Stop Whining Because It Makes You Look More Like a Wiener than a Winner

Complaining is easy when things are not working in your favor.

Photo by Kenrick Mills on Unsplash

Because if you’re winning, you’re probably too busy to complain.

That’s reality. Everyone (assuming it’s ethical or if it’s not harming others) is trying to game the system — especially if they can get away with it. The moment I fully acknowledged that, the less time I spent on complaining.

Now, I’m not suggesting you should not complain.

We’re all human. It’s ok to air our grievances out there when things seem to get worse and worse. Someone has to speak up…right? Otherwise, we’ll keep suffering in silence. And when that happens, nothing will change, which could eventually ruin everything for everyone.

I get it.

All I’m saying is that, as someone who is also new to the game, things are unlikely going to be in our favor. It’s critical to develop the self-awareness to catch yourself when you start acting more like a whiner than a winner. Because the more you do it, the more you become it.

Winners make things work despite the unfairness they see around them.

That said, here are 3 things you can do to start acting more like a winner and less like a whiner:

1. Avoid engaging in an “I’m right, you’re wrong” discussion. Offer your point of view, but don’t defend it to a point where you feel like strangling the other person (you’ll never get to see) online. Remember: Life is short.
2. View problem-solving like a puzzle game. Get good at finding and solving problems. Your value highly depends on the kinds of problems you’re capable of solving. Our mental energy reserves are limited. Thinking requires a lot of it. Therefore, instead of wasting it on complaining, I’d use it to find a workaround to the problem.
3. Be so busy improving you don’t have time to complain. Building skills, testing your theories, and creating new sets of insights (based on personal experience) require a lot of time and tinkering.

By getting your mindset right, you significantly increase your chances of acting like a winner. It helps you stand out from your competition (who think like everybody else). If you’re still in the game (despite all those instances where it made sense to give up), then you’re already acting like a winner.

You got this!

P.S. The “You” I refer to is my newbie self