision — to be happy.

21. “My habit now is to seek the positive, speak the positive, and live the positive.” Anita Wixon

22. Having no place for the negative thoughts to be expressed, the mind ceases production of them. When your mouth stops expressing negative thoughts as complaints, you will discover new, happier thoughts currently hidden behind the fog of negativity that shrouds your thinking.

23. Love others. The best definition of “love” I’ve ever found comes from Dr. Denis Waitley: “Love is unconditional acceptance and looking for the good.” As we accept other people and situations and look for the good in them, we will experience less to complain about. Loving others means not tring to get them to stop complaining. Rather, it’s sweeping off your own doorstep, knowing that it is the surest way to clean the entire world.

24. The word “hope: is defined as “a wish coupled with a confident expectation of its fulfillment.” So long as you hold a confident expectation of what you desire coming to pass. It can never be false.

25. As you become a person who speaks only the highest for yourself and others, simply by being who you are you will signal everyone that it is time for a change. Without even trying, you will raise the consciousness of those around you. They will entrain with you.

Entrainment is a powerful principle. I think this is why human beings like to hug one another. When we hug, even for just a brief second, our hearts entrain and re remain ourselves that there is only one life on this planet, a life we all share.

26. The opposite of complaining is gratitude. Gratitude is giving thanks for what you have, whereas complaining is expressing dissatisfaction with what you do not have. Before you can truly know gratitude, you must first stop complaining.

27. The average person complains approximately 15 to 30 times per day, resulting in roughly 4.5 BILLION complaints spoken every day in the United States.

Complaining keeps people focused on current problems, stultifying their innate abilities to seek and create positive, harmonious solutions;

Complaining has been shown by research psychologists to be detrimental to a person’s physical and emotional health, relationships, and to limit their career success.